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| Spring is Sprung! |
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By HEATHER BUTLER* The grass is ris...... Now I was wondering after the last issue if I could jinx us all again? Famous last words on no more frosts if I remember rightly! Well it’s the end of September and we should be in the middle of our Equinoctial (had to look that one up in the dictionary!) Winds. Other than make us ratty, what does it mean in our gardens? The fruit trees have mostly flowered by now except the apples, so young fruit can be knocked off. There is nothing we can do to prevent this, doesn't matter when you spray or feed the trees, you can't stop the wind. Roses are full of new growth after a hard winter full of frosts, strong winds will snap this growth and put you back to square one. You can make a difference to your roses by being careful with the amount of feed you give them in early spring. Too much food leads to soft, stretched growth that is easy prey to our spring gales. Using slow-release type fertilisers such as Osmocote, blood and bone or even sheep manure, will give the roses the chance to put on their spring growth at their own pace. It won't magically cure any damage the winds will try to do, but hopefully, the stems will be stronger and less likely to snap. Unfortunately, by now, all the over-wintering aphids will now be at reproductive fever-pitch! If you wish, let the ladybugs and silver eyes do their job for you. Or if you are too impatient, blast the living daylights out of them with the poison of your choice! Pyrethrum, confidor, bug gun, rose fungicide and insect spray, the choice is seemingly endless. Whatever you choose, do remember how the insects work, there is an adult female out there somewhere laying eggs like there is no tomorrow. For every adult you kill, there are a lot of eggs waiting to hatch, so repeat spraying is necessary, otherwise it will all have been a waste of time. Most of the vegies can also go in now, after all its nearly Show Day, and we all know what that means. *Heather Butler can be contacted at the Lindisfarne Garden Centre on (03) 6243 0333.
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