Emu Valley Newsletter – July 2018

• Date: 11th July 2018
• author: Neet

IN THE GARDEN

Winter time here at EVRG is still buzzing with both visitors and volunteers plus plenty of colour to see. I went to do one particular job in the garden last week and found I was distracted very quickly with taking photos of different aspects around the path ways early in the morning along with the magical colours of the blooms in different pockets of the garden.

Having said that, there are many rhododendrons that are flowering already and shouldn’t be, like the photo below that I took in our ‘Don Dosser’ section. Are your Rhodos doing a similar thing? Any ideas why? Well basically this happens in late autumn /early Winter when the climate conditions trick the plants into thinking it is springtime. A dry summer followed by a reasonably warm Autumn with just enough rain to keep plants happy without any extra watering, and mild winter days will do this and there is obviously no way of preventing it as we can’t control the seasons. However you can give them a handful of potash because this will stimulate the process of hardening off therefore will reduce the amount of flowers flowering out of season and will focus on producing a spectacular display come Spring. Just remember to dead head the spent flowers and hope the rhododendron settles into a normal routine the following season.

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