Celebrate the festive season in the beauty of your green space
The arrival of summer can mean long, hot days but December also brings the festive season, holidays and lots of time to enjoy the outdoors, especially in the garden or green space.
Spend some creative time in the garden or green space to prepare for festive celebrations with family and friends, while also helping your garden survive the stresses of summer.
Dressing up the garden
Get the garden looking good for the festive season and entertaining by adding colour. It could be with pots of plants such as hydrangeas, petunias or roses, but a coat of paint on the fence or a garden building is a smart way to give the garden a colourful facelift.
Use black, dark grey or dark green to make a feature recede or paint it a light or bright colour to turn it into a highlight. If your boundary fences are all different (as they can be if you have several neighbours), painting your side of the fence one colour brings cohesion and tames a design nightmare without the expense of new fences and is a great holiday project!
A coat of paint can also transform an eyesore such as an old shed or an unused summer house into a cute garden feature. If you are keen to choose a bold colour, be inspired by what’s flowering in the garden. Continue your chosen colour theme with ornaments or matching cushions.
Popular Christmas gifts for gardeners
If you are looking for a gift for a passionate gardener, it is hard to beat a gift voucher from a local hardware store or garden centres, along with a container of Seasol and PowerFeed, the perfect gift for your garden’s care. With the voucher in hand, they can shop for a plant or tool that they really want for the garden.
Although it is good to shop local, another gift card option is to buy one from a mail-order nursery such as a specialist bulb or rose nursery. Gift cards are easy to wrap and to transport or post!
Alternatively, think big with the gift of a good quality wheelbarrow or pull-along cart. For an older relative, check out powered wheelbarrows or even a kneeling pad.
For a cheaper, home grown option, nothing beats a basket of fresh homegrown produce and beautiful blooms from the garden.
Vegies and flowers to plant now
Keep planting edibles to make the most of the warm growing season. There’s still time to plant tomatoes, beans, cucumbers, chillies, capsicum, eggplant, lettuce and herbs to extend crops into autumn.
Buy seedlings from the hardware or garden centre to save time and to ensure plants are cropping before the end of summer. If your green space is a balcony or small courtyard, select dwarf varieties and plant in pots. To keep your vegies happy and healthy apply PowerFeed PRO SERIES Tomatoes & Vegetables every 1 to 2 weeks for vigorous growth, flowering and fruiting.
If there’s room in the vegie patch or pots, also plant some flowering plants to create a picking garden. Gladiolus, dahlias and sunflowers all grow well and provide lots of lovely flowers to pick and take indoors from summer to autumn. For a bumper supply of beautiful blooms, liquid feed them every two to four weeks with PowerFeed PRO SERIES Roses & Flowers.
Watch out for earwigs
Earwigs are pesky insects that attack full-petalled flowers such as dahlias along with some vegetables such as cauliflowers. They are small brown shiny insects with tiny pincers. They cause holes in petals and developing vegetables. They breed up in mulch and litter within the garden then hide among the flowers and leaves.
Chemical controls are difficult and often ineffective, but these pests can be trapped and disposed of. Use traps made with screwed-up newspaper stuffed into a cover such as an upturned pot or yoghurt container.
Put the trap near the vegetables that are under attack or, for tall plants on a stake among the flowers. Empty traps into a bucket of soapy water. For more information, check out our earwig guide.
Five important jobs for early summer
- Make sure watering systems and sprinklers are on timers to avoid overwatering and wasting water. Also keep an eye on any water restrictions that may be in place, limiting their use.
- Keep mowing regularly but lightly so lawns are neat but lush. Deep water once or twice a week and give the lawn a boost for festive entertaining with Seasol Organic Iron for Deep Green Lawns.
- Do an early morning walk in the garden to keep on top of weeds and pests. Harvest ripe vegetables for the day’s meals and nip off spent flowers and apply Seasol GOLD regularly throughout summer to help plants cope with heat, pests and diseases.
- Keep gutters clean and remove flammable debris around your property to maintain fire safety. Also keep fence lines clear as part of bushfire readiness and ensure hoses reach all parts of your property.
- Top up mulches to keep soils cool and moist and to reduce plant stress. If water is not going down into the soil apply Seasol Super Soil Wetter & Conditioner to get water to the plant’s roots.
Lovely lavender
Lavenders are charming plants to grow in the garden. As well as producing long-lasting colourful and fragrant flowers, their grey green foliage is attractive year-round. In flower, they are a magnet for bees and other pollinating insects.
Italian lavender (Lavandula stoechas) flowers from late winter into spring. There are many named varieties to grow. Coming into bloom now is English lavender (L. angustifolia), which is the most popular lavender. In the home garden, use lavender as a hedge or border. For a low hedge or pot, look for dwarf varieties.
Select a warm, sunny location in the garden or pot with well-drained soil to grow lavender. Prepare the soil with organic matter, homemade compost and/or Seasol Super Compost. Although lavender is drought tolerant, water during hot summers. For great advice on growing lavender, check out our lavender growing guide.
Controlling vigorous climbers
Many climbers put on vigorous growth in early summer after flowering. As well as the rampant tendrils of wisteria, banksia rose and jasmine are also in full flight with lots of new shoots looking for somewhere to twine. To keep these vigorous growers manageable, prune off the new growth or train it onto a support. In the case of wisteria, also watch out for suckers growing around the base of the plant. These too should be removed.
As well as cutting off unwanted new growth in early summer, wisterias can be pruned quite heavily in autumn, cutting stems back to leave four or five leaves. Don’t prune any later than this however or you risk pruning off flowering wood and having no flowers in spring. Fat flower buds will form below where you pruned. Hard pruning of a wisteria on a large pergola also allows light to flow through in winter and early spring.
After pruning, apply Seasol to your favourite climbers to help with the stress of pruning and keep them looking good all summer long.
