Brighten up your garden with summer flowers, tangy tomatoes and sweet peppers.
Garden tasks for October
• Add colour with dahlias, gazanias, marigolds and salvia and for sunny beds and begonias, impatiens and coleus for partial shade.
• Annuals that grow quickly and easily from seed are alyssum, cosmos, lavatera, portulaca, California poppy, and nasturtium. They all do best in full sun.
• It’s a good time to plant summer- flowering perennials like coreopsis, gaillardia, rudbeckia, gaura, pelargoniums, penstemon, Echinacea, Shasta daisies and perennial verbena.
• Water regularly and spread a layer of mulch over beds to conserve water and keep the roots cool.
• Mow lawns at least once a week. If it’s very hot and dry, mow less frequently and set blades higher.
• Sow these vegetables: carrots, beetroot, green beans, butternut, baby marrows, cucumber, eggplant, radishes, Swiss chard, sweet peppers, chilli peppers, tomatoes, pumpkin, sweet corn and sweet melons.
Vegetable of the month
Don’t just think red when you think tomato. Heirloom Rainbow Mix from RAW seeds includes purple, green, red, pink, yellow, black, orange and white varieties of beefsteak tomatoes. All in one seed packet! The flavours range from mild to sweet to tangy.
Sow a few seeds at a time in seed trays or directly into well dug-over and composted soil. Space plants 60cm apart and keep soil moist during germination, which takes seven to 14 days. Water regularly and control whitefly and other pests with an environmentally friendly insecticide like Ludwig’s Insect Spray Plus. Stake and support plants, especially those with large fruit. Let fruit ripen on the plant for maximum flavour and use as soon as possible after picking because the fruit bruises easily.
Details: rawliving.co.za
