Whether your garden is a balcony, backyard or acreage, Autumn is a wonderful time to revel in harvesting, pruning, planning and planting.
In case you need an excuse to enjoy some balmy-weather days with your plants, here are some essential tasks.
1. Pruning. Trim hedges, but leave most shrubs and flowering trees until late winter, to encourage strong growth and blooms next season. Prune shoots on climbing roses and ‘dead-head’ flowers.
2. Propagating. Use some of the cuttings from your pruning to make new plants. Snip stems back to just below a healthy node and trim away excess foliage, then dip in hormone powder or honey and plant into pots of seed raising mix. Keep in a warm, protected spot until new growth is established.
3. Collect those glorious fallen leaves and add them to the compost bin. If there are too many, fill a few hessian bags, add some Dynamic Lifter then park them out of the rain until next spring. Alternatively, allow the pile to dry then get the kids to jump in it to break them down then strew them around as mulch.
4. Feed lawns with slow-release fertiliser and water in well. Add topsoil and sprinkle lawn seed where necessary, to repair bare patches.
5. Transplanting. If you’ve been wanting to re-arrange your garden, the cooler weather makes this the perfect season to transplant small shrubs and herbs such as lavender or rosemary. Feed with liquid fertiliser to help them get established.
6. Plant winter vegetables – onions, leeks, shallots, silver beet, peas, broccoli, lettuce and rocket.
7. Sow and plant flowers and bulbs now for winter, spring and summer displays and tend to any perennial bulbs that will be starting to re-remerge from under the soil. Plant new bulbs, adding compost and manure to encourage growth.
