August Garden Journal

* Deepen the colour of your blue hydrangeas with Yates Blueing Tonic by applying it each month from August to December. To deepen pink hydrangeas scatter a handful of lime per square metre over the ground and water in well.

* Spray your lawns for bindii with a herbicide such as Bin-die from Chemspray or dig them out. Weeds grow where grass is struggling and soil is compacted, so dig your lawn with a fork to allow air and water to penetrate. Top-dress if necessary and feed the lawn in spring.

* Re-pot container plants in late winter. Use a seaweed solution and re-pot into a slightly larger container. If you want to reuse the same pot, trim the roots, disinfect the pot and put the plant back with a fresh batch of potting mix. Always use the best potting mix you can afford, with added fertiliser and water-saving crystals.

Tips & Tricks
* If you have dreadful soil, sow a crop of lupins, beans or peas. These green crops will improve soil nutrients. When the crop is mature just dig in, wait a month then plant.

* After a quick borer fix? Clean dust away, poke wire into hole, block with timber putty, and paint with Mastik, a bitumen membrane.

Azaleas

When flower buds begin to colour, azaleas may be sprayed regularly with a fungicide such as Bayleton to control petal blight. When they begin to bloom, remove affected flowers regularly to reduce the severity of future attacks.

Flowering bulbs

Water daffodils, jonquils, snowdrops and tulips with a potassium-based fertiliser such as Thrive For Flowering Plants. Don’t be tempted to cut the foliage once the flower is finished. Allow the leaves to die back to feed next year’s flower.

Liliums

Plant lilium bulbs into well-drained soil in a protected, morning sun position. These bulbs are susceptible to rotting so bed them in sand. Place a slim bamboo stake with each one, for support. Liliums grow tall with beautiful fragrant blooms in summer but resent being disturbed. They’ll flower each year if you feed and water them.

Sweet peas

These will be growing well up their supporting trellis. Water if the weather is dry but do so in the early morning to minimise bud drop. Feed with a weak solution of your favourite plant food (formulated for flowers) and spray with a fungicide for powdery mildew.

Petunias

For a splash of colour, plant early petunias into warm, temperate gardens. Give them plenty of sunshine, condition the soil with compost and don’t forget the water crystals. Pinch out the growing tips for increased strength.

Sow carrots

For carrots, mark out shallow furrows 20cm apart and sow seeds 6mm deep. Cover with compost and water gently. Keep the bed just moist until they germinate.

A head start

Sow seeds of tomato, eggplant and capsicum in plastic-covered trays on a warm windowsill. This will give you a head start, as they take three months to grow. Prick out seedlings into 10cm pots and grow them in a warm sunny spot.

Sow onions

Sow onions direct into a prepared bed in a 6mm deep furrow. Thin seedlings early to 2-3cm and later to 7-10cm. Bulbs take 6-8 months to reach picking size. Once their tops dry off, they are ready to harvest.

Grow peas
Choose a sunny, protected spot and sprinkle blood and bone and lime or dolomite over the soil because peas don’t like acidic soil. Water soil the day before you plan to sow pea seeds. As long as the soil remains just moist, the peas shouldn’t need watering again until the seedlings have emerged. They’ll grow rapidly if you side-dress with all-purpose fertiliser.