Kentish Gazette Canterbury & District
It’s time to spring into action
Bring those green fingers into play: The jobs you need to doing in the garden right now
With springtime buds in full bloom, your patch of greenery is probably a hub of activity. “Making sure your garden is ‘spring ready’ is a wonderful way to get yourself outside and enjoy the early spring sunshine,” encourages David Domoney, gardener and chartered horticulturist. “I always look forward to the early spring months, as there are so many excuses to get outside – and in the garden.” One of the most important overall gardening jobs you should focus on, regardless of whether it’s your flowering beds or your vegetable patch, is weeding, says David. “Making sure you are on top of perennial and annual weeds is essential to guaranteeing a healthy garden patch. “Hoeing a larger area will be ideal for dislodging small and annual garden weeds, whilst weeding by hand will help you to remove more established weeds,” he advises.
“You could use a digging or border fork for this, or a more directed approach, using a hand fork to wrestle those weeds out from the root.” As well as the wedding, there are plenty of other tasks to start in your vegetable patch. Now is the perfect time to plant onions, shallots and garlic sets – you can do this successionally to produce batches of this crop throughout the year. Also, you can plant your second-early and main crop potatoes at this time, after any risk of frost has passed. “The second earlies, ‘new’ potatoes, will be ready to harvest in July and August, and the main crop potatoes can be enjoyed from August to October, perfect for warm meals in cooler temperatures,” says David. “Additionally, early and mid April is the ideal time for sowing flowering companions for your vegetable plots, such as pot marigolds, whose fragrant foliage can deter some garden pests from your crops,” he adds.
‘Making sure you are on top of perennial and annual weeds is essential for a healthy garden’