At last Spring is on it’s way! March is all about feeding and sowing, getting your garden ready for the season ahead.
Fertilise your beds
Once your soil is workable, dig a 5cm (or more) layer of compost or well-rotted manure into your beds to prepare for the growing season. You can also work in a general-purpose fertiliser, such as pelleted chicken manure, or Fish, Blood and Bone. This applies to either your vegetable beds, or general flower beds.
In the flower garden
- Put supports in. If any of your garden plants or climbers need supporting this year, put them in now, so plants can grow up through them. Adding supports afterwards is trickier and often looks unattractive. Use bamboo canes for Sweet Peas, or Beans, Hazel branches can be used as well.
- Prune clematis - prune early-flowering varieties once their flowers have finished and summer-flowering ones before they start into active growth.
- Finish cutting back cornus and salix cultivars, and other shrubs grown for their colourful winter stems. Cut them right back to their bases to encourage new stem growth for next winter.
- Finish cutting back dead foliage from perennials and ornamental grasses to make way for new growth.
- Prune overwintered fuchsias back to one or two buds on each shoot. This will encourage a bushy growth habit.
- Keep an eye out for slugs as the weather warms. Pay special attention to soft, new growth, which slugs love. Use nematodes for an effective organic control.
In the fruit & veg garden
- Cover prepared soil with sheets of black plastic to keep it drier and warmer in preparation for planting.
- Cut autumn-fruiting raspberry canes to the ground to stimulate new canes, which will fruit in the autumn. Cut the tips of summer-fruiting raspberry canes that have grown beyond the top of their supports; cut just above the bud.
- Feed blueberry plants with ericaceous plant fertiliser, and mulch or top pots up with an ericaceous compost.
- Cover strawberries with a cloche to encourage earlier fruiting.
- Top up veg planters and raised beds with compost and good quality topsoil.
That’s all for this month. We’ll be back soon with our top tips for April – hopefully we’ll get lots of sunshine in the meantime! 🌸