Spring Gardening
Although spring tends to roll round early in these parts, the topsy-turvy weather of recent years means that gardeners need to be ready for anything from gales to snow or even drought. But whatever the weather, the delights of seed sowing time start in earnest now – indoors even if conditions don’t allow outdoor sowing. While the ideal covered growing space is a purpose-made one like greenhouse or polytunnel, the well-lit windowsill of a warm room can be a surprisingly productive place to raise frost-tender flowers and vegetables like tomatoes, cucumbers, tobacco plants, marigolds and many more. Either sow your own seed now or skip forward one step and get guaranteed results by ordering plug plants to pot up and grow on. Outside, provided the ground is workable and the weather not too cold, there’s lots of different hardy plants that can be sown – and if the weather isn’t favourable, cover bare soil with polythene or landscaping fabric so it warms quicker ready for sowing. Vegetables to sow now include a range of salad crops, especially lettuce; carrots, beetroot, radish, spinach and kale. Many hardy annual flowers are wonderfully easy and include lots of bee and butterfly-friendly nectar rich blooms: just some of my favourites are Californian poppy, pot marigold, sunflowers, viper’s bugloss and nasturtium. Just a few pounds’ worth of seed will give months of glorious blooms.
This month and next, buy and pot up summer-flowering bulbs and tubers for a vibrantly colourful summer display in patios and borders: begonias, dahlias, gladioli and Eucomis or pineapple flower are frost-tender and need starting off under cover, while lilies can be planted outside straight away. Tubs can be filled with spring bedding to cheer up patios and front gardens: primroses, polyanthus, forget-me-nots, double daisies and violas, plus spring bulbs which can be bought ready grown if you didn’t plant last autumn. These early spring flowers are invaluable for bees and butterflies, newly emerged from hibernation and in desperate need of food.
Seasonal jobs
- Once the hard frosts are past, get borders in shape by cutting back dead growth of herbaceous perennials, pruning roses and clearing weeds.
- Mulch bare soil between plants with organic matter like garden compost or well-rotted manure, to improve the soil and suppress weeds. No need to dig: worms and other soil organisms gradually take it down.
- Deadhead larger bulbs like daffodils, removing the flower head only as the stem still produces food to build up the bulb. Allow leaves to die back naturally. Applying fertilizer helps next year’s display too. Large clumps of snowdrops can be divided and replanted immediately after flowering.
- Watch out for birds nesting in shrubs, climbers, conifers and hedges and leave undisturbed as much as possible.
Looking good now
Camellias: a wealth of colours and varieties.
Daphne: tops for spring perfume.
Early spring bulbs: crocus, hyacinths, narcissi, snowdrops and many more.
Primroses and polyanthus
Sue Fisher is a garden designer and writer based on the Bere Peninsula. Tel 01822 841895. Email: suefisher@talktalk.net Website: www.suefishergardens.co.uk