Autumn is a great time to do garden improvement and maintenance, for example constructing a pathway or a pergola, sharpening your tools, improving your soil or mulching the garden beds. A little time spent on jobs now will help your garden power away in the spring. Don also has some tips on keeping your indoor plants looking great right through the winter.
Strawberries
Strawberries planted now will produce fruit in October and November. Prepare the bed by digging in some aged poultry manure or compost. You can buy strawberries in pots or punnets, but the cheapest and best way is to buy runners in a cardboard box (always use plants that are certified free of virus diseases). Space the runners at about 30cm apart, and apply a mulch to help prevent weeds and keep the fruit clean. When the flowers start to appear feed with a liquid fertiliser, such as Nitrosol, every few weeks. Strawberries will fruit well for about three years – replace them with new plants in the autumn of the third year.
Citrus trees
Don put some mulch around the base of a citrus tree, making sure not to allow any of the mulch to touch the trunk. Some citrus trees, such as Emperor mandarins, bear so heavily that the branches bend over with the weight of the crop. When this happens it is necessary to do some emergency thinning to prevent the branches snapping under the strain. Ideally, the best time to prune citrus is after the crop is harvested.
Banksias
Don was surprised to find a little banksia growing and even flowering in a shady part of his grevillea garden. Since autumn is a wonderful time of the year for planting, he decided to put in another banksia.