Revolting in the Rose Garden!
For the first [or last?] year of the Century our Autumn time certainly put on a magnificent performance. I have never seen such wonderful colouring in both gardens. We have just had a record low rainfall for the four seasons in Tasmania. Thousands of sheep are having to be killed, the poor farmers cannot afford to feed them and are asking for help to get them disposed of.
We gardeners may lose a plant or two but that is of little consequence when you read of those troubled farmers who provide us with our food and our warm, soft clothing. It may even force some to leave the properties and that is very sad.
We can take precautions in our garden and the answer is mulch, mulch and even more mulch. That is our main work at the moment. Last weekend, I ignored some fairly urgent tasks and tried to get the gardens weeded before settling them down under their warm blankets of mulch and pine bark. I will make sure that the covering does not go right up to the trunk of the trees and bushes, if it is piled up to the trunk, it could cause bark rot. I have to forget the pruning of the hydrangeas, a big job with so many. I usually cut them back to two fat buds on either side of the stem. These are the shoots that are carrying the flowers.
Talking of pruning, there have been changes in the rose world. For the annual prune we are now told to forget the outwards looking bud as the spot to make your cut. Get out your hedge cutters and just go Whoosh! Snip! Snip! at the height you want your bush [I like my bushes to be fairly tall] and cut out all the dieback! But the really breathtaking news is that a trial has taken place on how to deadhead your roses. I quote from the Royal Horticultural Society's journal "The Garden"
"Last year the Floral Department at Wisley" [the wonderful garden managed by the RHS ] "carried out a mini-trial on deadheading roses. They found that a revolutionary technique gave better results than tried and tested methods for large flowered cultivars"
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