Garden Centre

Friday, April 3, 2009

Garden tasks for April

The one thing that I always tend to forget at this time of year is to prune!

Honestly, it’s my biggest weakness in spring. I never forget to weed and I usually remember to lift and divide clumps of spring bulbs, but somehow I forget that shrubs need some tender loving care too. What I ought to be doing is pruning back my winter-flowering jasmine so that it looks as good next year as it did this. It’s on my list, but (sad confession) I tend to only get around to giving it a prune every third year, instead of every year.

Also needing to be brought down to ground level are my dogwoods – actually they should have been cut a couple of weeks ago, but it won’t do any harm to cut them now, even though they are just starting to come into leaf. If I don’t hack them back, they won’t have jewel-bright winter stems last year.

My neighbours are planting out dahlia tubers now, and as long as they are covered in a few inches of loose soil, they should be okay. In northern regions it might be best to wait until the end of the month. I don’t grow dahlias, but I do have lily bulbs in pots that I’m hardening off now. The reason I grew them in pots is that we’ve got the hideous red lily beetle (Lilioceris lilii) in our garden. Because the larvae overwinter in the soil and can eat a lily bulb to the ground in a matter of a few days, I’ve got into the habit of repotting the bulbs in sterilised soil at the end of each flowering period, after carefully dusting off the bulbs to ensure that no horrible larvae are lurking. So far so good!

And although we don’t usually have hanging baskets, this year somebody gave me two empty baskets for Christmas, so I’ve decided to make them into salad chandeliers, featuring nasturtiums and other pretty but edible crops. I planted the seedling nasturtiums in them this week, and I’m also going to have orache, and dwarf marigolds and variegated sage to add colour.

Labels: april garden tasks, april pruning, dogwood, lilies, lily beetle, nasturtium, sage

The All Seasons Gardener at 2:10 AM 3 Comments

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Tuesday, April 8, 2008

Spring tips for perfect looking gardens

Well, if you can see your garden at all, that is. We had several inches of snow on Sunday and it took a lot longer than anybody had anticipated to melt! If your plants are actually getting their heads above the white stuff, then this is the time to demonstrate some TLC to spring-flowering container plants to ensure they look gorgeous right through to May by picking off dead flowerheads from primulas and winter-flowering pansies to encourage the plants to develop further flowers. You can also pick off the faded heads from spring bulbs like daffodils, but leave their foliage intact and don’t do that awful thing of tying the leaves into a little bundle as this starves the bulb of the energy it needs to produce a good flower the following spring.

This is also the ideal time to clip old flowers off winter-flowering heathers but you need to make sure you don’t trim back into old wood or your plant will not be happy with you, and it’s also the last possible moment to complete rose pruning before your plants start into strong growth. Shorten all shoots, cutting back to an outward-facing bud. And, if you can see your spring bulbs through the snow, it’s the time to put a stake or label next to any clumps that have flowered poorly this spring, so that in high summer when they’ve died down you can lift and divide them to give them plenty of space and scope to flower at their best next year. The exception to the die-down rule is snowdrops which are best moved ‘in the green’ or when they are still in full leaf. Simply divide up congested clumps, spacing out the bulbs when replanting. Plant them fairly deeply, watering in well with a liquid feed.

Labels: april garden tasks, april pruning, deadheading

The All Seasons Gardener at 2:35 AM 0 Comments

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