Searles Buffalo Master Selective Weedkiller

Winter is a dormant season for deciduous fruit trees, not an idle one for the gardener. While your apples, pears, peaches and plums stand bare through the cooler months, they are quietly resting before an important growth spurt, and the jobs you tackle now go a long way towards deciding how well they crop once spring arrives. It is easy to walk past a leafless tree and assume there is nothing to do, but skipping winter care is one of the most common reasons home orchards under-perform. At Searles, we have been helping Australian gardeners grow with confidence since the 1970s, so here is your complete guide to winter fruit tree care, from pruning and dormant spraying through to feeding, mulching and looking after citrus.

If you've ever stood in the seedling aisle wondering which punnet is going to reward you and which one is going to test your patience, you're not alone. It's the question we get asked more than almost any other, especially from first-time gardeners: what's actually easy to grow? We recently teamed up with urban gardener Kia (you might have seen her ranking winter vegetables from easiest to trickiest on Instagram) to put some garden favourites to the test. The verdict lined up with what our team sees at garden centres every winter: some vegetables are genuinely low fuss, a few need a little more attention, and almost all of them are doable for a beginner if you set your garden up properly from the start. Winter, in particular, is a kind season to be new at this. Cooler temperatures mean fewer pests, slower water loss from the soil, and less pressure on plants generally, so mistakes are easier to recover from than they are in the heat of summer. Here's how our winter favourites stack up, and what to plant if you want a veggie patch that looks after itself.

Spring is when Australian lawns really start to show what they're capable of, but it's also the season where a few well-meaning habits can quietly hold your turf back. Fertilising at the wrong time, mowing too short, or reaching for the hose more often than necessary can all undo the good work of a warming season. At Searles, we've been helping Australian gardeners grow with confidence since 1977, so here are five spring lawn care mistakes worth avoiding, and what to do instead.