Tuesday, 13 May 2008

Dealing with Osteospermums

You may find that your osteospermums or Cape Marigolds as they are commonly known, are beginning to look straggly with maybe some dead growth on the lower parts of the stems. They are getting past their best now and may have been damaged in last weeks storms.  If you want to have nice bright cushions of flowers next season cut the stems right down to where you can see new green growth and take out any stems that have become wooden.  It may seem rather drastic but it will encourage the plant to make lots of new growth before the temperatures get too hot.
Posted by Patricia at 05:06:46 | Permanent Link | Comments (0) |

Friday, 09 May 2008

Helping your plants after the storms

Many gardens will have suffered as a result of the unseasonal storms yesterday which swept across the island.  Although gardens were in great need of rain,  so much in such a short time damaged many plants.  Try and dead head all you can as quickly as possible or the dead heads may go mouldy causing problems later on.  Cut back branches which may have been broken and use this opportunity of the soil being moist to plant any new plants before hopefully the sunny warm weather returns.

Posted by Patricia at 17:21:43 | Permanent Link | Comments (0) |

Saturday, 03 May 2008

Feeding the fruit and nut trees again

This month you should be feeding your fruit and nut trees again, but not loquats or pomegranates.  If you look at them closely you will see lots of new leaves and you need to give these a boost with some nitrogen for good strong growth.   Mature trees need about 3 mugfuls of 20.0.0 fertiliser around the base of the tree, whilst young trees need one mugful.  ( A mugful equates to about 300 grams). Normally rainfall will dilute this but as we haven't been having much lately you will have to use some of that water you have saved to water it in. The trees won't need feeding again until December.

Posted by Patricia at 05:32:37 | Permanent Link | Comments (0) |

Friday, 02 May 2008

Garden Opening a Great Success!

Our Garden Opening for the British Charity 'Help for Heroes on May 1'  was a great success.  We had lots of visitors and raised Euros 772.50.  Thanks go to our helpers and all those who came along and supported us.

The garden was looking fresh after the rain we had on Tuesday and Wednesday.  I hope that you had some rain in your area this week too.
Posted by Patricia at 08:50:47 | Permanent Link | Comments (0) |