Hello and welcome to our garden notes for June. It’s officially winter, the weather has cooled down and so has the soil, so things are starting to slow down a little in our gardens. We’ve also had reasonable rainfall in most places oer the last couple of weeks, which has been very beneficial.
One thing that hasn’t slowed down in most gardens though are the weeds! They are running rampant now through most people’s gardens and pots, particularly the ever-present soursop. Fortunately, there are several methods of control that are relatively easy. The first is to remove weeds by hand. When we get a fine day, get out in the garden and spend some time hand weeding. In some cases where the weeds are growing in close proximity to, or even through established plants, hand weeding might be the only choice, although you can use a weeding wand if you are careful. When hand weeding try to remove the complete root system if you can, although with soursob this can be quite difficult. Don’t forget to add the weeds you’ve removed to you compost heap. If you can safely spray there are various products that are readily available. There are a range of Glyphosate based sprays on the market both in concentrate form and premixed ready to use. For people who want something “greener” a product called Slasher, which is salt based is also available. No matter which you use, you will need around four hours of dry weather after application onto dry weeds with minimal breeze to lessen spray drift, so picking the right day is quite critical to achieve a good result.
While the soil is now too cold to plant citrus, you can still plant deciduous fruit trees, things like apples, plums, apricots and peaches etc. There is a huge variety of these fruit trees available these days both in both standard size trees and dwarf forms. This means that even with a small garden you can still “grow your own” as the dwarf trees are perfectly suited to growing in large pots such as half wine barrels. Two of the best are the Super Dwarf Peach and Super Dwarf Nectarine. These trees only grow to about one and a half metres and are prolific bearers of good sized, very tasty fruit.
Other fruiting plants to consider planting now are Rhubarb, Asparagus as well as all the berries Strawberry, Raspberry etc. It’ s also time for Kiwi Fruit but remember this is quite a vigorous vine and you need both a female and male for cross pollination. Most of these can also be grown in containers if you are short of ground space.
As you can see there’s still plenty to get stuck into even in winter! So, when it’s not raining, rug up and spend some quality time out in the fresh air. Your garden will thank you come spring.
For more advice, visit your local Stratco store and speak to one of our expert horticultralists.