Garden Clinic Blog

Feather Falls & Swift Grow offer

Get the new Feather Falls decorative Carex and the new Swift Grow organic fish fertiliser with Platinum membership to the club.

Father's Day Offer 2021

This week we have a great offer to give your Dad our special Father’s Day pack with everything Dad needs to get his garden powering this Spring.

All this plus a 1 year Platinum club membership, but best get in quick.

Stocks are limited.

What's in the Winter Garden Care Pack?

Receive all the wonderful benefits of the Platinum membership - your Winter Garden Care Pack

What to do this week: A bad season for lawn grub!

Much worse than usual, the warmth and the moisture has caused a proliferation of lawn grub, the worst in a decade! Typically you notice the damage before you see the pest.

Star of the Season: Willowy Windflower

Lovely in a shaded border or woodland, or as an under-storey plant, the waving stems of the Japanese windflower are one of the many joys of the autumn garden.

What to do this week: Time to take cuttings

Take advantage of warm temperatures to take cuttings of woody plants like lavender, rosemary, justicia (Brazilian Plume Flower), azalea, camellia, brugmansia (Angels Trumpet) and rhododendron.

What to do this week: Summer Prune Stone Fruit Trees

This week in the garden it's time to prune your stone fruit, and dead-head your agapathus

Star of the Season: the flamboyant dahlia.

Unashamedly bold, brash and beautiful; it’s time to pick armfuls of them to fill your home. We combine our dahlias with buddleias which make perfect partners, especially the new Buzz Series buddleias which never stop flowering (if you keep dead-heading).

How to: divide upside down orchids

Graham’s upside-down orchid (Stanhopea tigrina) has grown old and unproductive, and this year treated us all with only five flower spikes, instead of the usual 30!

In the Vegetable Patch: It’s time for another tee pee

Late September we planted our first tee pee with cucumbers, beans and a yellow cherry tomato called Honey Drop, in the centre.

What to do this week: Time to plant passionfruit

Passionfruit are among the most productive of backyard crops, especially when the bees do their thing. Now that summer has arrived

What to do this week: Scent, Scale and Drama

Lilies are flowering on cue, late spring and summer. Tall, elegant lilies standing on strong stems in the back of the border and delightfully fragrant. Small varieties are fantastic in pots. Lilies love morning sunshine with protection from strong afternoon sunshine.

In the Vegetable Patch: Zucchini is a vegie in a hurry

It’s time to plant this tasty summer vegetable. Quick and easy to grow, zucchini take 6 weeks from seed sowing to harvest

Spotlight: Oak Leaf Hydrangea

Hydrangea quercifolia is one of our all-time favourites! We love this beautiful hydrangea with lush curvy leaves, a similar shape to the oak (quercus), hence the name ‘oakleaf’ (quercifolia), and long graceful conical flower heads.

What to do this week: Protect your blueberries

Blueberries are in full production at present. These pretty shrubs, with delicate, pink, bell-shaped flowers, give way to delicious purple-blue berries full of goodness and high in antioxidants.

What to do this week: Plant a lemon tree

Spring is perfect time to plant a citrus tree; lemon, lime, orange and mandarin. Not only do they look beautiful – with glossy green leaves, gorgeously fragrant spring blossom and winter fruit in warming colours that glow in winter light, but they also taste great.

In the Vegetable Patch: Time to sow beans

For 200 years, fresh beans have been the second most popular home-grown vegetable in Australian gardens (after tomatoes). With low calories, lots of protein, fibre, and packed with vitamin C, A and K, beta-carotene, folate and potassium. But the best bit? There are varieties for every situation.

A Trifecta of Flowering Trees

The mauve mantel of Jacaranda, the best-recognised of three late spring flowering trees, has been cast over our world. Jacaranda flowers so well in our latitude that many people think it’s a native plant. But that honour isn't ours!

In The Vegetable Patch: Manage Tomatoes

Trim lower leaves of tomato plants It will help prevent disease spreading in mud splash.

What To Do This Week:Take frangipani cuttings

October / November is the perfect time to propagate frangipani cuttings. It coincides with the ideal time to prune frangipani. We pruned our huge 20-year-old pink frangipani early October to allow access for people to walk under it. All pruning wood was made into cuttings.

Spotlight: The exotic Orchid Cactus

You have to stay up late to enjoy the opening of the Queen Of The Night cactus, it flowers between dusk and dawn. But other orchid cactus flower during the day and can be grown in a basket producing masses of cascading flower all through late spring.

What to do this week: Plant summer flowers

Plant up summer flower planters to brighten your balcony, deck or patio.

In the Vegetable Patch: It’s time to plant summer vegetables.

Are you a new gardener and inspired to start a vegetable patch, but don’t know where to start? There are five steps to consider when starting a patch from scratch. Position, garden bed construction, crop rotation, soil preparation, and feeding. Get this combination right and you'll be harvesting a bumper crop in no time

What to do this week

It’s all about pruning this week as flowers fade. Spring flowering shrubs should be pruned as soon as flowers finish. This allows the plant to make new growth which will flower again next year. If you delay pruning, your plant will not have time to regrow the flowering wood for next year’s flowers.

In the Vegetable Patch: Scrumptious potato salad

It’s time to think ahead to alfresco summer dining. Grow your own delicious produce and you will never go hungry.

In the Vegetable Patch

The energy of growing vegetables is palpable. Our tomatoes are growing 4cm each day! They are netted now to protect them from fruit fly and each one has a length of pipe for deep watering.

What to do this week: Prune spring flowering shrubs

We are taking the advice of Tony Matson from Cutabove Tools at our recent Garden Clinic class. Sharp and clean tools make gardening so much easier.

5 Things You Need To Know About Roses

It’s time to get those unruly roses under control. Spring is all about emerging rose buds. With some prior planning you can give your roses the best shot at a spectacular flowering season. Sandra Ross shares the 5 things you need to know to make them happy, healthy, fragrant and fabulous.

What to do this week: Citrus Care

If you take a few simple steps to care for your citrus you will be rewarded with a bounty of fruit.

In the Vegetable Patch: Man the Barricades

As fruit and vegetables begin to ripen all sorts of vandals lay claim. Ripening fruit can act as a beacon for birds and lizards in particular, so we put our minds to building protective barriers that let the sunshine in while keeping the rascals out!

What to do this week: Comfrey Tea

This home-grown fertiliser contains more potash and more nitrogen than commercial feeds, and costs only the price of a bucket and its water. Your vegetables will love it, especially your strawberries at the end of winter. Strawberries are growing well and already producing flowers and fruit.

In the Vegie Patch: Time to sow beans

This week in the vegie patch we're thinking about beans and when to plant them. It's a good idea to wait until temperatures are reliably warm before sowing beans, so a few more weeks should do it. Meanwhile you can build your sturdy trellis to support them, as beans can get heavy once they are in full growth.

Rose Care Pack

Join the club today and you’ll receive Neutrog’s Sudden Impact for Roses, Richgro’s Black Marvel for Roses, and Amgrow’s Rose Spray to deter those pests. This will have your roses looking great this Spring.

Spotlight: Poppy

When we think poppy, most of us think of the crepe-papery Iceland poppy, but there are other lovely species to grow and pick!

Plant of the Year Lavender Pack

Our plant of the year is the new range of lavenders from Plant Management Australia called Lavinnova. This week when you join the club you will receive one of these new lavenders “The Queen” ready to plant into your garden.

In the Vegetable Patch: keep a close watch on broad beans.

Broad beans are so tasty, and so nutritious! It’s one vegetable you should try. Watch them closely at this time as the flowers are setting pods, for aphid attack. We sprayed our crop with Yates Nature’s Way (ready to use) garlic and pyrethrum spray.

What to do in the Garden: time to plant avocado

Plant an avocado; better still plant two for better pollination rates and more fruit. Given the correct growing conditions these trees will bear heavy crops in three years. Mature trees can be affected by excessive rain and by hot and dry wind, especially at flowering and fruit set.

Spotlight : Ranunculus

There has been a revolution in the breeding of ranunculus. ‘Renaissance’ Ranunculus is a triumph with high quality, long lasting, consistent doubles in a range of colours. Up to ten flowers will open from a single tuber (bulb), and they are double from start to the finish. ‘Picasso’ is another fully double variety with a black centre and producing up to 10 blooms from each tuber.

Star of the Season : Light and Lacy… Japanese Maples

Alan Jackson is crazy about maples! His nursery, Maple Springs is in Little Hartley where he propagates, grafts and grows 250 species of maple. Over the last 25 years he has designed and created Gory’u Japanese garden (which featured in the spring issue of the Garden Clinic Magazine). Alan is jumping out his skin with excitement as his maples burst into fresh new leaf. Click here to read our story.

What to do this week: Feed the Flowers

Hibiscus bring a glorious taste of the tropics to a warm frost-free garden. This week is your last chance to prune them. As they flower on new wood, the harder you prune, the more new growth is produced and the more flowers. Hibiscus are hungry so feed them every six weeks with either Sudden Impact for Roses (Neutrog) or Black Marvel Rose Food (Richgro) and water it in with a seaweed solution.

In the Vegetable Patch: It’s time to plant passionfruit

The passionfruit vine is a vigorous, climbing plant with deep green leaves and fragrant, delicate, purple to white flowers with a distinctive corona. The vines are sensitive to frost and the fruit matures to a deep red colour and contains a sweet, juicy, orange edible pulp.

Happy Hippies!

We have been growing this exotic-looking bulb for three years. Hippeastrum is also known as Amaryllis. We started with one and now we have approximately 10 bulbs in five clumps. It comes from the tropical forests of Brazil and grows easily in a frost-free climate.

Star of the Season: Clivia

The classic burnished orange-red clivia has been overtaken by new lemon, lime and peach colours. Peter Hey is mad about the new clivia colours he is now producing – lime-green, bronze, peach, scarlet and apricot!

Tim’s Fruit Fly Resistant Tomato + Fertiliser pack

Have you tried growing tomatoes only to lose your crop to fruit fly. Then we have the solution –Tim’s fruit fly resistant tomato and you’ll have genetic protection against fruit fly.

What To Do This Week

With the arrival of spring there is much to do in the garden. Plants are hungry! And in some areas the garden is dry and we need to keep the moisture level high for good root growth. Here is our weekly checklist.

In the Vegetable Patch: It’s time to plant tomatoes

The structures are built! The soil is powered up! The agricultural pipes are in place. Now the temperature is right to plant tomatoes.

Know Your Grevilleas

There are 365 species and 100 subspecies of grevillea, making grevillea the third largest genus in Australia. Many species attract birds into the garden as they produce huge quantities of nectar. They are so many different colours, shapes and sizes and they flower for such an extended period of time, there's so many reasons to grow them.

Tomato Tragic's 3 Golden Rules

I want to inspire you to grow tomatoes, but I’d be fibbing if I told you it was going to be easy. But it’s definitely worth the effort! Here are the tomato-tragic’s three golden rules.

What to do this week

Get ready, spring will be here before we know it. It's time to feed flowering bulbs, replenish moisture and give the Crepe myrtle a prune. Get those ‘last chance’ winter jobs done this week before spring has sprung!

Spring Inspiration

A new range and an old favourite garden this spring will be just what we need. Mr Fothergills summer bulbs and Nooroo, Mt Wilson