Weekend gardener: go easy watering house plants
House plants
Start to reduce the amount of water and frequency of watering of houseplants.
Let the surface of the soil dry a little before watering and always drain excess away so the plant is not sitting in water.
Before bringing plants indoors for the cooler season, check for any pests they may have picked up outside, such as red spider mite, mealybug and scale insect and treat where necessary.
Ornamentals
Time for some early autumn pruning. Give evergreen hedges a trim, which should keep them in good shape over winter. Latesummer flowering shrubs such as crepe myrtle, datura, hibiscus, philadelphus (mock orange) and Russian sage may also do with a tidy up.
Climbing roses may be pruned once flowering is finished. Cut back side shoots of the main branches to two or three buds, and remove any weak, diseased or dead growth.
Sow hardy annuals, such as alyssum, candytuft, cornflowers, nigella, larkspur and viscaria for an early spring display.
Don’t put your banana skins in the compost, treat your roses by placing the skins at their base. They will benefit from the speedily released beneficial minerals such as potassium, sulphur, calcium, magnesium, trace elements and some phosphates.
Edibles
Check sweetcorn. If the tassels have turned dark brown, the ears should be good to eat.
Plant broccoli and cauliflower (remember how expensive cauliflowers can be to buy).
If any crops weren’t as successful as you may have hoped – your tomatoes too pale, your corn dry, for example, now is the time to research what might have gone wrong, while the problem is fresh in your mind. Maybe your soil is poor, you didn’t water enough, you fed it too much of a certain fertiliser. Find the answer and then you’ve got all winter to mull over remedying it for next season.
Prune grape leaves to allow more sun on the bunches to help them ripen. This will also help air circulation and combat any lurking fungal diseases.
Dig up the last potatoes and store in shallow boxes lined with paper in a cool, dry place out of direct sunlight. Sow a green manure crop on the cleared land, or use it for winter greens such as silver beet or brassicas.
There seems to be an abundance of lemons. But as lovely as they look in the fruit bowl, lemons last much longer stored in a sealed plastic bag in the fridge.