Top 10 jobs to do now
There’s lots to do in the garden at this time of year. Here’s a list of jobs to do now.
- Prepare garden beds for summer flowers by digging in some compost and organic fertiliser.
- Deadhead daffodils and jonquils as they finish flowering, but continue liquid-feeding the plants regularly until the leaves yellow and wither.
- Pluck and bag dead flowers from azaleas to prevent a build-up of disease.
- Give summer-blooming shrubs a trim and tidy-up if needed.
- Use hedge shears to cut tatty clumps of ornamental grasses off at ground level.
- Prune poinsettias and any other winter-blooming euphorbias, such as snowflake (Euphorbia leucocephala).
- Check all of your indoor plants and discard any that are heavily infested with scale or mealy bug.
- Begin applying lime to hydrangeas to change the flower colour to pink, or use blueing solution for blue flowers.
- Visit cymbidium orchid shows to admire and choose new varieties.
- Cheer up the late-winter garden by filling pots with colourful violas and other seasonal flowers.
You’ll find more than 50 gardening projects this month, including how to make a quick greenhouse, prune citrus gall wasp lumps, and plant a hedge, in the August 2020 issue of ABC Gardening Australia magazine, out now.