December is the time you need to know how to cut some corners. So here are the best cheats possible to have you garden looking great – fast.
Feeding – use half strength liquid feed twice as often to fast track your flowers and up the anti on green foliage. Try a fertiliser like Thrive for flowers and fruit on any potted colour, flowering shrubs, roses and even your fruiting plants like tomatoes, capsicums and the passionfruit vine. For the lawn, hedges and pot plants, click on some Seasol and go crazy.
Watering – in can be hard to keep water up to plants over summer – especially if you’re away! Don’t let them dry out when temperatures spike though. Add mini reservoirs by upturning bottles of water in your pot plants and even put some saucers under particularly thirsty plants like hydrangeas and ferns. Use some Drought shield, which is like sunblock for your garden, to help plants cope with the heat.
Colour in the garden– what? Did you forget to mass plant annuals six weeks ago and the garden’s looking a little drab? Instantly brighten up the place with our ready grown selection, or fill in gaps with some of our super advanced seedlings.
Weeds can easily get on top of you over summer, so smother them with fresh mulch. Many will die off quickly if they don’t get to sunshine, and those that remain in the driveway or footpaths you might want to just take to with a boiling kettle full of hot water one morning with your cuppa! It doesn’t get easier than that! If you have weeds in the lawn, make sure you have the catcher on your mower and drop the height down for a quick trim – it should catch many of the flowering heads and stop them from going to seed. We also stock a few organic weedicide options for those of you that want to avoid glyphosate.
Pruning – it can be a bit like ‘day of the triffids’ in summer, especially after a storm when your neatly trimmed hedge can suddenly take off, or those well maintained climbers start growing like liana in Borneo or a day in the Amazon! Avoid pruning (or mowing) on really hot days as you can give your garden sunburn, instead, trim on a milder day.