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- Now that many of our spring bulbs have finished flowering, it’s timely
to remind gardeners that for bulbs such as daffodils, tulips, hyacinths and
freesias, you need to feed them before they dry off so that next year’s
flowers are assured. Otherwise they will regrow next winter, but their
flowers will be poor or absent. Use a fast acting water-soluble fertilizer
with a high potassium ratio.
- Annie has just handed me her freesia report card for this year’s
performance. Her massing cottage garden fragrant freesia mixture were real
duds, which got attacked early in the season by thrips and never really
recovered. The more expensive Bergunden Freesias on the other hand did not
get a single setback and went on to flower with huge robust blooms in bright
colours, albeit without much perfume.
- So I’m under instructions to destroy the massing type of freesias and
order all Bergunden next year. That’s what gardening is really about
anyhow. Find out what grows best for you and plants lots of them!
- Our Tiger lilies are breaking dormancy at present and they look so
healthy, when they venture out, but now is the time to start feeding them or
else they will soon exhaust their entire available nutrient in their pots
and be too hungry to flower in three month’s time. They can tolerate
superphosphate to get their roots growing strongly and a seaweed extract to
provide the organic particle so that when water-soluble fertilizers are used
in a month’s time, they already have the buffer in place.
- I see organic pellets being used everywhere these days, no doubt due to
the easy of application, but on bulbs it just results in soft lush leaf
growth and poor flowers. The leaf eating insects move in and there’s not
much left. Pellets are fine in conjunction with other nutrients but unless
they have been enriched with other nutrients they need to be used sparingly.
- On that score I see local fertilizer company, Neutrog has launched a new
‘Sudden Impact™ for Roses’. A specially formulated organic pellet that
has a massive potassium load added. The stated N:P:K is 9 : 4 :12 plus trace
elements, which should be ideally suited to roses. It comes in a 10kgs tub
that will double as a bucket for harvesting roses or storing other
fertilizers in the garden shed.
- It’s time to feed your passion vine before it starts looking poorly.
They grow like steam in early spring, and unless the nutrient flow is
maintained things slow down just at the critical stage when they are going
to flower. They are real organic hogs and if planting a pair of lamb livers
each side, does not appeal to you, then create a hole into which you can
liberally spread enriched organic pellets or a smaller measure of slow
release fertilizer, say about 60 grams.
- The ubiquitous potato vine is on the march too, so time to give it a shave
with some hedge trimmers or clip it by hand, which reduces the long rampant
tendrils and that way it will send shorter side shoots that flower more
profusely.
- If you grow lemon grass divide that and discard the old culms, retaining
the younger growths and keep them in bunches of at least four or five per
spot that you plant. Divided into smaller clumps they seem to struggle to
get established. Snails love them too, so remain vigilant! That’s code for
whatever you want it to mean.
- With all the mowing that is required around the average hills residence
over the next few months, it’s worth putting in a plug for the compost
heap. Shredded grass left to self-mulch your roadside, serves no gardener.
Collect it and mulch it then add it to your garden or vegetable beds in a
few months time. Even the lowest quality grass clippings make useful
compost.
- With all the recent moisture and a few warm days we can expect
considerable outbreaks of black spot and other fungal diseases on our roses
and on other similarly affected plants. In the first instance try a spray of
PestOil (recently acquired by Yates, no doubt influenced by my continual
reference to it being a useful garden product) on small plants, since the
fine oil seems to create a fungi hostile zone, effectively protecting your
leaves. Don’t use these sprays on grey woolly leaf plants though. I did on
Carnations and the leaves went black and they dropped off. Sure they shot
again…but pretty ugly sight.
- It’s been so wet this spring that even the Delta strains of Pansy (the
most common used in 95% of all blends in SA) have had their blooms going
mouldy. Now I haven’t seen that in years and it highlights the need to
keep dead-heading your bedding plants once they are spent. That reduces risk
of the dreaded Western Flower Thrips from invading your garden.
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