Let’s go to seed! Gardening tips for early March

Wonderful!  It’s March. It’s seed-sowing time!  It’s time to get started on all sorts of flower and veg seeds. Sowing your own will save you a FORTUNE on plant-buying and give you a bucketful of satisfaction and joy into the bargain.  

Let’s also take some crazy-simple cuttings, sort out the dogwoods, and tidy the ferns too…

Feeling seedy

Dozens and dozens of beautiful flowers can be sown as seed indoors now to be planted out later – Cosmos (like Caroline’s sparkling specimens in the feature pic this week), salvias, busy lizzies (Impatiens), petunias, marigolds, nasturtiums, to name just a few………don’t forget sweet peas (I hope you read our epic blog on them last week!)

There is also a huge range of vegetables that you can sow inside in March – lettuce, celery and celeriac, aubergines, tomatoes, kale, cucumbers, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts….Chilli and pepper seeds are often sown a little earlier than this because of their requirement for a long developmental stage before they start fruiting;  however,  I often save some of the seed to sow now, to make up for any that didn’t germinate in January/February.

Don’t forget about herb seeds: chives, lemon balm, oregano, parsley and basil are all perfect candidates for a March sowing indoors.

Can I just throw in a little caveat about the seeds of tender plants that grow rapidly after germination? I’m thinking of things like courgettes and squashes mainly. The point is that they get really big before you can plant them out (ie when there’s no more chance of frost in your area). So you are much better off delaying sowing these seeds inside until the end of March or in April.

Each kind of seed has its own set of criteria for maximum germination so your best source of info about this is on the back of the packet. Some (like cucumbers, sweetcorn, zinnias or salvias) might need a warm spot, some (like begonias, tobacco plants and lettuce) might prefer not to have any compost or covering over them – just study the packet and find out what the experts say – remember that they have a very vested interest in you succeeding with their seeds!

You (like me) may not have loads of space for this seed-sowing adventure.  A sunny windowsill is good enough for a lot of things, but for seeds that are happier with more warmth, a small propagator is a good investment.  I have just such a thing with a heated mat, and almost all my seeds are started in small pots in there.  

Can I beseech you not to sow the seed too densely? It’s so tempting to use all the seeds in the packet, just because they are there – when they all come up, the seedlings become long and weak very quickly, and you run a high risk of losing the lot as they collapse.

Once the seeds in the heated box have come up, I move them out to a bright windowsill for a couple of days to acclimatise them to the drop in temperature, before separating them into modules (‘pricked out’) to grow on and get stronger. The windowsills are getting very crowded by the middle of April 🙄 and that’s when a little greenhouse/very sheltered spot outside would really come in handy. They’ll be planted out in the garden in beds or pots when all chance of frost is past.

I hope all this doesn’t sound too much of an effort!  Please just try sowing easy and accommodating seeds like nasturtiums or sunflowers, and you will be so flushed with your success, that you will get the bug and be sowing hundreds of seeds before long!

Plants from cuttings

I know my scathing sisters will accuse me of being too sickeningly upbeat and over-motivating this week, but you MUST try cuttings, if you have never have before!  Like seeds, they are a form of magic! 

Softwood cuttings, hardwood cuttings, internodal cuttings, root cuttings…….there are so many ways that you can take a piece of a plant and mysteriously make a whole new plant from it.  I have recently been very pleased with my experiments at rooting cuttings in water, and Laura has just been potting on all the cuttings that she took last autumn – they are looking terrific!

But I think we are now getting to the time when you can take the easiest cuttings of all – basal cuttings.  These are perfect for beginners at the cuttings-game, because they are almost guaranteed to work. It’s a perfect free way of bulking up your flower-drifts, creating presents for friends or family, or acquiring perennials that you covet in a pal’s garden (with their permission, of course!)……..

This is how to do it:

1. Lots of herbaceous perennials will be starting to send up lots of soft green pithy new shoots shortly – lupins, phlox, chrysanthemums, delphiniums, plume poppies, campanula, etc. And it’s a fab way to make more dahlias. With a sharp knife, cut a shoot below soil level including a bit of the solid base bit at the bottom of the shoot (that’s why these are called ‘Basal Cuttings’). If the shoot has an actual root or two, so much the better!

 2. Tidy up the shoot, and cut any bigger leaves in half to reduce water stress as it roots.

3. Tuck your cuttings firmly round the edge of a pot of gritty peat-free compost, water them in then put the whole pot into a clear plastic bag (again, I’ve re-used mine for years) and tie the top. Untie it at least every couple of days to let some air in.

4. Leave the pot anywhere light and protected, and you should see new shoots developing quite quickly. Once you can see clearly that they have rooted, pot them up separately to grow on. They might even have flowers their first year. Go on, I dare you to have a whack at this and flex your horticultural wings a little more!

Gardening shorts

• I created a small fern bed two years ago in a shady spot and it’s already given me so much pleasure.  None of the ferns I used were rarefied – just common ones like polypody, harts-tongue ferns (Asplenium) and Dryopteris – but they held their form and architectural substance for months and months.  

And unlike hostas, they weren’t ravaged by molluscs!  Ferns can look messy now though, at the end of the winter, so it’s time to trim all the old leaves using clean sharp secateurs or shears.  I cut all of them right back to the ‘knot’ of new fronds at the base.  That’s it.  The new fronds will soon start to emerge gracefully from the centre of each plant.

• Did you get a poinsettia for Christmas? March is a good time to cut it back to about 6″ (15 cm) which will hopefully encourage it to send up new stems that will carry those beautiful bracts again next winter.

• You’ve enjoyed the bright stems of multi-stemmed dogwoods through the winter, but cut them back hard now to the base because it’s the new shoots and stems that have the best colour ready for next winter.

Here’s a wonderful spring stalwart! It’s an outstanding feature for hardiness and cheer, and a worthy addition to Louise’s Great Plants this Month:

Essential kit for seed-season!

Perfect tools to help give your seeds the best chances of germinating and growing on. This bundle of seedling widger AND tamper saves you money on each. Get your gardening year off to a great start (or buy it for a friend if they deserve it!). Just £11.99 for both!

Another good job for this time of year is tidying up bamboo clumps. Laura shows you just how she deals with her bamboo in this short video.

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