Winter Sowing
There are still lots of beautiful flowers you can sow in the depths of winter. Here are some ideas for gorgeous floral colour to sow now and enjoy in the months to come:
Free Shipping When You Spend $50 or More
All around Australia:
Yates Heirloom Cottage Garden Mix contains a beautifully bright blend of colourful annual flowers that have been cottage favourites for generations, including calendula, cornflower, cosmos, larkspur, wallflower and zinnia. Scatter the seeds over bare soil that's been enriched with Yates Dynamic Lifter Organic Plant Food & Soil Improver Pellets, cover lightly with Yates Specialty Potting Mix Cuttings & Seeds, firm down and keep moist.
Yates Wild Flowers of the World lets you create your own wild flower meadow. This free-flowering blend has been gathered from around the world and includes gorgeous flowers like alyssum, poppies and salvia.
For temperate, sub-tropical and tropical areas:
Yates Alyssum Carpet of Snow is a hardy annual that is covered in masses of tiny fragrant white flowers. Only growing to around 10 cm tall, it's ideal as a border plant, ground cover or for growing in pots.
Yates Gypsophila Baby's Breath produces sprays of delicate white flowers that sit upon fine stems. It's a popular and long-lasting cut flower.
For sub-tropical and tropical areas:
Yates Cornflower Mystic Blue can be sown in early winter and produces an abundance of beautiful double flowers in rich shades of blue. It blooms for a long time and is a popular cut flower.
Yates Californian Poppy Sunshine Mix contains a vivid colour mixture of white, red, orange and red Californian poppies. These hardy annuals produce a long-lasting display and are best sown direct where they are to grow.
Yates Salvia Blue Bedder is an easy to grow annual with beautiful spikes of rich blue flowers, contrasting with soft green foliage. It grows best in full sun in either garden beds or pots.
You can also continue to include more flowers in your garden during winter by planting seedlings like violas, pansies, polyanthus, primula, and snapdragons. Look in your local nursery to see what seedlings and bright potted colour they have to tempt you!
Flower tips: protect seedlings from damaging snails and slugs with a light sprinkling of Yates Snail & Slug Bait and then feed flowering plants every week with Yates Thrive® Roses & Flowers Liquid Plant Food. It will encourage strong healthy plants and lots of beautiful flowers. Trim off spent flower heads regularly to help keep the plants looking tidy and promote more flowers.
Easy plant propagation
If you have a favourite deciduous shrub or vine growing in your garden that you would like more of, then winter is an ideal time to get cloning. Why not try your hand at taking some 'hardwood' cuttings. It's easier than you think!
Hardwood cuttings is the technical sounding term for taking pieces of stems from plants like hydrangeas, wisteria and grapevines during winter and encouraging them to grow their own roots and create brand new plants.
Here's a step by step guide to propagating plants from hardwood cuttings:
- Choose leafless stems around 0.75 – 1 cm thick and cut off 15 – 18 cm long pieces.
- The top cut should be just above a node (the bud where the new leaves develop) and the bottom cut just below a node. Make a slanted cut at the top so you can remember which way is up.
- Dip the bottom ends of the cuttings into Yates® Clonex® Red Rooting Hormone Gel. Clonex Red contains a concentrated plant hormone which helps promote root development as well as sealing and protecting the cutting.
- Insert the dipped ends of the cuttings into pots filled with Yates Seed Raising Mix and keep in a cool, sheltered, well lit position. A Yates Mini Greenhouse provides an ideal environment to keep cuttings until they form roots in a few months time.
Once roots are well established, individual cuttings can be transplanted into small pots to grow until they are big enough to be planted out into the garden.
Lavender Violet Lace
The Lavender Lace Collection from Plant Growers Australia is a series of early flowering forms of lavender, bearing a range of gorgeous winged flower heads throughout winter and into early spring. The flowers are born on stems that sit proudly above the plant, forming tight domes of bright colour and an impressive display for any landscape during what can be a dreary time of year.
Like all lavenders, the foliage releases a delightful fragrance when brushed against, so hedging a pathway with lavender provides a lovely aroma as well as beautiful flowers. Lavenders also work well when planted repeatedly throughout border gardens and are perfect plants for containers.
Lavenders attract pollinating insects, so are ideal to include in vegie patches and near fruit trees. They prefer a sunny spot with well-drained soil and should be lightly pruned each year after flowering to keep the plants bushy.
In the The Lavender Lace Collection is Lavandula 'Violet Lace' (pictured above), which has intense deep purple flowers on a plant that grows to around 70 cm high and wide.
Every 6 – 8 weeks feed lavender with Yates Dynamic Lifter Roses & Flowers Plant Food Pellets. Spread the pellets around the root zone of both in-ground and potted plants. The pellets contain a special combination of natural ingredients, boosted with fast acting fertilisers, including flower-promoting potassium, to encourage both vigorous green leaf growth and lots of beautiful lavender flowers.
