Garden Clinic Blog

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

 

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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!

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

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.

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.

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

 

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.