The Blog is back! Not before time, since today’s the last day of March, and it’s been dormant since November!
I have finally been stirred into some keyboard-action because a) those lucky enough to have gardens are finding themselves there quite a lot more at the moment, and may be wondering what to do; b) I tripped over my own gardening boots, fell down the cellar stairs and sprained my ankle at the weekend, so can’t get in my own garden at the moment, and; c) I’ve been meaning to pull my finger out and write a few blog-words for at least, erm, three months, so now seems like a good time.
Shrubs and flowers
If you have a dogwood (Cornus sp.), you can now coppice it by cutting it right down to within 5cm of the ground. This encourages new, good-coloured stems to grow, which will make for good winter interest next year.
If your winter jasmine (Jasminum nudiflorum) has finished flowering, cut flowered stems down to strong young shoots and prune out thin, weak spindly stems. Remove about a fifth of older, woody stems at ground level.
Winter Jasmine - Jasminum nudiflorum
If you had snowdrops, and the foliage is starting to turn yellow, these can be lifted, divided and replanted. You can also prune bush and climbing roses, if you haven’t already done so.
Get ready for sowing
If you were efficient enough to sow some green manure, now is the time to cut it. Leave it to wilt before digging it in to the soil, and give it a few weeks to decay before sowing new crops. I’ve started waging my war against the bindweed (and other weeds) early this year, and have also decanted old compost from last year’s containers, and spread it over the borders as a mulch.
I haven’t been organised enough to chit seed potatoes this year, but now is the time to plant early potato varieties and onion sets, if you have them. I have been studying the backs of the seed packets in my box, to see what’s still in date, and what to plant when. My veg-growing record is pretty poor to date, but I really need to make more effort with veg, fresh herbs and salad this year, for obvious reasons. There’s still time to order seeds online.
I’m going to try a bit harder to grow my own salad leaves - to avoid that ‘pop to the shop’.
The lawn
I don’t think my lawn stopped growing at all this winter. I have cut it once already, last week, taking care to mow around the crocus foliage. I used a high blade setting – so it didn’t look like I’d made much of a difference, but for the first cut of the season, it’s best not to scalp it.