June 2013 Garden News

Well, it’s been very funny month weather wise.

In Queensland we usually have our dry season during winter with mostly sunny days.

This month has been just the opposite with rain and mostly cloudy days.

The garden needs a bit of sunshine.

 Impatiens grandis

We visited the Ipswich Horticultural Society and Kilcoy Garden Clubs this month and paid host to a group from the ‘Rose Lovers’ Association.

We were invited to the Bayside Garden Club for their friendship day where a guest speaker showed many slides of her holiday in France, I am afraid I am not one for looking at holiday photos so found myself getting quite restless.

I have now sprayed the whole garden twice with Natra-kelp to help it through the winter, it is magnificent stuff and we use a lot of it both spraying and watering in new plants.

I ordered a truck load of loam and have topped up one of the front gardens and filled a few holes in the garden.

A big problem is ‘shrinkage’ where the organic element in the soil eventually decomposes and leaves holes and areas that need topping up.

Nowadays I try to use soil that has minimal organic content.

I have been buying a few rare bulbs through ebay and would really like to collect more of the Amorphophallus type plants; I did bid on a Titanum bulb but was well and truly outbid.

I have had my third article published on ‘Garden Drum’; it is a very informative site with good articles.

http://gardendrum.com/2013/06/30/how-to-open-your-garden/

We are looking forward to going to the Queensland Garden Expo at Nambour in July; we go every year and really enjoy hunting for new and rare plants.