Garden Clinic Blog

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.

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

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.

 

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.

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!

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

It’s a masterwork in plant breeding! Depth of colour and incredible vigour makes this anemone outstanding. Deep purple and bleeding into a blue centre with black stamens, its dramatic as a cut flower and no wonder the florists love it.

In flower now with huge goblet-shaped blooms that burst from furry grey buds on bare branches. This is their charm; no leaves, just grey bubs and branches and glowing flowers. There are some incredibly beautiful hybrids available in your local nursery. Choose one now while they are flowering.

Get ready, spring will be here before we know it. As we come to the end of winter here is a list of ‘last chance’ jobs:

We are feeding our potted strawberries with Rocket Fuel (Neutrog) and watering with Harvest seaweed (Amgrow). Remember to water the soil, not the leaves, with a seaweed solution every two weeks.

After heavy rain last week it’s timely to attend to our pots, check the drainage, make sure they are sitting on pot feet and draining freely. You can use a chopstick to open the potting mix and help with drainage.

 

You might remember we planted spring flowering bulbs in pots around Mother’s Day; tulips, daffodils, hyacinths, ranunculus and anemones. The first of these tulips and hyacinths are flowering!