MARCH
Autumn has arrived and with it, a respite from the heat.
Now is the best time to plant trees and shrubs, new season vegies and even pop in some flowers that you can pick and bring inside.
Prepare
If you want green grass over winter, now is the time to over sow your lawn with cool climate grasses
Strawberry crowns are available now. For your own backyard patch of yum, clear the ground completely of other weeds and groundcovers, and create some mounded rills to plant them into at the same time as incorporating plenty of organic matter.
Mulch well with straw or sugar cane.
If you don’t have room for a patch, plant a wall bag or strawberry pot.
Make a trellis for growing sweet peas. It can be a simple lattice structure or tripod.
Sprinkle on some lime to the area too, as they like an alkaline soil.
Keep the flowers snipped off annuals like basil and coleus to prolong their display.
Now is the best time to trim your box, murraya and lily pilly hedges to keep them neat.
Add organic matter, compost and manure to the soil before planting bulbs in May
Enjoy
The last of summer fruit like figs, peaches and plums. You can preserve these by semi drying them in the oven, stewing them or making jam.
Autumn roses. Take the time to smell them, pick them (with long stems to encourage more blooms) and even dry some.
Perennials like cone flowers, salvia and dahlias are still looking wonderful and attracting pollinators into the garden. Keep old flowers dead headed (removed at the bottom of their flowering stems) to keep them blooming into May.
Ornamental grasses like purple fountain grass and zebra grass which are looking wonderful
The first apples of the season
Camellia sasanquas flowering
Sedum ‘Autumn Joy’, and other succulents like Aloe as they come into flower
Have on hand
Bamboo stakes for tripods
Agricultural lime
Cow manure, chicken manure, mushroom compost
Secateurs and hedging shears
Cool season grass seeds like rye blends
Straw bales or sugar cane mulch
Buy bulbs and keep them in the fridge
Sweet pea seeds
