Nearly winter

We’re rolling in to the end of Autumn now. It’s been a big up and down roller coaster in the weather department here in the Western Districts of Victoria, Australia. We’ve had cool but gloriously sunny days and cold, grey, miserable days too. One common theme in conversations though, is we haven’t had enough rain; a few other regions in this great, vast country have had more than they need!

It’s still a little early to prune roses, they’re still pushing out late season blooms, but lots of people are starting to think of that job. I’ll hold off on it until at least mid June I think.

One plant that can be attended to now is one of my favourite plants, Sedum spectabile (Check out my blog post from 7March 2022, Autumn). It has finished flowering, and while I do love the rust coloured dead flowers, there comes a time to let them go.

Cut the long stems back down to the basal growth and use this opportunity to get rid of the weed growth which all too often peskily gets right down underneath the clump. This is a good time to spilt up larger clumps and spread them out to other parts of the garden. Just dig up the whole clump, divide it by hand then replant to the same depth as what it was when you dug it up. Water it in and Bob, as they say, is your uncle.

When you’ve cut the stems off, you may have noticed some of them have growth coming off them.

These will grow into new plants as well, so what I do is take some off what will be the ‘bottom’ of the stem then place the stem lengthways into a shallow ‘trough’ and back fill. Bob may be your uncle yet again.

I was wondering about the seeds, I hadn’t really bothered about it before as vegetative growth is so simple, so I googled and discovered they do indeed have seeds (of course) and it is possible to grow new plants from seed. I’m not likely to do this as I tend to be able to grow seeds then forget to water them and lose them. If you’re interested, look it up, it might be fun to try.

It’s ‘burn pile’ burning time at the moment so this weekend I’ll be getting that job done, I’ve been looking forward to it for a while, so I’ll get out there now and enjoy the last of the glorious sunshine.

Til next time!