LIFESTYLE - SATURDAY!
Your September garden
Deborah Hele
Posted Tue, 09 Sep 2008

It's time for pruning, replanting and feeding. Follow our spring gardening guide and make sure you enjoy all the colour spring has to offer...

• Prune and shape any frost-damaged plants.
• Towards the end of the month, pinch back plants like fuchsia and daisy bushes to encourage them to be become bushy.
• Prune back spring flowering shrubs when they have finished blooming.
• Remove old leaves and feed bearded irises, cannas and daylilies.
• This is the last chance to lift and divide perennials.
• Divide overcrowded water lilies and replant in rich soil.
• Remove old spent winter annuals and replant with summer annuals.
• Mulch soils to add organic matter.
• Service irrigation systems.
• Watch for aphids on new growth and treat with Aphid killer, RoseCare or an organic alternative.
• Early fruit trees should be sprayed with Lebacid when 80 percent of petals have dropped.
• Feed Strawberry plants with 3:1:5.
• Feed Roses with 5:1:5, 3:1:5 or Ludwigs Vigarosa.
• Feed spring flowering shrubs like Camellias, Azaleas and Gardenias with Phostrogen Acid Food.
• Feed lawns with 7:1:3 or 3:2:1 (SR).
• Increase your watering on lawns.

Bulbs

Plant summer flowering bulbs like coloured arum lilies, amaryllis, clivia, eucomis, nerine, zephranthus (Storm Lily), crocrosmia, dahlia, tigridia, gladioli, tuberose and others.

Seedlings

Plant flower seedlings like alyssum, begonia, lobelia, marigolds, viola, pansies, impatiens, portulaca, schizanthus, petunias, zinnias and vinca.

Vegetable seeds

Sow vegetable seeds of cucumbers, tomatoes, marrows, carrots, peppers, chilies, Swiss Chard, beans, basil, cabbages and brinjals — only once the danger of frost has passed.

Flower seeds

Sow flower seeds of alyssum, aster, begonia, impatiens, lavatera, linaria, marigold, portulaca, salivia and zinna — only once the danger of frost has passed.