Flowers & Ornaments

• Time to feed azaleas and camellias now that flowering is finished with Baileys Rose, Camellia & Azalea. They can also be pruned to shape if necessary.

Pot Plants

• It's also a good idea to feed your indoor and potted patio plants as these are getting into their most rapid phase of growth for the year. Feed with an organically enriched fertiliser such as Baileys Soil Matters Garden. 

Lawn

• Give your lawn a boost now its hitting peak growing season with a high nitrogen fertiliser such as Baileys Brilliance. 
  
• Start a regular program which includes feeding, wetting agents, mowing and renovation. For further information read our Spring Lawn Care in WA Blog. 
  

Garden Beds

Natives

Edibles

Flowers & Ornaments

• Bottlebrush is best clipped after flowering has finished. This keeps them fresh looking because it encourages rapid growth. Flowering next season is enhanced too.
• If you haven't clipped hibiscus this season then do so now. Take about a third of the growth off and always follow up with a feed of Baileys Soil Matters Garden to get new growth pumping along.
• Also a good time to prune kangaroo paws. 

Garden Beds

• Prune back shrubs that have finished flowering in early spring such as wiegelia. Cut old woody stems back to the ground and trim young stems back by about a third.
• Apply wetting agents now to improve water penetration before the summer months hit, use Baileys Grosorb. 
• Now is also the time to mulch before the weather warms up, use Baileys Moisture Mulch, to keep the soil protected and moist.

Fruits

• Time to thin crops of peaches and nectarines which traditionally overbear around Perth. Lemons are also setting fruit this month and they tend to produce a bunch of 10 to 20 fruitlets in a cluster. Thin these out to 1 or 2 fruits only. This can be done with your fingers.
• Passionfruit vines can be lightly trimmed now just before flowering. Cut off the last 50 cm of the trailing shoots. Feed now with Baileys Soil Matters Garden to encourage new shoots in early summer which produce the flowers needed for fruit production.
• Paw paw fruits that were set last summer and have been hanging on through winter should be ripening now. Watch for a blush of yellow colour in the skin.
  
• Loquat, mulberry, lemon, orange valencia, late season mandarin and strawberry all fruit during October. 
  

• Spring is the best time to establish a new lawn from turf or seed. Make sure to prepare your soil well from the get go as its hard to amend afterward. If your soil is sandy dig in Baileys Soil Matters Clay & Compost. 
• If couch or buffalo lawn has become spongy, it's the best time to dethatch. A vertimower will chop up the stem growth and toss it onto the lawn surface for raking off.
• Compacted soil produces poor quality lawn and needs to be aerated. Various forms of aerating equipment can be hired to make the job easier. If you use a coring machine, then immediately rake Baileys Lawn Reviver into the grass. 
• If your lawn is patchy after winter, it may need top dressing with a compost and loamy sand-based soil blend. Mow it short then dress with Baileys Lawn Reviver to get all the good stuff into the subsoil.
• Give your lawn a flying start to spring by applying a granular fertiliser high in nitrogen now every 4-6 weeks, such as Baileys Brilliance.  
  
• For optimal colour in between granular applications or when grass colour fades you can add liquid fertilisers to your program like Baileys Iron and Manganese. This promote a dark green colour and corrects any deficiencies in the grass leaf.
  
• Now is a great time to check all sprinklers are working well and covering correctly before the summer heat.  

Vegetables & Herbs

• A little bit of pest prevention goes a long way. Protect your vegetables plants with an application of tomato dust. 
• Jet white fly and aphids of vegetables with water. I find if you keep this up daily for about a week the pests just move away.

Trees & Shrubs 

• Watch your palms for big chunks being eaten out of the fronds and leaflets being stuck together. These are tell-tale signs of the orange palm dart caterpillar which is voracious.

Fruits

• If you have citrus trees, keep an eye out for an explosion of ant numbers running up and down the stems. This is a sign that scale may be invading your tree as the ants get a sweet sugary material from the scale which is food for them. In return, ants move the scale insects to new feeding pastures. Spray with low toxic Pest Oil to control.