SPRING FORWARD
New season plants can help you through these difficult times
AT TIMES when it seems like everything is under threat, when there are so few certainties, and we are forced to spend our days at home, there is a source of solace – plants.
It might be your collection of houseplants, or sowing some seeds, or you may be lucky enough to have a balcony, patio or garden.
The coronavirus isn’t affecting the soil or plant life, after all.
If you are healthy enough to be outdoors there’s plenty of gardening work that can be done – and the very act of going out and appreciating nature in these precious weeks can be a balm for the soul.
It just takes hearing a bird sing or spotting something new in flower to lift the spirits. When so much is being taken away from us – our liberty, human companionship, our treats and peace of mind, spring is ready to give. There’s no better time for gardening than now. Nature is exploding and if you sow, it will grow.
Practise mindfulness in the garden and be aware of what is happening. Appreciate the gifts of this season.
On a practical note, what jobs need doing? Spring is seed-sowing time, whether that be indoors, outdoors or under glass.
This will depend on what you are sowing and your local conditions. If the ground is still waterlogged, you’re best off planting in modules for transplanting later into the ground.
And if it’s anything tender, it’s indoors for the moment for transplanting outdoors around May.
Sowing anything will help us look forward to summer, so plan to grow some vegetables – easy stuff such as lettuce, broad beans, beetroot, spring onions and new potatoes if you’re a beginner. We want to look forward to colourful flowers as well. Hardy annuals can go straight into pots or the soil outdoors.
Suitable candidates are poppies, cornflowers, lavatera, calendula, nigella, eschscholzia, orlaya, larkspur and scabious.
Top tip here is, when sowing, pick roughly where you want them to grow outdoors but sow in rows rather than scattering so that as they grow, you’ll be able to spot the difference between them and unwanted weed seedlings.
Perennial plants can be lifted and divided – this is a great way to produce more plants.
Take an established clump. Lift, and using two garden forks back to back, pull away gently and tease out roots. Divide into good saucer-sized clumps to ensure flowering.
Do this now for summer-flowering plants such as hardy geraniums and phlox. Generally perennials that flower in spring are best left until autumn to do this job.
It’s also time to chop off the dead flower heads on hydrangeas.
These have been protecting the new buds from frost damage over the winter but it’s time for them to go. Just remove the old flowers and cut back an inch or so to just above a healthy pair of buds.
With older hydrangeas you can remove entirely some of the stems while you’re at it, allowing new growth to emerge.
Make sure you enjoy your garden.