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Any gardener knows that September marks the beginning of the pay off for all your preparation work throughout winter and these gardening tips will help you to grow a better garden. If you have worked hard, September and spring will be an absolutely marvellous time in your garden.

What makes September such a good month for gardens is the fact that, in general, around Australia, the weather starts to warm up with more sunshine hours. This leads to a slightly warmer soil temperature. However there are still occasional showers (and even some storms) which supply much needed moisture so that your plants can make the most out of the sunny weather. This is slightly different in tropical regions where the rains will actually be starting in the next month or so after the dry season. So what do you need to do this month? Well, there are two things you must do during spring, and therefore begin this month; enjoy the fruit of your labour and start to prepare for summer.

1. Enjoy the fruit of your labour
September is a good month to plant some annuals. Some Australian favourites include ones such as petunias and marigolds, as listed previously. Though these are not Australian natives, they can be planted in and around your native plants to spice up your garden with a little colour. Local nurseries will have a large array of annuals to choose from so why not head down and pick some out?
Make sure you spend some time out and about your garden, soak in the sun, and enjoy the spring blossoms. Perhaps even look for a local wildflower show to go to one weekend to gain some inspiration. There is nothing like seeing Australian natives in full bloom out in the wild to inspire you and give you ideas of how to best grow them in your own garden. Even if you don’t use Australian natives, wildflower shows will help you see how you can best utilise the Australian landscape in your garden.

As your plants blossom, make sure you trim off the flowers when they die. This encourages your plants to flower again because they really want to produce seeds. September, and spring in general, are also great times for growing your own veggies. Plant some peas, lettuce, beetroot, carrots and silver beet and if you have not already, it’s not too late to plant tomatoes or beans.

2. Start preparing for summer
The second major task for spring is to make sure that you start to prepare your garden and grassed areas to cope with the summer heat. If you have any dead patches of lawn, dig up a couple of runners from other spots in your grass to replace them with. This is mostly effective with buffalo-style grasses though couch grasses will respond as long as you get some roots.

I like to find runners that have grown in places where they were not meant to for use. Anyone who has grass knows that keeping it separate from your garden can be a big task by itself! If you take these troublesome shoots and plant them in dead spots you effectively ‘kill two birds with one stone.’

Make sure that your garden beds are sufficiently mulched now. Don’t wait for summer because the weeds will pop up in abundance from late winter if you do not have sufficient mulch. Plus, if you mulch well now, your soil will be improved so that is it better prepared to handle the heat of summer, and, in the case of tropical Australia, the wet of summer.

If your garden is already littered with weeds, clear them out and get mulch down before optimal growing conditions begin and make weed control almost impossible.

If you want to get gardening tips for the whole year sign up now to my pre-release subscriber list so you can get the best price on my upcoming gardening tips ebook, releasing September 16th.  Sign up here.

If you live in a tropical climate, you may have already started to receive the summer rains, and this will only continue. If you have large grassed area’s, make sure you either manually aerate them with a garden fork, or you apply a good soil wetting agent during November. Even your gardens could do with a bit of soil wetting agent to make sure they can absorb and dissipate the large quantities of water about to come their way. You’ll also want to apply a good lawn fertiliser and a good garden fertiliser to the various area’s of your garden.

If you live in the more temperate or cool climates of Australia, your story is very different. Far from expecting drenching summer rains, temperate and cool climates can usually expect a very dry next few months. Because of this, a lot of the tasks for November are based around water management. Like the tropical climates, an application of soil wetting agent, if you haven’t done so already, would be beneficial. Rather than preparing for lots of water, this is to ensure that any water that does fall makes it to where it needs to be—the roots—and doesn’t sit on top of the soil surface for the sun to evaporate.

I also tend to say this every month, but if you have ignored me 9 times, you’ll have to ignore me a tenth. Mulch, Mulch, Mulch! Mulch in summer is your best friend. It will help keep the soil moist, stop the sun being able to cause large scale evaporation, and provide much needed organic materials throughout the summer months. Mulch your garden!

If you have spring flowering plants that are starting to finish their flowering you might like to consider giving them a prune now. If you have plants that

flower from Spring through summer, continue to make sure you remove the spent flowers because this will encourage most plants to at least try and flower again. Spring and summer flowering bottlebrushes are a prime example. Cut off the dead flowers and you will likely get another display sometime during summer.

It may also be time to remove your spring annuals if they are no longer looking healthy. Local nurseries are stocked full of summer annuals and November is a great month to get them growing. In most temperate and cool parts of Australia, November is still relatively mild, compared to Dec-Feb, so planting summer annuals now will give them a month to prepare for the summer sun.

Keep an eye on your vegetables and make sure you are watering them regularly. The hot sun will absolutely devastate vegetable plants that are low on water. Good water and the right amounts of shade will significantly help in achieving a healthy vegetable garden this summer.

Soil Wetting Agents

Ahhh winter, the brisk mornings, the cloudy skies, the inability to simply walk 5 metres without getting wet…oh how I do not enjoy it! However, although I may not enjoy the rain, your garden will and we DO need rain.

Only one problem…with Australia’s harsh summers increasingly drying out our soils, sometimes our gardens are not equipped to handle or best utilise the rain we do receive in the winter. One such reason for this is that soil can tend to build up a ‘crust’ on top, made up of various bits of soil, chemicals and other things. This is why you may see your garden ‘holding water’, that is, the water not sinking into the soil but instead pooling or running away from the plants.

There are 2 main ways to combat this. One is to air the soil, either by getting your trusty shovel and turning over the top soil or grabbing a garden fork and puncturing holes throughout the top layer. This breaks up the crust that may have formed and will allow water to penetrate past the top soil and down to the roots of the plants in your garden. However this can be a temporary solution because there will still be crusty soil and the gaps created for water to penetrate may be covered up in a short period of time.

The other, more beneficial way is to use a good soil wetting agent, like Wetta Soil, which you will find at any good garden centres. Wetta soil breaks up the crust layer, dissolving it without disrupting the natural composition of the top soil. The difference here is it actually rids the soil of what causes the crust to form as opposed to just breaking it up. A soil wetting agent will help your garden soak in all the good rains that we will hopefully get this winter, making it more ready to grow beautiful flowers for you in the spring.

James’ hint for soil wetting – Follow the directions of you soil wetting agent carefully, you do not need to make the solution stronger to fix heavily crusted soil. A stronger solution of a soil wetting agent could in fact do more damage than good. When the directions are written for using a soil wetting agent, they take into account what is best for any soil so there is no need to try and make the mixture stronger.

Roses in particular enjoy a good winter prune. In July or August give your roses a healthy prune. Rose pruning advice varies greatly. I myself like to give them a fairly vigorous cut, removing between 1/3 and 2/3’s of each stem. You can also thin out the rose by cutting off stems that cross each other, giving the rose a better overall shape. In fact pruning time is a great opportunity to shape your plants in the way you’d like them to grow during the next growing season. When pruning always cut stems at a 45 degree angle. This helps the plant to repair itself where you make the cut and encourages more shoots to sprout around the cut area, which is what you are going for. One thing to take into consideration when doing this though is in area’s that you want a particular shape to happen or where you want a stem to grow in a particular direction as a v is likely to be formed where you prune a stem as the new growth sprouts. This may require pruning later on to remove new stems that have grown in places you would prefer they did not grow.

Another important point is some plants are more susceptible than others to a bad prune. As I mentioned before I like to vigorously prune roses. This is mostly because established rose plants tend to be pretty hardy when it comes to vigorous prunes and can come back from seemingly impossible conditions. Australian natives plants on the other hand often require a more delicate prune and certainly prefer to be pruned straight after a flowering season. A simple google search will usually net you good results for whether or not the plant you wish to prune needs a delicate or vigorous pruning or alternatively leave a comment below on this post and I will get back to you.

Water Wise Gardening

With water being a very precious resource in Australia, people need to become increasingly aware of just how much water their garden is using and how much they need to survive. Australian dams are running close to all-time lows. It is pivotal that people take water needs into account when planning and maintaining any garden.

Ever since settlement, Australian gardens have been filled with European plants such as roses. As much as I like roses and as much as surveys show that about 42% of Australians like the idea of growing roses , they are not the most water wise plants. Roses, like grass, take a lot of water to survive because they come from climates where water was rarely scarce. Ever since settlement Australians have tried to re-create British Cottage gardens in Australia. While this can still be achieved in a water wise manner, at AussieGreenThumb.com I like to support another way.

Australian native plants are fantastic. Being native they are perfectly suited to the Australian climate. Now, not all plants are native to every part of Australia with some plants being more suited to specific parts of Australia. Take the Boronia for example. It’s best growing location is South Western Australia because it does like a little more water and a cooler climate than some other natives. The Sturt Desert Pea however prefers more arid areas and, when cultivated carefully, can survive in very harsh conditions with very little water. This is why it is important, when considering planting native Australian plants, to discover which plants are from your particular area.

One myth that I do want to bust right now is that Australian native plants don’t need watering at all. This is not true, especially when they are first planted. Like any plant really, Australian natives can take some time to become established. While it is true that, once established, they can take FAR less watering, they still require water every few days. However Australian natives generally will survive periods without water better than European plants. Equally so, planting natives from your area works best with this scenario. When first planted, make sure Australian natives get plenty of water so as to establish themselves quickly.

Finally, in most states in Australia there are restrictions on when and how you can utilise reticulation systems. Make sure that you check with you local water authority on the current situation for your state. The fines for being caught out are quite significant and there are very good reasons for limiting the use of water during peak usage times!

This month we will be looking at the terms staking, pruning, grafting.

Staking – Quite simply some plants require a little help as they grow because they become top-heavy, that is the top of the plant is heavier than the base or root system can support. In such cases it is helpful to stake them. This means to stick a piece of wood, or metal, or anything else that is strong next to the growing plant and as it grows, tie the new ‘top’ loosely(and this is the key) to the stake.  This way the stake is providing support but the tie is not restricting the plants growth, both upwards but also in terms of the thickness of the growing stems or branches. If, after you have staked a plant, the ties look to be causing a problem, simply loosen then or move them to a different area of the growing stem or branch.

Pruning – This is basically the removal of part of the plant to either restrict its size, shape the plant or promote flowers or fruit to grow. It may seem strange but for many plants, the loss of some of the plant, via cutting, encourages it to grow or fruit more vigorously. This is especially the case when the pruning involves the removal of dead or dying limbs. IMPORTANT NOTE: Do not go out and prune a plant without first doing a little bit of research into the best times for that particular plant. Some enjoy mid flower pruning, others require after flower pruning. There are many other things to take into account when pruning, which I will most likely discuss at some other point in time.

Grafting – The process of grafting is not really one for a gardening new comer, but it can be handy to understand the term when shopping for varieties because a ‘hybrid species’ variety is normally the result of two species either being grafted together, or being bred from a grafted species. Grafting is basically taking the stem or bud of one variety and joining it together with the stem or stem base of another variety of the same plant. Some grafts work better than others and some plants are more open to grafting, hence why the actual process of grafting is best left for intermediate or experienced gardeners. The resultant, grafted plant will have a blend of characteristics of the two parent varieties and the process can lead to more hardy plant varieties or produce more beautiful flowers.

For more definitions of gardening terms see the previous entries from this series;

Part 1 – annual, biennial, perennial & deciduous.

Part 2 – mulch, compost, manure/fertiliser & trace elements.

Part 3 – native, succulent, specimen plant and ground cover.

Welcome to the first installment of this series for 2010. The main purpose behind this series is to give you a little bit of background as to where I have come from as a green thumb. I want to introduce you to the people that have shaped me into the gardener that I am and help you to understand why I am indeed so passionate about gardening. The entries in this series may be shorter than some of my more regular entries but I do hope they give you an idea of my gardening history.

I will start this series in what could be seen as a strange fashion. I want to explain what I am not as a gardener before I go into what I am as a gardener, as well as where I have come from and why what I am saying at AussieGreenThumb.com can help you in your garden.

I am not a qualified gardener or landscaper. I did not go to university and gain a degree in gardening nor have I gone to TAFE to gain a certificate in gardening. I am not a TV celebrity gardener like Jamie Durie or Don Burke. This paragraph alone may leave you wondering why you are bothering with AussieGreenThumb.com? My hope is that what I write will answer for itself as to why it is useful.

At AussieGreenThumb.com it is not really my aim to teach you to take your garden and turn it into ‘Australia’s Top Garden’ because I realise this is not the goal of the everyday person. In fact, in my experience, most people simply want a garden they do not feel ashamed of. I believe you probably just want a front garden that does not make you cringe when you invite people to come over, and wish you could blindfold your friends until they are inside the doors. You want a backyard that compliments your amazing outdoor entertainment area and not be a cause for moving the party to your second cousins place! It is you that I have in mind with this blog. It is the everyday, minimum fuss, just want it to look neat gardener.

It is because of this that I believe what I have to say is worth reading. It is because of this that I believe where I have come from has trained me to help in this circumstance. I have grown up in and around the garden. I am not a professional gardener but simply someone who is passionate about the garden. Things that I take for granted in gardening terms, I am discovering are not quite as simple for people that did not grow up in the garden and it is this kind of simple advice that I believe can make a big difference between someone bothering and not bothering with improving their garden.

It is my belief that every person can have a gardening lifestyle, today and tomorrow. What matters is what this means to you. What does it mean for you to have a garden you are happy with, and what are you willing to do to work towards this? It is the goal of this blog to empower you towards this end and it is the goal of this series to show you how simple it can actually be, with the right people helping. I have learnt most of what I know today as a child. Because of this I believe anyone can learn some simple skills that will go a long way towards them having the garden they want.