Even good housekeepers may have avoided heavy chores in the hot summer weather, but this month should see everything in apple-pie order—benches overhauled and coated with lime-sulfur wash as a disease and insect deterrent: wooden structures painted dazzling white, inside and out, to conserve the winter light; glazing in shape and heating system ready.
Start Cuttings
The valued tender perennials such as impatiens, and coleus. Iresine, fuchsia, lemon verbena (Lippia citriodora) and mint geranium that we like to carry may be done now. Many border plants may be cut back this month, potted, and moved in when frost threatens.
The South African bulbs are almost indispensable and a real favorite in my flowering schedule. They have a wet-dry cycle instead of the hot-cold cycle of the hardy spring bulbs. They can be roasted in the sun, bone dries all summer, each protected by a characteristic sheath, and when cool moist weather comes they root and bloom amazingly.
If you can keep a 45° night temperature in a sunny greenhouse, make up a pot of freesias and one of Ornithogalum ambient or 0. aureum. You need to give them little attention now—a sunny spot outdoors or indoors and no water while the weather is hot.
Bring inside later, start to water and they will make copious roots and good top growth—the amount dependent on available nutrients. Freesias, especially, require a deep pot of rich sandy soil; commercial growers often plant them in-ground beds.
Ornithogalum does well in bulb pans and should be planted shallow. Treated in this way they can be flowered for Christmas. Their enemy is heat—night temperatures above 50° give poor growth and no bloom.
44659 by Victor Greiff