Pig Survives Car Crash - Feb 20, 2014
Dear Gardening Friends,
It seems like my newsletter from last week may have broken the drought. So much doom and gloom last week but this has all been erased in the short term by the weekend rain.
I think we need to become more like farmers now that rain is falling less often. We need to fertilise our lawn and gardens almost as the rain is falling.
I fertilised my garden on Sunday with a product called “Rapid Raiser”. This is an organic fertiliser similar to Dynamic Lifter but this one can be used on all plants in your garden.
This is so much easier than having to buy Citrus food, Azalea food and Rose food. I just walk around the garden a put a handful around the drip line of every plant. I even fertilised my outdoor pot plants. The best news about this organic fertiliser is that it has almost no smell! I am amazed. If you use Dynamic Lifter you almost have to go on holidays for a week.
Rapid Raiser comes in a 20kg bag so there is enough to fertilise your entire garden. A big bag costs $20.99 so it is good value.
Rapid Raiser is palletized so it is easy to spread. It is best to use these products on windless days or better still, wear a mask. You don’t want to breathe in the dust. Organic fertilisers feed your plants but they also help break down clay so over time your soils get better. They also attract earth worms and these are the unsung heroes of the garden. You can use it on your lawn too but you won’t get that real lush green colour that you get from our Tim’s Rapid Results lawn food. This is because Rapid Raiser only has 4% Nitrogen while Tim’s Rapid Results Lawn food has 21%. More rain is expected so fertilise your lawn and garden now.
Remember to mow your lawn before you fertilise otherwise your grass catcher will pick up all the fertiliser. A recent study has found that 45 minutes in the garden is equivalent to doing a workout at the gym for 30 minutes. So mowing the lawn more often could make you look great too.
Did you notice that your tomato plants looked sick at the end of the season? They were probably being attacked by Two Spotted Mites. In the old days when you were spraying your tomatoes with chemicals like Rogor and Lebaycid then Two Spotted Mites weren’t a problem. These chemicals are no longer available to the home gardener because they are too dangerous. ( The fruit you are buying in the shops are still being sprayed using these products). You can’t use Yates Rose Shield on vegetable plants so you will need to spray the back of the leaves with Eco-oil.
This earth friendly spray controls many insects in your garden.
Check out your Lillipilly plants and Gardenias for scale insects. This insect also attacks Kentia Palms inside your house. The scale insects attach themselves to the leaves and suck out nutrients. The leaves often get covered in a black sooty mould too. The scale insects extract a sticky substance that attracts ants. If you have ants walking up the stems then your plants probably are being attacked by scale insects. Scale can be controlled using Eco-oil or Pestoil. You will need to spray several times.
We often get asked for Orchid Trees or Butterfly trees when they flower in spring. There is a beauty growing in Mawson Park. These are spectacular small growing specimen trees that have butterfly shaped leaves. In China they are called the Clever Leaf tree. The leaves are often dried and used as book marks in the hope that it will help students get better marks. Bauhinias have become impossible to find in nurseries so we grew a variety known as ‘Purpurea’ from seed. They have grown so quickly and they are ready to plant now. If you would like a fast growing tree with beautiful purple flowers come and get one. They are a bargain at $14.99.
Autumn is only a couple of weeks away so it’s a great time to plant anything in your garden. Ryan found some beautiful Vinca plants this week. These colourful small growing shrubs look like Impatiens but they are much more cold hardy and they stay nice and compact. Vinca will also grow in full sun. They look great in pots or add a splash of colour in your garden. You get 4 plants for $12 so they are great value.
If you are not on Facebook then you would have missed out on all the excitement here on Saturday. A car drove along Queen St then turned left into The Moore Oxley bypass. As it drove over the bridge the car in front stopped and it crashed into the back. The drivers got out to discuss the accident. While they were chatting their car rolled backwards, did a 180 then traveled forward and crashed into the safety fence just missing Pig and our nursery. Only then did the owners notice that their car was actually missing! Pig was traumatized for a couple of days. Despite being a witness to the accident the police couldn’t get a word out of him.
Happy Gardening
Tim