Gardening tips can help make gardening easier, they save you money and time as well as obtaining better results. You may like to cut out this article for future reference.

Experienced gardeners, learn from each other, methods that can create an advantage in their gardening endeavors.

Most of the following tips have originally come from other gardeners and the writer has seen the common sense of them and does not take credit for all the tips.

(I am just a knowledge collector and investigator that enjoys sharing what I have learnt.)

Firstly one must realise that there is a lot of misinformation bandied about, some of which is taken for gospel by novice gardeners to their disadvantage.

Take for instance adding dish washing liquid to a garden spray, it will help spread some types of sprays better over the foliage but it will also assist the spray to wash off faster in rain or from over head watering.

 Instead use Wallys Raingard which is a sticker, spreader and rain proofer.

But dish washing liquid added to water, on the other hand, is good for dry soils or mediums where water will not penetrate.

Add to warm water in watering can by giving a good squirt of dish washing liquid and the water over dry area to break surface tension in gardens, lawns and containers.

The old cake Sunlight soap used in the past, in boilers for washing clothes (Remember lighting a fire under the copper boiler in the outside laundry and literately boiling your soiled clothes to wash them.

Then using the hand wringer to wring them out of Copper into a concrete tub with water that you had added ‘Blue’ to (Copper hydroxide)

Then wring them again before hanging out in the sunlight to dry.

Back then germs did not have a chance thats for sure.

Well after the boiler water cooled one would bucket it out and if you had roses growing you would pour the soapy water over the roses.

Because of the fatty acids in the old Sunlight soap it would kill the soft body aphids.

Same can be done today as a aphid spray by lathering up some yellow bar sunlight soap (only one that works) and spraying the aphids with that soapy water.

Garlic sprays favored by organic people do not kill insect pests.

Garlic sprays will however disguise the natural smell of a plant making it difficult for a pest to locate if the pest is one which finds its host plant by smell.

The smell does not last especially with rain and the plant is left open to attack.

Wallys Super Pyrethrum can be used with garlic sprays for the killing action as it is a very good natural insecticide that is a quick kill for the insects that come into contact with it.

Problem is that Pyrethrum is very quickly broken down by UV (Sunlight) and may only be effective for a couple of hours when sprayed during the day. (even on a cloudy day) I

f on the other hand you spray Pyrethrum at dusk, it will remain effective till sunlight destroys its active ingredients the next day.

Copper sprays are a good protection against diseases such as blight, downy mildew, brown rot, curly leaf, bacterial diseases and citrus diseases.

BUT If you add a spraying oil (Conquer oil) to the copper spray it reduces the effectiveness of the copper, so you waste your time and money?

You often hear advisor’s saying to mix copper and oil together to save you time.

If the two were truly compatible then someone would have introduced a product that already combined the two elements.

The only reason to use a spraying oil is to smother scale insects or thrips in the winter/spring period. If you don’t have scale or thrips why use the oil?

If you do have scale insects then do a separate oil spray when the copper protection is not needed.

Copper sprays do not protect your plants from diseases such as black spot, powdery mildew, botrytis, rusts, leaf spots and leaf moulds.

You need a sulphur spray for these which will also control spider mites.

There is an advantage in using Wallys Liquid Copper sprays as it does not block up sprays like the powder products do.

You need to use the right protection for each disease, often copper is recommended for rust and black spot but it does not do much for those diseases.

Instead use potassium Permanganate at a quarter teaspoon per litre of water.

I had a call from a lady gardener a while ago who told me that when she lived on the farm, she feed her roses cow manure and had wonderful, healthy roses that never needed spraying.

When she moved to town and started to use water soluble fertilisers and Nitrophoska, her roses started to have problems.

To overcome these problems she was told to use Shield and Super Shield alternatively every 2 weeks. The roses never improved if fact they got worse because their natural

immune system was compromised by the harsh chemicals..

These chemical sprays and fertilisers harm the soil life and as a result effect the natural health of the roses/plants.

The simple answer is to go back to the natural foods like animal manures and watch your rose’s health recover.

You may need to use some natural products such as Wallys Magic Botanic Liquid and Mycorrcin in the meantime while the soil life and worm populations are allowed to build up again.

Herbicides used for weed killing also harm soil life but busy people that do not have the time to hand weed prefer these quick solutions.

Environment friendly weed killers such as Ammonium Sulphamate or using vinegar or cooking oil are a better option.

If you opt to use the conventional chemical herbicides then you can offset the damage by adding either Thatch Busta or Mycorrcin to the spray.

 The weed killer will work better and the dying weeds will disappear faster as the products speed up the decay time and feed the soil life.

Raingard has been proven to increase the weed kill by about 50% if added to the herbicide spray.

If you use glyphosate weed killers such as Roundup etc then add Raingard plus Thatch Busta then you can halve the amount of glyphosate used.

Example, instead of 10 ml of glyphosate use 5mls. In fact for many weeds you can come down as low as 2.5mls.

The less chemical used the better off everything is including your health and the environment.

Club Root is a bad disease that effects brassicas (cabbages etc) by distorting the root system.

It is a soil borne disease that is often introduced into gardens with seedlings and plants grown in contaminated soil. Once you have it you have a problem growing cabbages etc.

The control is the old Condy’s crystals (potassium permagnate)

A quarter teaspoon of potassium permanganate is dissolve in one litre of water along with 3 desert spoons of salt.

This is then added to a further 9 litres of water and you pour one litre of the mix into the planting hole to saturate the soil prior to planting your cabbage etc.

Potassium permagnate is available from many garden centres.

When mixing any sprays you should fill the tank of the sprayer to half the required volume of water, mix the concentrate product/s in a litre of warm water, add this to the tank with the balance of water required.

Always use all the spray made up, wash out tank and run fresh water through the sprayer. If possible only use warm water when mixing any sprays, they mix into warm water better, than into cold.

Rodney Hide and myself did another gardening program during the week..If you want to watch and listen go to….

https://rcr.media/episodes/wednesday-webinars-lifestyle-spring-planting

Phone 0800 466464
Garden Pages and News at www.gardenews.co.nz
Shar Pei pages at  www.sharpei.co.nz
Mail Order products at www.0800466464.co.nz

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