Gardening columnist JACKIE WARBURTON has a hero plant this week – the Chinese plumbago with it’s blue flowers and red autumnal foliage.

My hero plant this week is Chinese plumbago, a deciduous shrub that grows well in our region.

Its flowers are in bloom now. They are the most amazing cobalt blue colour and once the autumnal foliage begins to turn red, the contrast is really lovely and has a long-lasting summer and autumn display.

Chinese plumbago (ceratostigma plumbaginoides) can be used as a small hedge. It has a slow suckering habit that can be clipped into shape. It grows best in full sun, where it flowers well.

There is a new, smaller, powder-blue flowering variety available called Summer Sky, which grows under a metre tall. 

WE are still in a busy period in the garden with lots to do – planting garlic, green manure crops and all winter vegetables, which need to be in the ground before the soil cools at the end of the month. 

Pull weeds to keep them from setting seed and lying dormant over winter in the soil. Place them into the compost and keep moist and turned over through winter. 

Autumn leaves need to be picked off the tops of hedges to prevent damage and the last of the pruning for evergreen hedges should be done now, except for viburnum tinus, which flowers in winter. 

It’s also a great time for dividing and moving plants around. Conifers can do with a tidy up of all the brown needles from inside the shrubs to help with airflow and use those pine needles around strawberry and blueberry plants to help keep the soil acidic. 

REDUCE fertilising plants as the weather cools. Now it is time to work on garden soils over winter. Tilling soil is good for controlling weeds and pest control. 

Adding manures and mulch over the winter to garden beds will help the soil microbes to work and plants will be ready to grow as soon as spring arrives. 

Spraying for peach leaf curl can be done now and, if possible, remove as many fallen leaves as possible from under the tree and dispose of them in the green bin and not the compost. 

Spray with copper oxychloride and ensure all the leaves are wet on the undersides as well and allow them to dry before watering. 

I like to also alternate with lime sulphur if there has been an aphid infestation. It is stronger than copper, but unfortunately a little on the nose. However, the smell goes away after a day or so. 

Lime sulphur is not suitable for apricots, berries and grape vines, but it is  useful for spraying roses once they have lost their leaves. 

THE humble echinacea plant has come back in vogue with new varieties. 

With a similar flower shape to sunflowers (they’re from the same family –  Echinacea plumbaginoides), they’re in bloom now. It’s a long-lasting plant through summer into autumn and terrific for attracting pollinators.

There are now varieties available with wonderful compact growth that die down as a herbaceous plant in winter and regrow in spring. 

Echinacea is a rhizome and can be divided around late winter into early spring. 

Jottings

• Plant winter colour such as polyanthus, primulas and pansies. 

• Prune grape vines before they bleed. 

• Place a bag of manure to the compost to help with decomposition.

• Start to fertilise bulbs that are beginning to grow.

jackwar@home.netspeed.com.au