Spare a thought for the office indoor plants or your own if you are going away over the Christmas period. I’ve seen a fortune in indoor plants that fail to recover when subjected to four weeks indoors in summer without attention. Consider these strategies. Offer them to some staff member to take home and plant sit (this might need a slab or something as inducement), even arranging transport is cheaper than replacement. Ring a real estate agent, who may have a client that would hire, or at least look after them for their open inspections.

Failing these moving options, take them to the toilet/bathroom at your office or home and water thoroughly with a kelp or seaweed extract, which will provide them with their best chance of surviving the break and maybe roster or coerce someone to water them once a week over the break or while you are away.

Try to resist the urge of watering your tomatoes everyday, just because you are there. Put the effort into painting your lattice or making compost or just tilling your veggie garden. With summer watering local soils compact all too easily. So a little light tillage and mulching works wonders. The root disturbance is minimal and they recover quickly.

There is concern at present that the silvery leaves on Zucchini is an early appearance of powdery mildew, however most of the latest zucchini cultivars have leaves that naturally have silver markings on them, so inspect the underside of suspect leaves before you consider spraying. Even then, I’d be cautious, because even with mildew they still seem to set enough fruits to support most kitchens.

Christmas in the hills is a lovely season and making compost from all those weeds is imperative. However unless you are going to make a hot brew, which will need to be at least one cubic metre in an open heap or by adding animal wastes to an on-ground type of compostor, you will not reach the required 60ºC to cook the weed seeds.

Therefore make a silage brew in a plastic rubbish bin with lid. Half fill with weeds and top up with water and some chicken manure. Leave to brew for about four weeks and use as compost tea on leaf crops, like rhubarb, silverbeet and lettuce. If you are blessed with oak leaves that fell last autumn, use those in any compost and their residues act as a powerful snail and slug repellent.

I’m still getting advice about growing Impatiens and well lots of it. I’ve been flooded with seed and plenty of sound advice. Most correspondence is from folk who are astonished that I’d find Impatiens a challenge, since most agree they border on weed status. Fact is I was trying some of the new F1 hybrids in the stunning colours, when conventional wisdom is telling me to stay with the old taller types in basic pinks and orange.

Speaking of weeds, there is a fresh concern that “Broomrape” Orobanche ramosa is likely to hit our gardens in the near future. An insidious root parasite that is visible at this time of year as a rusty coloured flower pike like a dried up orchid only 15cm tall. It has decimated a wide range of commercial and home garden vegetable crops in Cyprus, southern California and similar climates and is currently known to be infesting about 8000 hectares between Bow Hill and Mannum and has recently been spotted on the Adelaide side of the River Murray.

This weed is more lethal than any in our recent history and sets over half a million dust-fine seeds per plant at this time of year. The state government has an active eradication plan but needs your assistance in spotting this villain. This parasite avoids nutrient rich soils and has no tolerance to boiling water, which suggests a control strategy at least on a small scale in your own garden if spotted. Any outbreaks locally should be immediately reported to Primary Industries SA, Weed Officers 8303 9500.