Get on board with a lime suiter
Ornamentals
Plant lilies in well-drained soil. Lilium regale and Lilium candidum are the easiest to grow being the most lime-tolerant. Other lilies will benefit from leaf mould being added to the soil to maintain the acidity they like.
Plant narcissi (daffodils and their ilk) with haste.
Trim and take cuttings of pelargoniums, geraniums, marguerite daisies and perennial wallflowers.
Dead-head perennials to give them – and the garden – a new lease of life, or at the least a little perk up for its last hoorah before winter. Feed perennials once flowering is over.
Fungal diseases such as powdery mildew thrive in times of cool nights and warm days. Watering the soil, not foliage, will help prevent it, as will not having plenty of air circulating around plants. In most gardens, this may mean not having plants crowded together. Should it affect a plant, remove it (or all the affected material) and destroy.
Lawns
Prepare lawns for sowing or repair by removing perennial weeds, dig over soil incorporating well-rotted manure or compost, then leave to settle for up to six weeks.
Before sowing, remove any new weeds, tread up and down and across to pack down the soil, then rake across and up and down. Sprinkle over a general-purpose fertiliser, rake again, then sow the seed – again by walking across and up and down. Rake yet again, this time lightly, to cover as much of the seed as you can with soil. Then wet with a light sprinkler. Never let the lawn dry out until the seedling grass is well established.
Choose your lawn seed according to your needs and desires. A wide range of lawns can be achieved from lush velvet to hard-wearing and rugged. Owners of female dogs can avoid dead patches in lawns caused by urine by having a lawn of clover instead of grass.
Edibles
Sow a green manure crop without delay – for maximum effect sow multiple species such as oats, mustard and lupin. Green manure crops should be dug into the garden in late winter to early spring.
Sow silverbeet about 1cm deep in rows 50cm apart, in soil preferably with lime and blood and bone added.
Earth up celery and leeks, and water well.
Should you have had clubroot in your brassicas, dig in dolomite lime to lower the pH of your soil.
Save seeds from your best tomatoes. Place on a tissue or paper towel on a sunny sill and when dry store in an airtight container till spring.
Prune boysenberries and blackberries after fruiting by cutting all canes that have just borne fruit to the ground. Then mulch.
– Mary Lovell-Smith