By the time this is on the World Wide Web it will be December. Everyone in Western Australia works pretty hard during the summer to keep himself or herself cool and to keep the roots of plants cool. It is also a good plan cover over the lawns and the pot plants with some wetta soil to make sure the water used does penetrate the sometimes unwettable soil and reach the roots of the plants and the lawns.
Those fabulous flowers, Daylily (Kemerocalli) are nice bulbous plants for the garden. They do quite well in the summer. The breeding programs of the plant nurseries have produced a stunning range of flower types and colours. Individual blooms may only last for a day, but multiple buds keep opening in the warmer months and create an almost endless display.
I suppose one of the main attractions, to me at least, is they need little care and can be grown in a wide range of different situations. They are pest and bug free and, as already mentioned, come in an endless variety of colours. They are absolutely great for dry and difficult spots in the garden.
As far as this time of the year goes, the roses are beginning to really turn on a great show; always useful as a Christmas present of course. We went to dinner at some friends last night. It was our fist meal in the house and my wife took along a good-looking floribunda rose 'Miriam'. The rose is not named after my wife, Miriam, but as she intimated it is one way of not being forgotten in a hurry. 'Miriam' is a coloured cluster rose with bright blooms and has shades of lemon, yellow, pink and orange. It is good as a hedge or a border rose, and is very free flowering.
Planting roses from pots can be done at any time of the year, so long as the roses have been grown in the pots. Before planting it is advisable to water the rose. Plant the rose in a sunny position dig the hole to a depth of about 60 centimetres deep(24 inches) and about 60 centimetres in width (24 inches).
It is as well to use well-matured compost and mix thoroughly with the garden soil. As far the roses in our garden are concerned, I keep adding a bit of mulch to the rose bed every year. They seem to thrive all right, and all in all I think they enjoy the treatment they get. We have an automatic reticulation system, which comes on before the sun rises every day, in the summer. The roses get full sun for part of the day in the summer. I believe that without it, they may develop 'Black Spot' or 'Powdery Mildew'. Some tips say that to avoid these two pests, you should avoid overhead watering and avoid watering in the evening and spray with fungicide in the spring and autumn. So far, we seem to have avoided these two common diseases.
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