Welcome 2024! A new year and always a time filled with possibilities and opportunities for new goals, insights and growth.
We hope you are starting this year with renewed energy and great ideas and we look forward to bringing new life into your homes and gardens as we enter into the months ahead.
Giving yourself a good workout in the privacy of your own backyard is much nicer than going to a gym and you don’t have to force your ‘love handles’ into unbecoming gym clothes!
While you are getting fitter and trimmer with pruning, weeding, composting, raking, digging, planting and mowing, your garden will reward your time and spent perspiration with lush growth and great harvests of flowers and edibles. Another advantage is that garden gym, which means spending time outside in the sunshine and fresh air, has a positive influence on your psychological health as well – it relieves stress and helps with depression. Regular hours spent in the garden will work out the muscles in your legs, back, stomach and will also give you a healthy cardiovascular buzz while the Christmas calories slowly melt away.
Before starting your garden gym session, warm up those cold muscles of yours by stretching a bit – it gives you time to decide what you are going to tackle first. Vary your garden workout with different actions like pruning, raking, mowing, digging and weeding, and spend about 15 minutes on each activity to work out different muscles. Do some stretching and releasing exercises before moving on to the next action. If you stick to this regime regularly, everything which needs to be done in the garden will be done, and you will become trim and fit!
Bedding besties
Zinnias can always be trusted on to supply of bright colour in the hottest months of the year. They have leathery leaves and sturdy flowers which love the hot sun. The modern varieties that have been brought out are much more disease resistant than the old-fashioned ones grandma used to grow, and while tall growing, well-branched varieties are still popular. One can also fill the garden with dwarf types like ‘Profusion’, ‘Mondo’ and ‘Zahara’ – all three are suitable for container planting too.
A resolution to practice this year:
Been Waterwise
pledge our minds and hearts to using modern technology and good old common sense to save water, we will get the maximum value out of what we have committed to the soil with a clear conscience – not only in large gardens, but also in small spaces, and even in pots on a patio or balcony.
- On hot days turn on those cold humidifiers to keep houseplants like ferns, Calatheas, Anthuriums and orchids looking healthy by supplying some extra humidity.
- Keep ponds and bird baths topped up.
- Punch holes in the bottom of plastic milk, water, or soft drink bottles, place them on or in the soil around plants, and fill them with water from your hose or watering can as needed.
- If you haven’t already adjusted your irrigation system, look at turning the schedule to water deeply in late afternoon to early dusk. This will allow for the soil to absorb the moisture and last longer, than watering during the day.
Mulching is priority!
Mulch around all plants and veggies using a light mulch (dried leaves, straw, bark, coarse compost and other commercial mulches available at Tuingenoot)
Advantage of mulching: Watering requirements can be cut down to 50% and weeds are smothered and discouraged (weeds compete with plants and grass for water, so mulching is essential to good gardening practice)
Another New year’s resolution!
Re-organise and declutter your space. All of us want a low maintenance garden, full of well-performing plants. So, ask come in and ask our knowledgeable staff for plants that can be relied on to grow effortlessly, and without too much water.
Bug watch
- Remove all your old flower stalks and dead material from around the base of your perennials this will help to curb mildew, rust and red spider mite.
- Continue spraying your roses with rosecare plus to help against black spot, mildew, spidermite and aphids. Also avoid watering your roses in the evening or late afternoon, rather look at early mornings, this allows for water to dry off the leaves and kurb a mildew infection from taking place.
- Watch out for hawk moth caterpillars feeding at night on impatiens, arum lilies and fuchsias – you can easily remove them by hand, or of you would prefer a poison then knox worm will do the trick.
- If you are suffering from a lawn caterpillar infestation, then we would recommend that you try out Wonder Lawn pest & green.
All these remedies for the above pest and disease problems are available at your favourite garden centre Tuingenoot.
You need to feed
Lawns will need a slow releasing nitrogen fertiliser to maintain their lush green colour. Look at trying out protek lawn and foliage to help keep those lawns lush and green.
Garden containers, young seedlings, and indoor plants should be fed every two weeks with a liquid fertiliser, such as Nitrosol, or kelp.
Azaleas and camellias will need an acid compost top up to help them set buds for winter, scatter the back of compost around the plant making sure not to cover the stem, add additional bark chips around each plant to help with water retention and most bark chips are from pine trees, which in turn will help with the acidic soil.
Caring for your Roses
- Look at deadheading or lightly cut back the stems of your roses in your garden on the second day of the year. They will then give you a second flowering on St Valentine’s Day
- Keep them foliated by not cutting long stemmed blooms for the vase and spray regularly with rosecare plus to preventatively fight against black spot, mildew and red spider mites to avoid leaf drop.
- Study your roses. If the leaves are a bleak light green colour, they need rose fertiliser. Bad performance can mean that the roots are too dry or robbed of food and water by another plant’s roots. If you notice that some of your roses have this try out Protek rose and flower.
- Use water in a clever way. Roses need at least two or three deep waterings a week. If you have restrictions, water them with grey water.
- Mulch the soil around the base of your roses. This will keep them cool for the heat to come.
General Gardening.
- Don’t allow your evergreen hedges and topiaries to grow out of shape and become unruly. Keep them lightly trimmed and neat.
- Look at sowing beans, beetroot, carrots, leeks, sweet corn, radish, spinach, and Cape gooseberries, and plant seedlings of tomatoes, chilies, basil, lettuce, celery, parsley, and brinjal.
- Feed your fruit trees like mangoes, avocados, lemons and granadilla vines. Apply a general fertilisers for roots, foliage, and future fruit production – use slow releasing fertilisers at this time of the year, anything like gwano pellets or flower power are great choices.
- Remove all the fallen fruit to discourage pests breeding in them, and infecting the healthy ones.
- Look at sowing quick-maturing annuals to give those bare areas a pop of color things like (alyssum), dwarf marigolds, portulacas, petunias and zinnias.
- If there are some old and tired annuals replace them with seedlings of Celosia, annual salvias, petunias, impatiens, vincas, begonias and marigolds, all are available on our shelves.
- Having problems with scale and aphids? Treat these critters by spraying plant protector or complete.
- Ensure there is no stagnant water in the cup-area of your bromeliads look at spraying the water out weekly – this will prevent mosquito larvae from hatching there.
- Try nipping out the growing tips of chrysanthemums and poinsettias to encourage a bushy growth on your plant.
The new year has arrived with a bang! There are 366 days ahead with this leap year. Lets grow something together, which makes every day a gardening day!
