The annual show is about to start
Give your orchids some love
Cymbidium orchids should be throwing up flowering shoots around now. Cymbidiums are probably the easiest orchid, but they grow fast and so are heavy feeders. Give them a weekly feed during the growing period with a specialist orchid fertiliser, such as Thrive Orchid Liquid Plant Food. Cymbidiums also need good light to flower well. If yours are shy to bloom, try shifting them to a position which offers more light.
Most of the orchids for sale alongside the cut flowers at your local food store are phalaenopsis, or moth orchids. You usually buy them in bloom and the flowers should last a couple of months on the plant. But when they drop off, cut off the flower spike just above a node on the stem below the old flowers. For other orchid types, cut the spike off at the base where it turns brown.
To encourage reblooming, feed your plant with a commercial orchid fertiliser. Continue to feed year round for optimum performance.
With the right care and regular feeding, phalaenopsis can be encouraged to flower yearround. Cymbidiums, however, which you sometimes also see for sale at supermarkets, flower just once a year no matter how good a gardener you are.
Plant strawberries for summer
Let’s be clear: it’s impossible to grow too many strawberries – at least six plants per person to get enough ripe at the same time to get a decent bowl full.
Bundles of strawberry plants should be in the garden centre now or soon and that’s usually the cheapest way to get a few plants at once to establish a new strawberry patch.
Plant strawberries in full sun, in rich, freedraining soil. Give them their own dedicated permanent bed, preferably one that can be easily netted to keep the birds out.
It’s best to mound up the soil to improve drainage, as strawberries are susceptible to fungal diseases.
Dig the soil over to a spade depth, sprinkle with strawberry fertiliser and rake it in. If you don’t have strawberry fertiliser in your garden shed, use any sort of tomato fertiliser. (It does the same job.) Space the plants 20-30cm apart, in rows 30-40cm apart.
Plant them now and they should be flowering at the start of spring, and fruiting six to eight weeks later.
Don’t let the pests get a head start
Look for the eggs of passionvine hoppers on the stems of any plants that they’ve infested and snip off and burn affected foliage. Search for the eggs of green vege bugs on the underside of the leaves of plants they target and squash or burn them too. Give your fruit trees a copper spray this month as well to prevent any overwintering infections. Remove old infected fruit still hanging on the trees. Rake up and remove any fruit on the ground.