 | | | | Michelle is Ruskington Garden Centre resident horticulturist, she is available to advise on all aspects of your garden care.
Michelle will also be writing regular articles on this page keeping you informed of what's currently available and making suggestions for planting and maintenance of your garden.
If you have a specific question for Michelle, please email michelle@ruskingtongardencentre.co.uk
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| Lawn Care Autumn Most lawns will have suffered from wear and tear during the Summer and need some attention if they are to wake up next Spring looking thick, healthy and attractive.
Dead leaves left on the lawn for a few weeks will encourage bare patches and worm casts. That’s why it is important to rake up the leaves at least once a week.
To turn these damaging leaves into valuable organic leaf mould, gather them together in a black plastic bag and add a special compost activator such as Miracle-Gro Organic Choice Compost Maker. This activator includes nitrogen to balance the high carbon content of the leaves and plenty of soil bacteria and micro-organisms to get the rotting process under way.
Now is the time to aerate the lawn surface by driving a garden fork or hollow tine tool into the surface every 15cm (6 inches). This will improve drainage and allow air to the roots. It will also relieve compaction to areas that are heavily used, although if you and your family are creating a natural path it may be worthwhile laying stepping stones to stop the damage.
At this time of the year growth of grass leaves slows down and available energy is put into root development and the production of side shoots, an action called tillering. To encourage this tillering and root development, apply a special autumn lawn food that contains a balance of nutrients.
To prepare the lawn for the rigours of Winter, feed the grass with a special Autumn lawn food such as EverGreen “I Want Complete Autumn Lawn Care” or Scotts Lawn Builder Autumn Lawn Food. These special foods will encourage a stronger, deeper root system and help to produce a thicker, greener lawn this Autumn and one that will green up quicker in the Spring.
EverGreen “I Want Complete Autumn Lawn Care” also contains seaweed extracts and a mosskiller to do a thorough job at this vital time of rejuvenation. For the smaller lawn the 100 square metre size of EverGreen “I Want Complete Autumn Lawn Care” comes complete with a ready-for-use spreader and provides easy lawn care in a can.
Top of the range for the real lawn enthusiast is Scotts Lawn Builder Autumn Lawn Food which supplies time release technology for superior performance. In the Autumn the nutrients help to build a thicker, greener lawn and strengthen grass roots. The mini-granules also include time-release nitrogen to give early greening next season.
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| Lawn Feeding & Weeding It’s a fact that lawns benefit from regular feeding. Without extra nutrients grass soon uses up plant food reserves in the soil and then turns pale and thin. Without food to develop side shoots and thickness, the lawn is open to invasion by weed seeds and moss that thrive in low nutrient conditions. On the other hand a regular supply of supplementary food makes your lawn thick and green, just as a well balanced diet helps children grow big and strong.
Good management of the lawn including regular feeding and correct mowing will encourage a thicker, greener lawn vigorous enough to repel serious invasion by weeds. However seeds will blow in from other areas of the garden and bird droppings will also contain weed seeds.
Getting rid of lawn weeds isn’t a matter of digging them out. Thankfully scientists have developed selective weedkillers that kill weeds without harming the grass. So there’s no excuse for a lawn full of dandelions, daisies, buttercups and white clover. Treating the average sized lawn (100 sq m) with a lawn treatment such as EverGreen Complete takes only 10 minutes and will cost less than £10 to feed, weed and control moss in one simple application.
Problem weeds?
Some small leaved weeds such as lesser trefoil and black medick are not easily controlled with standard weed and feed lawn treatments. However they can be easily killed with either Verdone Extra or Verdone Extra Ready To Use. Simply spray on and they wilt and die in just a few weeks.
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| Fruit and Vegetables
Seeds for lettuce and Summer salads need to be sown every couple of weeks to provide young fresh leaves. The loose leaf varieties such as Red Salad Bowl, Lollo Rosso and Bijou are tolerant to hot weather and seem to do better at this time of the year than the cabbage head types which can annoyingly run to seed. Tender herbs such as sweet basil can be sown now or you can buy plants from your local garden centre.
Sow marrows, courgettes and squashes outdoors in soil which has been well improved with organic matter such as well rotted garden compost or Levington Organic Blend Farmyard Manure. They appreciate a deep root run which holds plenty of moisture.
Pick broad beans as the pods swell. If blackfly are a problem on the growing tips pinch these out and spray the rest of the plant with BugClear Gun! for Fruit & Veg. This insecticide has a 1 day harvest interval and this will allow picking and eating of the crop on the day after treatment.
With all these tender seedlings coming up, remember to protect them from slug attack with SlugClear Advanced Pellets. You will need to use the same protection in and around any strawberry bed before you protect the fruit from mud splashes with straw or a protective mat.
Topical Tip
Caterpillars of the cabbage white butterfly can quickly ruin a crop of cabbages, calabrese and broccoli. Whenever you see the first signs of attack rub out any yellow eggs seen on the back of plant leaves and then spray the pests with BugClear Gun! for Fruit & Veg.
Happy gardening.
Michelle
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