|
- It’s time to start bluing your hydrangeas if that is your intention. The
old fashioned cultivars of hydrangea are renowned for flowering either pink
in alkaline soil or blue in acidic soil and the world over, what ever soil
gardeners have, they seek to change it. The agent of change is alum sold as
hydrangea bluing or various forms of garden lime sold as pinking agents.
- Unless you start with that process you will not have enough of a change in
your soil reaction by Christmas to see any difference. Local manufacturer
Manutec also has a product that is both fertilizer and blueing agent, so be
wary when comparing price that you take this into account. White hydrangeas
do not respond to colouring agents nor do some of the new maroon cultivars,
so ask your supplier if buying.
- You might question why not use iron chelates that you already have in the
garden shed? Sure it is supposed to acidify the soil, but unfortunately on
our very alkaline soil (say pH8.5 and above) which is most of the Adelaide
Plain, iron chelates get neutralised all too quickly and is not available
over the longer term, required to blue hydrangeas. At just under $7.00 a
packet, you might like pink hydrangeas this year?
- I was quizzing Kevin Handreck (local Soil Consultant) recently about the
availability of iron in our soils and his prescription was to core drill
with a post hole digger three or four 20cm deep holes around fruit trees and
other large shrubs that need more iron (i.e. they regularly show signs of
lime-induced-chlorosis or yellow leaves with green veins) and into these
holes put the following mixture: 2 litres of fine grade peatmoss or copra
substitute in which you have blended 250 grams (one cup) of iron sulphate.
Make sure you use rubber gloves or you will have black hands for a week!
- This mixture is compacted into the holes and backfilled with a shallow
layer of soil to cap each core. The acidifying iron sulphate is protected
from being neutralised by alkaline soil contact and yet being blended in a
perfect organic buffer of peat or copra, the tree and shrub roots can seek
out the iron they need to keep healthy green leaves. Such a core should last
at least a year, whereas iron chelates in the form that most gardeners buy,
can be neutralised in less than a week!
- The white cabbage moth is on the war path at present and if you seek a
chemical free control try this: Make a cylinder of 1cm chicken wire and
crush the top in to form an enclosed tube of wire. Surprisingly the cabbage
moth will not penetrate the wire to lay its eggs and so your cabbages,
cauliflower, kohl rabi and broccoli are left caterpillar free and free of
chemical residues too!
- Organic growers of vegetables have particular problems with trying to grow
tomatoes, beans, asparagus, red beet, cauliflowers, cabbages and broccoli,
since these crops actually prefer alkaline conditions in the soil and unless
you does the soil with top dressings of garden lime you get deficiencies,
such as the brown rot on the bottom of tomatoes. Called blossom end rot, it
is directly caused by a lack of available calcium (lime) in acidic soil. The
remedy has an immediate effect on the next set of blossom on your tomato, so
treating them immediately is the solution. You must use garden lime too, not
slaked lime or builders’ lime!
- Sow seeds of ‘Blackjack’ zucchini now onto mounds in a sunny aspect
and then sow some more again in about 6 weeks, because that’s when the
first crop will peak and they deteriorate quickly then, so the second sowing
takes over. Buy a single seedling in a Jiffy pot if your space is limited.
- If your aim to plant a few lettuce this week, draw a shallow trench and
spread 1cm of blood and bone into the trench then backfill and plant you
lettuce over the top. They will fly away and they taste best when grown
rapidly with loads of nitrogen. The temptation is to use a water-soluble
form of nitrogen, but the salt residue left for subsequent crops is the down
side, unless you use lots of organic matter as the buffer.
|
