Make the most of longer days to prepare your garden for the coming season.
TREES, SHRUBS AND FLOWERS
- Lift and divide summer flowering perennials. This helps to promote vigorous growth and makes new plants for free!
- Now is a good time to move evergreen shrubs.
- Remove the dead flower heads from Daffodils but leave the stem and Leaves to die back naturally.
- Start hoeing bare soil regularly to keep annual weeds in check.
- Assess your lawn and even out bumps and dips.
FRUIT, VEGETABLES AND HERBS.
- Plant one year old dormant asparagus this month. Prepare the ground with well rotted manure.
- Harvest spring cabbages and cut a deep cross into the remaining stem to get a second crop of tiny cabbages or spring greens.
- Prune figs to promote growth.
- Prepare for sowing. Cover seedbeds with cloches or horticultural fleece to warm the soil during the day and to slow down heat loss at night.
- Divide perennial herbs. Help to maintain the vigour of herbs such as chives, mint and lovage by dividing clumps every few years.
- Finish pruning fruit trees and bushes before leaf or flower buds burst open.
- Plant up potted up strawberry plants into well rotted organic matter.
GREENER GARDENING
- Remove excess winter debris from your pond. Algal growth can be controlled by adding a bale of barley straw or a mesh bag with the straw in it allowing approximately 50g per square metre.
- Direct sow hardy annuals such as cornflowers and marigolds in spare sunny areas of soil.
- Check for pests such as aphids and caterpillars which can be a problem as the weather gets warmer. Check plants regularly and remove any pests by hand.
- Plant Comfrey and use the leaves to make liquid fertiliser and it is also a useful groudcover plant as it spreads quickly.
- Mulch bare soil.
- Consider leaving a small area of your garden as a wildlife area, even a small patch tucked away somewhere will be beneficial.