ACTION PLAN

NIGEL COLBORN’S ESSENTIAL JOBS FOR YOUR GARDEN THIS WEEK

DIVIDE PRIMULAS

IF YOU want to bulk up your favourite spring primulas, now is an excellent time. This works well with primroses, cowslips, oxlips and polyanthus. But if you want to divide auriculas, wait until all the flowers have gone.

Dig up ageing primula clumps, shake the soil from their roots and gently split them into smaller sections.

You’ll be dividing them further, but may need a pocket knife for that, especially with small-growing varieties, such as Primula Wanda or P. juliae.

Examine the divisions to spot the individual leaf rosettes. Carefully split these off, using a knife if necessary. Each tiny division should carry a root or two, plus a few healthy young leaves. Remove exhausted or damaged leaves and pinch out spent flower stems.

Plant your baby rosettes into moist, humus-rich soil in a shaded spot. Alternatively, pot up as many as you need in good potting compost. Keep the plants cool, shaded and moist until they’ve recovered and begun to grow. By autumn, each rosette will have developed into a healthy young plant. During October, transplant them to wherever you’d like them to flower.

Taking small divisions can be fiddly, but it results in top-quality young plants for a better spring performance.

LIFT SPENT TULIPS

MOST tulips have finished flowering. If you want to get rid of the bulbs, dig them up and discard them.

If you prefer to keep the bulbs for replanting next autumn, lift them without removing the stems, lay them in a tray somewhere dry and allow the stems to die away. Clean up the debris once the tops have dried and store the bulbs somewhere cool and dry.

Tulips in mixed informal borders can be left to die down naturally. If healthy, they’ll pop up for several years, though often with smaller flowers.

With permanently planted tulips, remove the seed pods and allow the leaves to die naturally. The tulips will disappear among the other herbaceous plants in the border.