The Plant Pot News February 2015

Whether you are new to gardening,in need of freshening up the gardening or have been keeping busy in the gardening throughout the past few months, we would like t give you an insight into what you should be doing to prepare for he spring.

Where to begin

If you’re reading ‘The Plant Pot News’ at home take a look out at you garden and how do feel? What do you see? If you’ve ran back indoors in a rather “that can wait” attitude now is the perfect time to get this garden looking how it should look, tidy, kept and maintained. This follows the ethos of GR Garden Retail -Care,Transform & Grow.

Once you make the initial start the results are rewarding from here on. Now you can either run into the garden and start straight away or meticulously plan what you want to achieve this year, perhaps some new beds, planters or a rockery?

Cut back any dead leaves and stems from the plants, rake up any remaining leaves their you go that’s the initial part complete and it will start to look better already. Remember you would like to enjoy this garden in the spring and summer months so let’s continue…

Now I can suggest planting trees, large shrubs and plants for fruit cages but I’m not going to as not everyone can facilitate this so I am going to suggest things we can all grow.

Pots

You may well have daffodils, hyacinths or other bulbs in pots already if not let’s start with getting some small plants geraniums are a fave. I’m not going to suggest the aforementioned bulbs as we are in February and the planting season for these is has passed us but if you tidy up your pots (perhaps redo the compost or weed) then it’s ready for the next lot of bulbs tulips, anemone, freesia, agapanthus, lily of the valley, lilies.

Now you’ve added some colour to your pots sit back and wait for them to grow. It doesn’t batter if it’s your first time or hundredth time at potting up it is still exciting to see those first plants creep above the soil.

I may suggest putting some netting over the top of the pots until the plants get a little taller, this to to prevent birds, rabbits and other wildlife nibbling away at them!!

Send us a picture of your potting up this year and we may include it in next years calendar with any plant snapper receiving a free calendar from us!

Whilst doing your pots you may have some bulbs left over or fancy getting some more bulbs or seeds which we’ll be discussing next month. So now you’ve potted up why not begin adding some colour to the beds in your garden after they’ve been prepped.

 

Beds, borders and planters

It’s easy to put bulbs and small shrubs into a bed and then leave it, and return 4 months later and wonder why it didn’t grow or why it looks shrivelled and unhappy, its all in the preparation! Something I was once told years ago was 90% of any good job is the preparation the other 10% is the work! And that is absolutely true, take for example painting, 90% you are preparing that outside wall scraping the pain off and the other 10% you are painting! This philosophy can be used in the garden, 90% prepping the beds 10% planting.

So if you’ve got compost bins, leaf mulch or manure fantastic! If not then that’s ok because it is never too late to begin. For the moment I’m going to assume you have compost you’ve made at home. Firstly weed that first bed you always see remember at the start of this newsletter I asked you to look outside well if this is the bed that caught your eye lets get this looking the best! Take a fork to it and dig out the weeds, you may find it easier with a weeder, once done fork over the earth we want to oxygenate the earth and loosen it all up so that the roots of the plants have movement.

Adding the compost 

Lightly fork in any compost you have made it doesn’t all have to buried and then give it a sprinkling of water. Now if you think about it we have so far- weeded bed, loosened the earth, added nutrients with compost and watered in. Plant your bulbs in positions you want to see them, perhaps a cluster of tulips in the middles with lilies around it, whatever you think and just finish it off by defining the border of the bed if its next to the lawn define this.

You can now work around the garden if you’ve no compost or mulch you could get some horse manure to tease into the beds.

 

Now your garden will be looking like a garden and it’s still the start of the year so that is great and the hard work done. If you spend a little time each day or dedicate say every Saturday to the garden then it’ll look magnificent before you know it.

Next month: we’ll be discussing growing from seed, kitchen garden, and what to plant in March-April. Growing from seed is easier than you think and doesn’t require a greenhouse!

Capture                                                       Thanks for reading!