Action plan: CIAR BYRNE'S essential jobs for your garden this week
- Give yourself a head start this spring by setting up a seed sowing station
- READ MORE: CIAR BYRNE'S essential jobs for your garden this week
SOW NOW AND REAP LATER
Once March arrives, everything speeds up in the garden and there is suddenly too much to do. Give yourself a head start by setting up a seed sowing station.
Preferably, this will be somewhere under cover so you can work even when it’s raining, but a small table or potting bench outside will do just as well.
You can sow seeds inside too, but be prepared for mess; if you are anything like me, soil gets everywhere.
You will need a supply of peat-free compost to hand, as well as pots and seed trays. I reuse the same plastic pots year in, year out rather than throwing them away, and I also have a few more aesthetically pleasing terracotta and wooden ones.
There are lots of eco-friendly seed containers on the market, or you can make your own from toilet roll inners and old yoghurt pots.
Once you have filled your pot or tray with compost, tamp it down, using either a specially made wooden tamper or with the bottom of another pot.
Sow seeds according to the instructions on each packet, then water them with a fine hosed can. A shelving unit under cover is the perfect place to keep pots and trays until the seeds germinate.
Once March arrives, everything speeds up in the garden and there is suddenly too much to do. Give yourself a head start by setting up a seed sowing station (pictured)
PLANT SUMMER BULBS
Dahlias (pictured), begonias, agapanthus and calla lilies can be started off in pots.
Summer flowers that grow from bulbs, tubers or corms can be planted now.
Dahlias, begonias, agapanthus and calla lilies can be started off in pots. Soak them when they arrive, and pot up in peat-free compost. Keep somewhere frost-free.
Gladioli, peonies, crocosmia, polianthes and day lilies can be planted straight into the ground.
POP UP A NESTBOX
It's almost the end of Nestbox Week but you can still help birds prepare for breeding
It's almost the end of Nestbox Week but you can still help birds prepare for breeding.
British Garden Centres’ team say boxes with an entrance hole of 25-28mm are ideal for tits, nuthatches, redstarts and sparrows. For starlings and doves, a larger hole of about 45mm works better.
Robins, wrens, wagtails and song thrushes prefer open-fronted boxes.
PLANT OF THE WEEK
DAPHNE BHOLUA ‘MARY ROSE’
This shrub can be evergreen or semi-evergreen, depending on where in the UK it is situated.
The fragrant flowers bloom in late winter to early spring and are a rich pink adding romance to the winter garden. It has glossy dark green leaves and can grow to around 2m high when mature.
It prefers a sheltered spot in full sun or partial shade and likes moist but well-drained soil. Make sure the soil around it doesn’t dry out in summer by mulching with organic matter.
Equally, don’t let it become waterlogged. Use horticultural fleece if there are prolonged freezes.
Daphne Bholua 'Mary Rose' (pictured) can be evergreen or semi-evergreen, depending on where in the UK it is situated
READER’S QUESTION
Why have my snowdrops not multiplied?
Judith Whyte, Polegate, East Sussex
Are they in a spot where the soil dries out in summer? If so, it may be better to move them to somewhere with dappled shade.
The ideal spot is underneath deciduous shrubs, as then you can see them in flower in winter, but they will be shaded in the hotter months.
Galanthus prefer moist, but well-drained, humusrich soil. Once your clumps have established, you can lift and divide them ‘in the green’ – just after flowering – in February and March, replanting in smaller groups.
Common species such as Galanthus nivalis will multiply faster than rarer snowdrops.
