• Spray
Once the rose is pruned, it’s a great chance to spray leafless rose bushes with lime sulphur, which is a smelly but very effective way to help break the rose pest cycle. Used at the higher ‘winter rate’, Yates Lime Sulphur will control scale insects which are lying in wait on rose stems during winter, ready to infect new spring growth. Breaking the pest cycle during winter will help give the rose the best possible fresh start in spring.
Pruning tip: if you live in a really cold area, delay pruning until August as pruning can stimulate new leaf growth which could be damaged by frosts.
Caterpillar patrol
Vegetable patches and pots during July can be bursting with delicious cool season vegetables like broccoli, cabbage, kale, cauliflower and Brussels sprouts. There’s nothing quite as satisfying and fresh and tasty as harvesting your own produce.
However finding green hairy caterpillars curled up inside a head of broccoli or kale leaves being skeletonised by caterpillars can be a little disheartening. It doesn’t need to be like this.
An easy way to control caterpillars on your vegetables is by spraying fortnightly with Yates Success Ultra Insect Control. It contains spinetoram, which is derived from a naturally occurring soil bacterium that was discovered on an island in the Caribbean. Spinetoram has the special ability to move through from one surface of the sprayed leaf to another (called ‘translaminar action’), helping to make it resistant to rain and sunlight.
It’s important to keep feeding your winter vegetable patch to promote healthy growth and a great harvest. It might be cool but winter vegetables are growing steadily and need to be fed to be productive.
Fertilise each week with Yates Thrive Vegetable & Herb Liquid Plant Food, which is a complete and balanced plant food containing nitrogen for vibrant green leaf growth, phosphorus for strong root development and potassium for healthy plants and helping to initiate formation of ‘flower’ heads of broccoli, Brussels sprouts and cabbage.
‘Veranda salad’
If you fancy stepping out onto your patio, courtyard or balcony and picking some healthy greens for a salad, then the ‘Veranda salad’ is for you! It’s an easy weekend project.
Here’s what you need:
• A pot at least 30 cm in diameter or a trough or window box. The larger the pot the more you can grow and the easier it will be to maintain.
• Good quality potting mix like Yates Premium Potting Mix.
• Seedlings of your favourite salad ingredients. During the cooler months you can grow leafy vegetables and herbs like lettuce, baby spinach, silverbeet, Italian parsley, spring onions and Asian greens like tatsoi as well as baby beetroot (you can harvest tender young beetroot leaves for a salad) and radish.
Here’s how:
• Place the pot in a sunny position (at least 4 hours of sun a day is ideal). Fill the pot with potting mix up to around 5cm from the top.
• Place your fingers across the top of the punnet and in between the bases of the seedlings and gently turn the punnet upside down, releasing the plants (with root ball attached). Gently separate the seedlings if required, retaining as many roots as possible.
• Dig small holes in the potting mix. The holes should be the same size as the root ball of your seedlings. Allow around 10cm between each seedling.
• Place the seedlings into their holes and gently firm down the potting mix around the roots.
• Water over the seedlings to settle them in and then keep the potting mix moist.
• In a fortnight, start feeding each week with Yates Thrive® Vegie & Herb Liquid Plant Food, which will provide the vegies with a balanced diet of nutrients to promote lots of healthy growth.
• Harvest regularly! You can start picking individual leaves after just a few weeks. And the more you pick, the more leaves will grow.
— Courtesy of Yates
