Larry Smith and the Riverside Gardens team talk all things pots, plants and pruning in their weekly gardening column.
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The winter sports have finished, and daylight saving has started, so now you have plenty of time to get into the garden — and what a great time it is to do so.
If you want to add a big hit of colour to your garden or spice up your veggie patch, now is the time to get started.
October sees the change from your winter season flowers and vegetables to summer cropping veggies and summer floral display seedlings.
Some flowers like pansies and violas may keep flowering through to December, but once the real heat kicks in they will finish up.
So, if you want a good floral display in your garden for the festive season, you will have to make the hard call now and make way for your summer flowering seedlings which will keep flowering through to winter next year.
Petunias are probably the best known of the summer flowering seedlings, coming in a range of colours in both single and double trumpet-shaped flowers.
Older varieties like Colour Parade, Giant Victorious, Bobby Dazzler and Waterfall are all still popular, but it is also worth considering some of the newer spreading varieties.
These spreading varieties, like the Petunia Craze series, will grow considerably wider and cover in flowers from the centre to the outside edge.
Petunias love a full sun position, and they also do well in pots and hanging baskets.
Other full sun loving flowering seedlings include vinca, marigolds, alyssum, salvia, snapdragons, portulaca, cosmos and celosia, which are all available now or in the coming weeks.
Some like celosia, and some of the salvia are not that well known, and are often overlooked when it comes to planting time.
But once they mature and start flowering, we get many inquiries about them — at which time it is almost too late to grow them from seedling form.
The shade-loving flowering summer annuals include lobelia, impatiens, begonia (in both green and red leaf forms) and coleus.
These all grow happily in low-light areas and can add a great hit of colour to those darker spots of the garden.
Coleuses are another of the overlooked seedlings at planting time, but I find them great scattered in among the perennial plants of a shady garden.
With their various patterned, multi-coloured leaves adding a hint of the tropics, they can really influence the feel of the garden.
The trick with these plants is to keep pinching out the flower buds as they appear, making the plants a lot bushier in their colourful foliage display.
In a few weeks’ time, advanced selected varieties of coleus will start to appear in the Garden Centre.
These can make beautiful centrepieces on an alfresco table or even as an indoor plant in a well-lit room.
If you have a veggie garden, summer is the time of the year when you are spoilt with the array of plants that you can grow — but now is the time to get your first lot planted.
Then next month you can follow up with another planting of the same so that you can prolong your cropping time.
As an idea of what veggies can be planted now, here is a quick run-through of seedlings that were on the shelf this morning.
Cucumbers in long green, crystal apple and little Lebanese, three or four varieties of capsicums and chillies, sweet corn, several varieties of lettuce, eggplant, zucchini, watermelon, onions, beans, snow peas, sugar snap peas, silver beet, beetroot, basil, strawberries, pumpkins, chives, parsley, bok choy, carrots, coriander and about 10 different varieties of tomatoes.
That’s quite a selection, but that is not all, as over the next few weeks there will be a few additions as the weather warms up.
There is also a wide selection of seeds that can be sown now that will further increase what you can easily grow right in your garden.
But remember, if you are going to be growing fruiting crops like tomatoes, capsicums, cucumbers and eggplant, you do need to learn about fruit fly prevention and control so that you are not wasting your time or adding to the problem in the area.
It is not hard, but you need to learn the facts and not be misled by the many false remedies around.
Even with your leaf and root crops, there are plenty of little critters that will enjoy snacking on your smorgasbord on offer in the garden, so call in and have a chat and we can run through your options, including some reliable organic ones.
If you have not already, it is a good idea to feed up your veggie garden soil with a good dressing of cow or chook manure, some blood and bone or some good compost to make sure there is plenty of nutrient available to grow your delicious home-grown bumper crop.
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