The large, lily-like or bell-shaped flowers of amaryllis are a colourful embellishment to our gardens in early spring.
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They can easily be grown indoors, but often they fail after the first or second year.
This failure is primarily due to the wrong treatment, especially in initial watering and subsequent care after blooming.
Watering a bulb too much after the growth starts can cause it to rot.
A newly-potted, dormant amaryllis should be kept fairly dry until signs of life begin to appear, except for an initial watering to settle the soil around the bottom of the bulb.
Once the leaf tip emerges from the centre of the bulb, and after the bloom stem has cleared the scales, the roots are definitely feeding the bulb.
It is then time to apply more water to the soil regularly, keeping it moist but not soggy.
Be patient … make sure you wait until the bloom bud shows, regardless of how promising the foliage looks, before watering.
Bulbs should be grown in a mixture of three parts rich loam, one part well-rotted leaf mould and another of well-rotted cow manure, with some sand and a little blood and bone mixed in.
Set the bottom third of the bulb in the mixture
Sweet or Savoury
A mass of sweet peas in October is one of the most welcome sights of spring.
Those who would like to have the pleasure should prepare the soil now.
Dig in compost or manure and some dolomite.
Next weekend will be the perfect time for sowing sweet pea seeds.
In the vegetable garden you can sow the first broad beans now, and Chinese cabbage, carrots and radishes.
Seedlings of cabbage and cauliflower can be planted out and will mature in winter. Protect them with snail bait.
All your vegetables will thank you for a watering with liquid fertiliser.
Strawberry plants usually produce their best crops in the first three years after which they deteriorate, so it is best to discard them and buy new ones.
Hop to it
Do you have trouble with small, jumping insects with fluffy white tails on some of your plants?
This is the immature stage of the passion vine hopper. They are sap suckers. They are very sensitive and jump quickly away when they sense changes in air currents and gusts of wind.
This makes it difficult to spray them because they jump out of the way. Persevere with pyrethrum spray.
The adult is a small brown moth with transparent wings.
They breed in large numbers in mild, moist weather.
Garlic, onion and chives, oh my
Onions, chives, shallots and their close relative garlic, are so easy to grow that they will thrive almost anywhere.
Golden shallots can be stored for months and unlike standard onions, shallots are propagated from bulbs instead of seed.
Shallot bulbs should not be planted deeply. Leave the top of the bulb showing.
Most members of the onion family like a soil that is about neutral, so if yours is at all acid, dig in some dolomite.
Chives are grown entirely for their leaves, which can be chopped into all kinds of dishes, adding flavour to salads, mashed potatoes, scrambled eggs, stews, casseroles and soups.
Chives can be grown from seed or by dividing up established clumps.
Of course, when you cut chives for use you shouldn’t cut every leaf off one plant or you will kill it.
The attractive mauve flowers should be cut off as soon as they appear in bud form, otherwise they will deplete the vigour of the clump.
None of the onion family should be overfed, particularly with manure, or fertilisers rich nitrogen.
This applies particularly when they are maturing.