In The Garden
With Brownie
AUGUST 1 is the official ‘Horse’s Birthday’ for every horse in the southern hemisphere.
It’s a convention used to standardise the age of horses mainly for the racing industry and is based on the traditional horse breeding season (early August).
In the northern hemisphere they celebrate the horse’s special day on January 1.
So, on August 1 make sure you wish a horse a happy birthday and maybe spoil him or her with a delicious carrot or an apple.
• It’s a good time to fertilise and prune hibiscus so they develop a bushy habit and produce lots of flowers in summer.
• If you have a veggie garden, don’t forget to water it once or twice a week. Although it’s cooler, the drier winter winds will drain the moisture from the soil.
• If you’re growing pineapples, give them a side dressing of complete fertiliser in late August. They like acid soils, so avoid using lime or dolomite.
• Spray the flowers of your mango tree with a copper-based spray to fight anthracnose disease.
• Plant your new roses now. Bagged and bare-rooted roses are in plentiful supply.
• Fertilise your existing rose bushes by mulching around them with cow manure.
• Keep your strawberries fruiting with a fortnightly feed of fish and seaweed solution.
• Apply a light application of a lawn fertiliser to give your lawns a small boost into spring.
• If older leaves of citrus are going yellow, give them a dose of sulfate of ammonia.
• Repot any cymbidium orchids that have been in the same pot for a couple of years immediately after they have finished flowering.
• If your peach or nectarine trees had peach-leaf curl last year, they will need to be sprayed with Lime Sulphur before the buds swell. Once fruit have formed, thin fruit to one peach per node and bag the fruit, to protect from fruit fly.
• Do not let lychee trees dry out, so maintain regular watering. Check emerging flowers for flower caterpillars. If more than 50% are infested, spray with Pyrethrum or garlic spray.
• Plant potatoes and sweet potatoes in the vegetable garden. Mound up soil around potatoes already growing.
• Divide and replant your perennials, such as gaillardia, gazania, rudbeckia, and statice.
