The summer heat is over and gardens are coming alive again. These tips will help you get the best from your autumn garden.
Gorgeous autumn roses – what to do:
Roses are at their best in autumn. Bigger blooms, with deeper colours that last for longer on the bush and in the vase. That’s what you can look forward to, even into June.
Here are 4 tips from rose grower Ludwig Taschner for spectacular autumn roses.
Fertilise
Feed the roses one last time in April with Vigorosa. This encourages the roses to keep on flowering while at the same storing food in the stems for sprouting in spring. Although the autumn days are shorter, the light is still bright enough for the roses to flower.
Water deeply
Watering can be reduced to once a week but make it a deep watering for 40 to 60 minutes or set your irrigation system to run for an hour once a week. Deep watering allows the water to penetrate deeply to the roots.
Healthy leaves
Keep leaves healthy by controlling aphids and other sucking insects and preventing Black spot that is prevalent in autumn because of the heavier dew on the leaves. Spray fortnightly with a fungicide like Coppercount N or Orion mixed with Ludwig’s Insect Spray Plus.
Cut off dead blooms
Dead heading the roses keeps the rose bushes looking neat and it encourages new growth. The more often it is done, the more the rose is encouraged to flower continuously.
Plant fragrance
Dianthus ‘Dart’ has sweetly scented flowers in shades of light and bright pink, raspberry, purple and red. It is a lovely cool season flower for garden borders and beds with good drainage or in containers. The upright, vigorous plants form a neat bush 30cm tall and 20cm wide.
The pickable flowers are carried on strong, short stems and attract bees and butterflies. ‘Dart’ is heat and cold resistant and also drought tolerant. Feed and water plants regularly until established. Dead head faded flowers to encourage new flowers.
Lobularia (Alyssum) ‘Lavender Stream’ produces clusters of fragrant flowers for the autumn garden. It’s a low growing spreading groundcover that looks gorgeous planted with pansies and violas. It will also cascade out of a hanging basket. Be careful of over-watering. Trim off dead flowers to encourage new blooms. It has a long flowering season, being cold and heat tolerant.
Sow these Autumn veggies
Vegetables that can be sown in April are broad beans, beetroot, cabbage, carrots, lettuce, leeks, peas, oriental vegetables (Pak choi or Tatsoi) parsley, spinach and Swiss chard, spring onions, turnips, and radishes.
Try this: Pan roasted beetroot along with other root veggies and scrumptious toppings, is a perfect accompaniment for the autumn braai or Sunday lunch.
Beetroot is a cool weather crop that grows best in a sunny bed during the cooler months of autumn and spring. An ideal roasting beetroot is the Beet ‘Red and Gold’ from RAW seeds. The super sweet Detroit Dark Red is best harvested and roasted you. Golden Detroit has a slightly honeyed flavour.
Besides roasting, both are good grating into salads. Don’t toss the leaves. They can be prepared like spinach and have a milder flavour. The best way to harvest the leaves is to twist them off. Do not cut from the crown.
Being a root crop, beetroot requires a finely prepared soil in which to form well-shaped roots. Dig over the soil, break down any clumps and rake out any sticks and stones. Beetroot takes about a week to 14 days to germinate and is ready to harvest within 60 to 65 days of sowing. Mulch when the plants are large enough and thin out if sown too thickly. Water regularly otherwise the roots become woody, tasteless and cracked.
www.rawliving.co.za or buy seed online from www.gropak.co.za
Garden tasks for April
- Plant pansies, violas, petunias, Iceland poppies, primulas, and snapdragons this month for a bright and cheerful garden that keeps the winter blues away.
- Flowers that grow easily from seed are Namaqualand daisies, alyssum, lobelia, Virginian stocks and the winter scatter pack mixes.
- Water camellias and azaleas regularly so that they set good buds for spring.
- This is the last month to fertilise the lawn before winter. Use a lawn fertiliser or a general fertiliser like 5:1:5 or 3:1:5.
- Keep watering and feeding perennial herbs. Use a diluted liquid fertiliser once a month for herbs in the ground and twice a month for herbs in pots.
Article and images by Alice Coetzee.
