February in the garden

Spruce up your summer garden with our top tips. Photo: Thinkstock

In your garden

• Brighten up your garden with a pot or two of the SuperCal Petchoa series, which comes in seven delicious colours. With flowers the size of a petunia, yet looking like a calibrachoa, it spreads up to 60cm. It’s released by Ball Horticulture.

• For a golden winner, plant the easy-care and long-flowering everlasting daisy Bracteantha ‘Daisy Fields Gold’, from Plant Growers Australia. Once established, it needs little water, enjoys full sun from spring to autumn, spreads to a metre wide and grows well in pots.

• Buy a potted plant for your special person on Valentine’s Day (14 February), like a colourful rose, fuchsia or even a romantic clematis. Don’t forget!

• Add colour with aloe vera. A great medicinal plant for soothing burns and scratches, it’s available in a range of new tones, from whites and pinks to greens and oranges. Plant in drier parts of your garden for best results.

• Check out the new Yates’ Garden Guide (HarperCollins, $39.99), released to celebrate Yates’ 125 years in Australia.

• Encourage repeat-flowering roses to bloom again in autumn with a light prune and a little fertiliser.

• If your tomatoes are taking time to ripen on the vine, try picking a few and putting them in a brown paper bag with a not-too-ripe banana. The theory is that the banana releases ethylene, which encourages ripening.

• If you live in cooler zones, and you grew tulips last season and still have the bulbs, put them in your fridge crisper for six weeks to get them primed for replanting.

Azaleas need special care in the heat of summer. Photo: Thinkstock

• Check azaleas for signs of lace bug damage (silvery upper sides and rusty brown undersides) and, if evident, treat monthly with a systemic spray.

• Prune back those hydrangeas that have finished flowering.

• Keep water up to shallow-rooted plants, such as camellias and citrus, as they dry out easily during the summer months.

• If you’re in the country or on the suburban fringes, maintain bushfire vigilance by cleaning out gutters, keeping grass cut short and getting rid of any flammable rubbish near the house.

• Top up mulches where they’ve become depleted – water the soil well first.

• Give your hibiscus a good feed to keep it happy and healthy.

Hibiscus. Photo: Thinkstock

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Plant Now

FLOWERS
Zones 2-5: Ageratum, antirrhinum, aquilegia, begonia, bellis, candytuft, Canterbury bells, cineraria, cornflower, delphinium, hollyhock, larkspur, nasturtium, nemesia, pansy, penstemon, poppy, primula, salvia, statice, stock, sweet
pea, sweet William, verbena and wallflower.
Zones 6-8: Alyssum, begonia, cosmos, gomphrena, petunia, portulaca, salvia, torenia and zinnia.

VEGETABLES
All zones: Lettuce
Zones 2-5: Broccoli, brussels sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower, kohlrabi, parsley, peas, radish, rhubarb, shallot, silverbeet, spinach and spring onion.
Zones 6-8: Capsicum, eggplant and tomatoes.