In The Garden WITH BROWNIE
NOVEMBER is a transitional month in the garden. Spring becomes summer, the humidity increases, it rains (hopefully) more, it gets hotter, and the daylight hours increase.
These changes mean you have to change your gardening habits and tasks. I like to work outside earlier in the morning, taking advantage of the cooler mornings. But it also means having to keep an eye out for those pesky horseflies which also love to be out at that time – looking for a bite for breakfast.
Most of my garden tasks now involve looking after what I have and getting things ready for the hot summer ahead.
• Once your spring flowering bulbs – such as jonquils, daffodils and iris – have died down, lift out the bulbs, clean off the dirt and store them in a dry dark place.
• Propagate daylilies from any plantlets that have developed along the flower stalks. Just plant them into a pot of quality potting mix and wait for them to grow.
• The recent rains and warmer temperatures will see a big increase in grasshopper and caterpillar numbers in the garden. Pick them off and squash them, or use a pyrethrum or bacteria-based spray.
• Time to prune your azaleas and dead-head roses to encourage continual flowering.
• Keep an eye out for bronze orange bugs on your citrus. Knock them off and squash them or spray with a pyrethrum-based product.
• Queensland fruit fly will start to appear. Keep them at bay by cleaning up old rotten fruits and using a splash bait, such as Eco-Naturalure.
• Prune back your grevilleas by a third to promote bushiness.
• It’s important to keep up regular watering of citrus while they are flowering and developing small fruits.
• Keep spraying your developing mangoes with Mancozeb to prevent the disease anthracnose.
• Asparagus will be finishing the spring harvest of spears and the bed will now be full of ferny fronds. Keep the plants well-mulched and watered to keep the fronds actively growing as this will feed the crown for the following year. It is OK to harvest spears at this time as long as they are a reasonable size. Spears smaller than a pencil mean the crown is in need of a good feed of compost or manure.
• Summer prune your mulberry tree to stimulate a flush of new growth and you’ll be rewarded with a second fruit crop. Cut back new growth by a third and keep the roots watered and mulched.
• With the rains come snails – we get both the larger garden snails and the smaller Asian tramp snails. Put pet-safe snail pellets out in containers close to young seedlings.
