In The Garden WITH BROWNIE
TO all those horses reading the paper … Happy Birthday (for Friday).
August 1 marks the standardised date which horse breeders use as the birthday for horses in the southern hemisphere (it’s January 1 in the northern hemisphere). It’s mostly for the benefit of the racing industry and marks the start of the breeding season – but there’s no reason why your pony or hack can’t be given a special treat on Friday.
After the cake (carrot, of course), here’s some ideas to do in your garden this August:
• 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.
• Watch for aphids attacking new growth on rose bushes. Squash them, hose them off or spray them.
• If older leaves of citrus are going yellow, give them a dose of sulfate of ammonia. Also, give them a light prune, taking care to cut out any dead, diseased or gall wasp infected stems.
• August is a great time to plant perennial food plants such as yacon, asparagus, Jerusalem artichokes, waterchestnuts, ginger, turmeric, galangal and chokos.
• Keep your strawberries fruiting with a fortnightly feed of fish and seaweed solutions.
• Apply a light application of a lawn fertiliser to give your lawns a small boost into spring.
• This is a good time to clean out a water garden. Divide waterlilies every year if they are in a container, every 3 years if they are on the bottom of the pond. Re-pot into fresh, slightly clay soil with either pulverised cow manure or a slow-release fertiliser added. Binding the fertiliser into solid clay balls helps to stop it floating away from the roots. Top with a thick layer of sand or clean gravel to stop the water becoming murky.
