The Last Day of July, 2000

On the last day of July, 2000 it was due to rain early in the morning. However, like a lot of weather forecasts - the rain never came. Yesterday we planted a few small agapanthuses, several Agapanthus inapertus and a few Agapanthus Baby Blues. The agapanthus inapertus, or "Purple Cloud" is another South African import; these plants have done very well in Australian gardens. They can be grown in full sun or in shade. They are frost tolerant and can exist in extended dry periods, which happen quite a lot in this part of the world. The Baby Blue agapanthus is very useful if you have a tough site where hardy pants are needed. We planted all of these agapanthuses to fill up an area around the front side of the garden where I transplanted a few fruit trees a few weeks ago. The transplanted fruit trees are doing very well and look as though they have all taken. I am still feeding them a regular dose of Seasol, the seaweed concentrate. I have come across another general all-purpose organic based fertiliser called Garden Party. Most of you may have used or heard of this product. Our local nursery owner told me that the chemist who took part in the development of Garden Party used to come around and experiment with the fertiliser some years ago. It has been formulated in the laboratories of Murdoch University, Western Australia, and is a genuinely easy to use fertiliser for pots, hanging baskets garden beds, fruit trees, bushes, flowers, ferns and lawns. It is made from animal blood balanced with nitrogen (N) and mineral plant nutrients, including trace elements. As a matter of fact it has been developed to help with deficiencies in the soils around this part of the world which are, as is well-known, lacking in several of the trace elements needed for healthy plant growth. Rose pruning time has arrived and yesterday we pruned all of the roses, about twenty of them. A couple of the larger trees got a really good 'prune', but the smaller ones were only tip pruned this year. New roses, too, continue to come onto the market in dozens of different colours - so look out in your local nursery and fill your garden with one of the world's favourite plant. By the way the rain has just started, so the forecast was only partly wrong. I believe it is a good idea to spray the roses after pruning, they are now dormant. I hear a good product is 'triferine', a fungicide to stop black spot.

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