THE usual chores of mulching gardens are not on the list of to-do’s this month, after the heavy rain the region has had (and continues to have) in the past few weeks. PHOTO SUPPLIED
THIS week’s column wasn’t one I was looking forward to, given the atrocious summer and the unwelcome news of the next weather system banging on the door this week.
In 40 years of gardening, I don’t recall a summer quite like this one. And that lack of experience has all gardeners scratching their heads as to which is the best course of action, as we begin the final countdown to autumn in three weeks.
There is little we can do to fix the ravages of this; even fruit trees have borne the brunt of the rain, with many not given the opportunity to be pollinated properly early in the season and those that were, taking on both wind and rain damage via splitting and fungal infections.
Reports of stone fruit rotting before it reached maturity have been common, waterlogged citrus trees dying off as mentioned recently and grapes needing their leaves pared back to be given as much sunshine as they can receive.
Tomatoes can’t cope with the wet weather and the fruit are now splitting, and the plants are full of blight and/or powdery mildew, leaving a full crop of green tomatoes.
February, known to be the hottest month of summer is indeed warm, but the humidity caused by the rain has meant the lush harvests of this time of year have stuttered to a stop.
Most flowers are struggling, as are many shrubs, roses are full of rust and blackspot.
Normally at this time of year, I’d be advising you to use your compost to mulch to conserve the water content in your soil. But this is not a particularly good idea at present.
Instead, keep adding your spoiled foliage or dead/dying perennials to your compost, keep turning it over adding a bit of dolomite lime, nitrogen (such as kitchen vegetable scraps, coffee grinds) to help the decomposition process along.
A good, healthy compost needs aeration and particularly with the levels of rain we’ve had, the turning of the top layer of it on a regular basis works towards creating a healthy soil biology.
Don’t add in the foliage from diseased plants, this will simply be passed along in the compost and isn‘t what you will need in the new soil it produces.
In the meantime, hopefully the big shiny ball in the sky will remember it is still summer, and we’ll see more of it in the next few weeks as we prepare for autumn.
