Check on your potted friends, they are not ok
Well, I think yesterday was the hottest day I have ever worked in the garden. We were supposed to be fixing two lawns, but one is not irrigated and depends on the elderly client moving around the sprinkler. Because the lawn is so dry, it would have needed the sprinkler on every part of it for, easily, two hours while all of the soil rehydrated, and then they would need to water it for about 15 minutes twice a day in order to keep the grass seeds sprouting. Even then, new grass will often burn and wilt back in such strong heat- so we had to skip that lawn- I opted to remove taprooted weeds and fill in dents in the lawn with lawn mix, but no more. The other lawn is irrigated and has sprinklers on it for a good period of time daily- not my favourite thing to do, but not my choice- and in this case it did mean we could put down grass seed and know that it would survive. Generally speaking, we do all of our grass in April. If a lawn needs a full dig up makeover, sure, Winter before the equinox. But in Autumn there is so much food available for the birds, and the grass is still really motivated to grow in the warmer temperatures, we chuck on the sprinklers and do it when it is easy.
Some do’s
DO run around your garden and find all of the plants you bought and forgot about. Whack them in the ground! Dig a hole, fill it with water to the brim. Wait till it drains. Fill it with water again and put the plant in it (still with the pot on) and wait until the plant is soaking wet through. Then once all of the water has drained a second time, plant the plant in the ground.
Remember those plants you said you would plant after lunch, three weeks ago?
DO put trays under any ornamental pots and water them whenever they get too dry. Pots are so reliant on you to water them. You can get ‘pot waterers,’ which are basically a vessel on a spike, which slow releases water into the pots. You can also, if you have irrigation, run long lines from your irrigation into your pots- but if you don’t know what you’re doing you could call in an expert. (Lately we have been using Rob from Growsmart Irrigation, but that’s only helpful if you are in Wellington). If you can’t keep up with watering your pots, relocate them to the shade!
DO keep pinching new growth off plants that you like the size of, or of vege plants that shouldn’t keep growing now it is late Summer (tomatoes, curcubits mostly). This is literally just chopping off the top bit so the node is gone.
DO trim lavenders and daisies that are either still flowering, but more dead heads than flowers, or lavenders that have finished. This will get you a second flush (or a tidier bush, if they have just finished). Most lavenders and daisies keep flowering for a really long season, and deadheading them is quite hard- I do my ‘winter prune’ early to get a longer season out of them, which is now, and clipping with a hedge trimmer or shears. In Winter I just tidy them up a bit.
DO keep picking flowers and vegetables. The more you pick flowers, the more you stimulate more growth.
DO keep watering your edibles, if you are worried about them being too big or small of a size.
The tiniest, sweetest mandarin off Anna’s tree in Belmont. In this case, watering throughout the season would have yielded larger fruit.
A big ‘DO’
DO decide what you would like to leave to go to seed. This year I have a lot of coriander, parsley, silverbeet, lettuce and spinach, which I love, and my garden does not like straight lines. So I’m leaving it to shoot up, flower and then self seed all over my vegetable garden.
To do this properly I am staying on top of the weeds, because when you let your garden self seed, you can’t hoe it anymore; you can’t mulch it too heavily before the seed falls, you need to avoid picking the good seedlings out of the bad.
This year I am also letting my roses that have good big ‘hips,’ the big bulbs that remain after the petals fall off, stick around. Usually you would deadhead roses, but rose hips are big red beauties that bring a lot of joy in Winter.
My cosmos has been great this year so it too is being left to self seed everywhere, as are my sweet peas- although I will be snipping off the seed heads and keeping them instead of letting them fall, because sweet peas need to be in the right spot, and they’re surprisingly hard to remove once they have set root.
So, if you have a particular flower or vegetable that you particularly like, let it get to the full end of its life cycle and harvest the seeds (or let them go everywhere).
Don’ts
DON’T do any trimming unless the plant is well used to trimming. Buxus can get sunburn, where the leave go a bit crispy. Bay laurels and corokia seem fine. It’s also just really hot! Not a fun activity. If you need to trim, do it on an overcast day that isn’t raining, or at worst, at about 6pm when the sun is cooler.
DON’T put fertiliser on the garden without watering it in heavily, because it might be too concentrated in one place and burn;
DON’T water the garden in the full sun- first thing in the morning or last thing at night are better;
DON’T put any spray on leaves in the full sun, because again it can burn and discolour the leaves (first thing in the morning or last thing at night)
DON’T worry too much about your lawn, but mowing up all of the weed seed heads is a great idea. Leave your grass clippings to fall on your lawn as you mow, providing a bit of damp and some much needed shade.
I picked some flowers for my friend’s birthday, they are the second flush from the wedding flowers I grew for a friend’s December wedding. I think I am now sold on growing flowers. They’re such a joy.
I think that’s about it! Let me know how you’re getting on, and enjoy the weather!