Greenfingers Garden Club: Continue to mulch and compost well

New chairman, Caroline van Hilten, opened the February meeting at the lovely garden of Ione Bowman in Pennington. Caroline welcomed us all and thanked Liz Thompson for all the hard work she had done as chairman during the course of the last nine years… and thank you Liz from all of us as well.

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Caroline gave some very valuable garden tips, February is usually the hottest month of the year so it is important to mulch and compost well to keep flower and fruit tree roots moist and cool after you have watered. Apply Epsom salts at 5ml to five litres of water if leaves are yellowing and feed flowering plants organic pellet fertiliser as opposed to chemical fertiliser as it helps aid earthworms. Watch out for borer if you have hibiscus and as a precaution sprinkle insecticide granules around the drip area and water in.

For vegetables carry on feeding summer crops that are still producing with organic or liquid food and mulch round and in between rows. Water and mulch citrus trees and underplant with garlic to deter ants and aphids. Look after your lawn well and if you have the sticky weed plant you will have to get on hands and knees with a sharp tool and dig the roots out manually.

Ione gave a history of her garden. Five years ago the garden consisted of a very steep slope with trees on it.

They first had a retaining wall built to level part of the garden off and a pool was put in, then the planting began.

Numerous cuttings were sourced from everyone and once they were growing, more cuttings from the cuttings were taken until the whole garden was planted out and everything looked really beautiful. Thank you so much Ione for hosting us at this lovely place.

The winners for January’s competitions are:

Rose Bowl: 1 Des Cliff and Wendy van den Heever.

Antirrhinum:1 Dion Pienaar and Rina Mason, 2 Elmerie Brown and Erica Jones.

Indigenous: 1 Dion Pienaar and Elmerie Brown, 2 Rina Mason, Rona Jones and Cecile Ebsworth.

Best fruit: 2 Elmerie Brown and Erika Jones.

Best veg:1 Steph Howell, Dion Pienaar and Erika Jones, 2 Des Cuffe, Cecile Ebsworth, Wendy van den Heever and Elmerie Brown, 3 Liz Thompson. Best herb: 1 Elmerie Brown, 2 Steph Howell.

March competitions are a one-stem flowering shrub or a one-stem flowering creeper and one-stem flowering plectranthus. The herbs are mint or fennel.

The next meeting takes place  at 74 Marine Drive, Bazley on March 21 at 9am. Parking is at a premium, so please try to double up and don’t forget chairs, hats and crockery.

Hope to see you all there and please follow the garden club signs.

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