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.
- Pot up coleus seedlings and cuttings to provide leafy colour for shady spots in the summer garden.
- Prune wisteria and other spring bloomers immediately after they have finished flowering.
- Use hedge clippers or a power trimmer to cut back shabby and overgrown clumps of grassy lomandra, dianella and pennisetum.
- Plant dahlia tubers in a sunny spot where the plants can be easily watered in the summer heat.
- Cut back native hibiscus (Alyogyne huegelii) by two-thirds after its main spring flowering, and feed with blood and bone.
- Remove small fruit forming on ornamental spring blossom trees so they don’t become hosts for fruit fly.
- Move potted dendrobium and cymbidium orchids into a bright, warm position out of direct sunlight.
- Sprinkle fertiliser and spread mulch onto moist soil immediately after spring rains.
- Pick off and bin rotten and mildewed blooms on plants such as sweet pea, stock, azalea and dianthus.
- Plant summer-flowering perennial salvias, which will add colour to your garden for months.
You’ll find more than 50 gardening projects this month, including planting potted roses, growing a new passionfruit vine, and taking heel cuttings of fuchsia, in the October 2020 issue of ABC Gardening Australia magazine, out now.