Embrace winter in the garden – colourful comforts in July

Keep your beds looking lush and your veggie garden stocked with these flowers and edibles to plant.

Don’t forget your July maintenance to help your garden stay in top shape and ready for the last cold stretch.

Enjoy the journey with your landscape and take some time to appreciate the remarkable changes of mother nature.

What to plant:

• Hardy, fancy flowers: Plant these flowers for colour and cosiness – Calendulas, asiatic lilies, flowering perennials such as osteospermum daisies, pelargoniums, wallflowers, diascias, and aquilegias for a gorgeous spring show.
• Robust succulents: Aloe Hedgehog, aloe Ferrox and aloe Speciosa.
• Indigenous gems: Krantz aloe, Basuto kraal aloe, nandina, viburnum, camellia, holly and Elaeagnus.
• Colourful fun shrubs: Pink – plectranthus (Plectranthus fruticosus), Blue-Zulu spur flower (Plectranthus zuluensis), Green or purple – Mona lavender.
• Balmy bloomers: Pelargoniums (geranium), Cancer Bush (Sutherlandia frutescens), sweet peas, poinsettias and calliandra.

 A flying reminder: Help the birds out and ensure your birdbath and bird feeder is well-stocked. Food is scarce for the flyers during the winter months.

Everything edible:

• Garden centre treasures: Fig, olive, grape, cherry, peach, plum and apple trees are available at nurseries.
• Harvest now: Horseradish, asparagus, celeriac, parsnips, sweet potatoes and waterblommetjies.
• Sow now: Hardy vegetables and herbs such as radishes, beetroot, spinach, lettuce, parsley, leeks, turnips, carrots, eggplant, broccoli, Asian greens and garlic chives in seed trays. In frost-free areas plant peas, cauliflower, cabbage and root vegetables.
• Split and divide: Divide your asparagus and rhubarb now for a larger yield and remember to mulch well after transplanting.
• Support: Stake broad beans and brussels sprouts to give them more support and increase growth.
• Feed: Remember to feed your winter veg seedlings with nutritious fertilisers and compost.

Top tip: Use bird netting or frost cover sheets to deter birds while also allowing light and air into in the veggie garden.

Perfect pruning and maintenance:

A little off the top: Fruit trees, roses, deciduous shrubs, golden shower, barleria, ribbon bush, wild dagga, westringia and hydrangeas. Also cut back bougainvilleas that have finished flowering.

Cut away: All dead wood, diseased branches and leaves and large trees casting unwanted shade. Remember to add all this organic matter to the compost heap.

Check your tools: Sharpen your garden blades, lawnmower blades and replace any old pruning shears. Remember to get your lawnmower and edge cutters serviced, spring is going to be busy.

Rose care: Start pruning roses at the end of the month and spray with Kumulus afterwards. Feed them with a rose fertiliser and apply a new layer of mulch around the bushes. Also transplant roses that need to be moved.

There’s much to be planted and harvested this month and certainly no absence of life in the garden.

DID YOU KNOW?

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