Summer is a time great of the year for entertaining and some effort now will ensure that your garden and living areas are looking bright, colourful and healthy as you enjoy your summer living.

Plant now for Colour

The Edible Garden

Now is the time to plant french and climbing beans, broccoli, brussel sprouts, cabbage, chinese cabbage, capsicum, cauliflower, celery, cress, cucumber, eggplant (advanced seedlings best), leek, lettuce, spring onion, parsley, parsnip, pumpkin, radish, swede, silverbeet and turnip

If your earlier plantings of dearly loved tomatoes are starting to show the fruits of your labour, now is the time to get cracking with a fertiliser enriched with potassium sulphate to ensure plentiful crops.Crops such as sweetcorn and tomatoes are likely to be looking top heavy, so make sure you have adequate support for your plants. Add a layer much such as pea straw or sugar cane mulch to maintain ideal growth conditions.

• Mulch sweetcorn and tomato and feed with Potash as fruit develops.
• Add saturaid to pots and hanging baskets.
• Feed fuchsias and geranium with bloom booster.
• Raise mower blades and avoid scalping your lawn. Scalping your lawn will encourage weeds to take hold and reduce the foliage protection to the nearby soil. Short grass effectively results in shallow lawn roots and grass with poor disease resistance.
• Prune spent flowers on your roses, rhododendron and camellia.
• Roses will benefit from an application of 'Sudden Impact' rose fertiliser for a wonderful autumn rose display (in 6-8 weeks time) which will not only ensure more flowers but reward you with healthy plants.
• Control passiofruit leaf hooper with Yates Mavrik insecticide
• Use Powerfeed soil conditioner to increase drainage in clay soil and improve plant performance.
• If Azaleas are looking sick check for leafminer and treat .
• Apply saturaid to lawns and garden beds ,this will improve the waters efficiency by up to 50%
• Mulch fruit trees with sugar cane mulch or pea straw
• Re-pot aquatic plants and feed