Spring masterclass

It's spring and gardens (as well as gardeners) are coming alive. Everything is sprouting, so enjoy the perfume, the new growth and start planning and planting your summer garden but beware of late frosts.

- Alice Spenser-Higgs

Ready, steady, grow...

While we did give you a comprehensive feeding programme in the August issue, this is a quick reminder to get feeding now:

• Petunias, pansies, violas, primulas and other spring flowering annuals will continue flowering well into October if fed every two weeks with a liquid fertiliser.

• Work in compost and bonemeal as well as slow-release fertilisers around summer flowering perennials which are starting to shoot and start watering them more regularly.

• Feed leafy shrubs with a general fertiliser and flowering shrubs with 3:1:5 or 5:1:5 fertiliser.

• Apply fertiliser around the drip line of trees and water in well.

• For healthy foliage and more flowers feed outdoor pot plants with a liquid fertiliser at half strength every two weeks.

Tip 

Water and feed spring flowering bulbs that you want to keep going for another season. Remove dead flowers and once the leaves turn yellow let them die back naturally before lifting the bulbs so that they can store food for next season’s flowers.

What to plant

If your fingers are itching to get into the soil, now’s your time!

• In warm frost-free areas, continue sowing summer annuals like asters, marigolds, zinnias, bedding dahlias, nasturtium, phlox, portulaca, Shirley poppy, lavatera, cosmos, cornflower and cleome.

• Other summer annuals that will be in garden centres and ready to plant out are salvias, marigold, bedding dahlias, gazanias, alyssum, dianthus and mimulus.