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- I planted six seeds of the Yates ‘Ecstasy’ double sunflowers two month
ago in a hot part of Annie’s cottage garden. Two seeds per planting hole
and roughly a metre apart. Well are they a picture right now. At least sixty
flowers in the clump 1 and a half metres tall, covered in enormous golden
double blooms and absolutely defiant of the heat
- They created a dilemma though. Do I remove the spent heads as they age to
keep the clump pristine or leave the old sunflowers to mature so the doves
and pigeons can eat the plump black seeds? I cut a few sunflowers off and
found the seeds had already swollen and when placed around the garden
certainly had the doves there within an hour, pecking away at their
favourite food.
- I cut all the tendrils off my climbing Snail Creeper and Chilean Jasmine
just before Christmas and they are now flowering their heads off, but still
trying to make more tendrils, so if yours are like that just keep removing
the tendrils or they will stop flowering.
- If we get a few cool days, feed them with a high potassium fertilizer and
water well, because they run out of nutrient to keep them flowering easily,
as most flowering vines do. That goes for Passion Vines too! Use a trickle
hose along the fence line of your creepers and set your automatic timer to
an hour on a low pressure at twilight. That’s the best watering they can
get.
- Fuchsias are flowering well right now too and the black and yellow
honeyeaters just love them. Fighting each other aggressively over their rich
nectar load in the pendulous flowers each morning and night, but keep them
watered and use a seaweed extract to keep them looking at their best in the
really hot weather. If yours get midday to afternoon sun, mulch them also.
- Hydrangeas are going off in some areas, but just by keeping them watered,
you get the benefit of the flower aging and the leaves will usually provide
some autumn colour too, so don’t be too eager to deadhead them or cut them
back. Too many local gardeners miss a lot of colour from their hydrangeas;
by thinking they are just for Christmas.
- Boy did I get a serve from Annie over the dearth of parsley at Christmas.
Well I mean I maintain six types of mint and just two of parsley and both
had run to seed. Don’t you hate that when you need it most? So the message
is always plant more parsley than you think you need even when you don’t
need it. I mean parsley at $1.70 a bunch is a bit rich, for what grows like
a weed anyhow.
- As soon as you return from holidays, assuming you get away, plant some
lettuce and spring onions. "Spring onions", what a joke they can
go in at almost anytime of year and have got to be the best value for money
in the vegetable garden. A punnet for $2.50 yields at least 50 seedlings,
yet a bunch of just 8-10 small plants costs $2.50 after six weeks growth at
the greengrocer’s.
- If you every lived in the tropics you’ll know Rosella, the
"Jamaican Sorrel". It has a lovely creamy-yellow hibiscus like
flower and red fruits and stems. The fruits make the famous Rosella jam and
jelly and even as a 1–2 metre ornamental annual it looks great, grows fast
in this hot weather, but dies down in winter. Still we have plenty of hot
weather left yet, so the long distance forecasters tell us!
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