Don't slow down in Autumn, it's a great time to garden | DIY Garden Projects | Gardening Australia

Описание: Summer flowers may be dying off and growth slowing down, but Autumn is not a time to rest in the garden! It’s the perfect time to plant new things, rearrange, get pruning, and generally prepare your plants to get through the cooler months ahead.

In her Adelaide Hills garden on Peramangk Country, Sophie has a list of jobs lined up:

Pruning Perennials
Autumn is time for pruning plants that flowered over spring and summer, as it won’t interrupt the flowering and fruiting cycle. In fact, it will encourage healthy new growth and keep them nice and compact, particularly when it comes to hedges or bushy perennials. You can also chop up the prunings and add to your compost bin.
Sophie has two salvias that require different pruning techniques.
The summer flush of Salvia ‘Celestial Blue’ has finished, and these can be nipped back by hand or secateurs – just look for where the old flower spike ends and break it off. This will help to get a second crop of flowers, as seen by one Sophie pruned earlier.
Salvia muirii continues to flower throughout the year, but if it isn’t pruned now it will look daggy and reduce the number and quality of new flowers.

General checkup: Use pruning as an opportunity to check for signs of pests, diseases or deficiencies. Is it showing signs of weather damage? Are there dead/broken branches building up that could harbour mould?

Feed the soil
Whether you’re planting now or not, adding compost to the surface of beds is a lazy way to do some good over cooler months.
If you’ve got well broken-down, ready to use compost, spread a thin layer across beds or gaps and gently dig it in. This will help keep the soil healthy and full of living organisms until you’re ready to plant, so there’s less work to do later. And if you are planting now, compost will provide nutrients to help them settle in and thrive through winter until you give them a stronger feed in spring. Give it a week or two to break down before planting - use the time to plan and choose the right plants.

Time to plant
Planting in Autumn gives plants 6-9 months to settle in and get their roots established. While they may not grow much, especially if you get frosty winters, by the time spring comes they’ll have already done the work to be ready for a growth spurt. It takes some planning ahead, but you’ll have more success than waiting to get plants from the nursery in spring when they are already in full bloom.
If the weather is still fluctuating in your area, make sure to wait for a cooler day to plant so they don’t go into shock. Even with cooler weather on the way you still need to keep the water up to give them a good start in life, making them more resilient to stress and pests.

Food for thought: Don’t forget the vegie patch! There are plenty of things to plant now that will keep providing food through cooler weather. In most areas of Australia, you can plant out brassicas (broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage) peas, beans, spinach, and silverbeet to have lots of delicious green veggies for winter meals along with onion and garlic for flavour.

Brassicas are nutrient-hungry plants, so Sophie has already prepared a bed with plenty of compost. Plant seedlings 40cm apart and feed with an organic liquid fertiliser when the flower heads appear. Sophie includes some sprouting varieties, especially at the beginning of the season, because these are usually the first to crop - and will keep producing food for several months.
The bed needs exclusion netting put on straight away to avoid the White Cabbage Moth taking over and its larvae eating your crop before it even had a chance to grow. This net can be removed once the cold has set it as they will be less prevalent. If you don’t net them, check the underside of leaves daily and remove the tiny green caterpillars.


Featured plants:
Salvia ‘Celestial Blue’ (Salvia clevelandii x leucophylla cv.)
Salvia muirii
Butcher’s Broom (Ruscus aculeatus)
Sweet Box (Sarcococca confusa)
Plectranthyus ecklonii cv.
Broccoli (Brassica oleracea cv.)



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