By Vickey Taylor Burbank House and Garden Owner
We have lots of winter – flowering plants to brighten up your garden, including Lavender, Hellebores, Dahlias and Gerberas just to name a few.
Whilst we might think it’s cold, a lot of plants love the cooler months and do their best work at this time. Our popular varieties of new season roses will start to come through in next few weeks. It’s also time to prune any existing roses to remove their messiness and get them ready for spring.
Camellias are starting to flower and will continue through to Spring. They are ideal to add a bit of colour to shaded spots in the garden.
Things to do
The winter prune is to stimulate new growth in roses, rejuvenate the plant and equalise the growing points. Almost all roses flower on new growth.
If you’ve had disease issues this year, the most important preventative measure you can take is a spray over and around the pruned bush with Lime Sulphur to kill any dormant fungal spores. Safe, low toxicity and very effective. If there is white stuff on the Rose stems that is a scale infestation, which will need a dose or two of Pest Oil. The first feed should be a high potassium rose food when the first new growth emerges to increase natural disease resistance.
- Watch out for clover, bindi and creeping oxalis invading your lawn. Treat with a suitable selective weedicide like Buffalo Pro. If Winter Grass is invading your lawn use Winter Grass Killer (but not on Kikuyu).
- Watch out for night feeding caterpillars on brassicas and herbs. Spray at dusk with safe Pyrethrum, which breaks down in sunlight, or use vegetable dust.
- Plant certified seed potatoes now into improved soil that didn’t grow potatoes last year. Plant 10cm deep about 25cm apart and side dress with all-purpose complete plant food. Mulching with pea straw or sugar cane is helpful, you can have great success growing potatoes in large tubs if garden space is an issue.
- Rhubarb & Asparagus crowns. Plant them in winter to give them time to settle in.