Be a winter winner in the garden in May month
Plant winter-flowering annuals like pansies, poppies, or compact snapdragons around rose bed edges to give them a revived burst of colour.
Get your garden maintenance in check, sow cool-season seeds and grow with the flow as we enter our last month of autumn. We’re celebrating our adaptable green fingers by also highlighting Africa Month and all our glorious ingenuous glory.
Crispy blooms to plant:
Bulb up: Honour our African heritage with a jive of colour from sparaxis (harlequin flower), genus ixia and tritonia.
Try also these perennial bulbous plants: sweet garlic (tulbaghia fragrans), weeping anthericum (chlorophytum saundersiae), red-hot poker (kniphofia praecox).
Bush out: Pork bush (portulacaria afra) is a ‘lekker’ local hero hedge. Good as a barrier plant, tolerates frequent pruning, extremely drought-resistant and fast-growing.
Succulent in: Aloes are in full swing, oh yeah try peri-peri, sea urchin and porcupine.
The 4 p’s: Plant with the 4 p’s – poppies, pansies, petunias and primulas.
Rose bed revival: Long-stemmed roses can be picked now. If the plants are in full leaf, continue with your spraying programme but reduce watering.
Plant winter-flowering annuals like pansies, poppies, or compact snapdragons around rose bed edges to give them a revived burst of colour (and hide bare branches).
Split and divide: If the following perennials have stopped flowering, they’re ready for the operating table: Japanese anemones (anemone japonica) and obedient plant (physostegia virginiana).
Be wise, fertilise: Annual stocks and larkspurs benefit from extra nitrogen to promote good growth and flowering throughout winter.
Eat like a winter-winner:
Eye candy: Add rows of ornamental (and inedible) kale between other winter vegetables. Companion plants include beetroot, violas and pansies (both have edible flowers), onions, nasturtiums and spinach.
Ornamental kale makes an unusual but stunning winter option for colour.
Mixed masala: Interplant leafy winter veggies and root crops with herbs like lavender, thyme, oregano, parsley, yarrow and comfrey.
Cuppa’ your own Joe: The coffee plant (coffea arabica), which is actually a tree will earn you kudos from coffee snobs if you can manage to grow it successfully in a high-light indoor area. Imagine grinding home-grown beans.
Un-gogga your cabbage: Pull up old sweet basil plants, chop them up and then use them as a natural insect repellent mulch around your cabbages.
If it’s yellow, it ain’t mellow: Prevent disease by removing all yellow leaves from brassicas such as brussel sprouts, cabbages, cauliflower and broccoli.
Fruitful advice: Feed avocado trees with 3:1:5 and mulch ‘em up. Plant litchis and citrus, while also keeping mango trees dry before their flowering starts. In coastal and lowveld areas, feed granadillas with a nitrogen and potassium combination fertiliser.
Tricks of the cool-season trade:
Prevent pests: Prevention is better than cure! Remember that good soil plus good drainage plus mulch plus fertilising/ feeding equals a healthy plant with more flowers, more fruits and more vegetables.
Spray away: Keep spraying those conifers with insecticide.
Rake it: Rake fallen leaves off the lawn to prevent them from blocking out sunlight and then pop them on the compost heap. Coastal gardeners can still apply one more dose of fertiliser before winter sets in.
Freeze alert: Watering should be done after nine in the morning and completed by three in the afternoon – wet plants will freeze.
DID YOU KNOW?
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