Spruce up your plants with some spring cleaning
ROSES are in full flower force in October! Although roses dislike disturbance around their roots while growing actively again, they do not mind the presence of a living mulch like a few dainty groundcovers and perennials to add more colour and romance to the rose garden.
Bright colours and flowers to add now include creeping Jenny, cranesbill (Geranium incanum), snow in summer, chives, brachycomes (different hybrids and colours), bindweed (Convolvulus), candytuft (Iberis sempervirens), lobularia, scabiosa (corn flower) and sweet violet (Viola odorata).
Fertilise your roses again with a fertiliser formulated for roses, and follow up every four weeks.
Treat preventatively and correctively against fungi and insects with a combination rose spray. Water three times per week.
Rake up grass clippings and leaves to allow the lawn blades to photosynthesise efficiently.
Get rid of broadleaf weeds in existing lawns by spraying with a selective weedkiller. Before spraying, fertilise your lawn, water well, wait two weeks and then spray for weeds. Repeat if necessary.
In the orchard, remove any growth sprouting from below the graft or bud union of the rootstock, on which a variety was either grafted or budded (oculated) onto a rootstock. Roses should be planted with the bud union below soil level to encourage sprouting of basal shoots, which will rejuvenate the bush. I
It is seldom that sucker growth occurs, due to the rootstock being used by all propagators. Gardeners tend to cut or break off the valuable basal shoots instead.
Regular cutting off of the dead or spend flowers on rose bushes – best halfway down the stem – encourages re-sprouting of quality flowering. Cut off the dead flower stems of winterflowering aloes and check around the base of your plants for small pups (plantlets) which can be planted out in pots or in the garden.
Prune flowering peaches, almonds and ornamental quinces as soon as they have finished flowering.
Repot ferns into fresh potting soil and start feeding them every two weeks with a liquid fertiliser mixed at half-strength.
Place houseplants like orchids or ferns that love humidity, on pot trays filled with gravel and a little water. Do not let the base of the pot stand in water, or the plants will rot.
Clean up succulents like Echeverias and Kalanchoe thyrsiflora which will have stopped flowering.
Prune honey marguerites (Euryops virgineus) and all the Buddleja species as soon as they have finished flowering.
Top dress containers with rooibos tea mulch, crushed peach or apricot pips or pebbles to keep the soil moist between watering.
Inspect all members of the lily family such as agapanthus, crinum, clivia, nerine, amaryllis and haemanthus for lily borer (a caterpillar with transverse yellow and black bands around its body). Larvae tunnel into the leaves. Young feed in groups and adults move towards the base of leaves and may even feed on bulbs.
They are most active at night and can be treated with a contact and stomach insecticide. Control from September to April.
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