No question that we’ll all be in for some more bitter weather before this winter is done, but for lots of us the gardening urge is stirring and there are jobs to tackle – even if most of them are under cover!
Let’s get some early seeds sown, take some simple cuttings, and if it’s not to ghastly out there, we could do some pruning and weeding…
Early seeds
Are you longing to have a few seeds already germinating? Me too! It’s a good deal too soon to start sowing most of the seeds you have lined up for this summer, but there are definitely a few that will perform much better for you if they’re sown early in the year.
I am referring to popular plants like salvias, pelargoniums, snapdragons (antirrhinums), tuberous and bedding begonias, lobelia, delphiniums, dianthus, basil, parsley, petunias, coleus, cup-and-saucer vine (Cobaea) aubergines and chillies. Rather wonderfully, you can even persuade perennials like lupins, campanulas and achilleas to flower in their very first year if you sow them now.
You do have to take a spot more care with these early sowings though. It can be trickier to get the balance of wet/dry compost right so that the seedlings neither dry out nor drown, there is an increased danger of fungal diseases attacking them, and low light levels can make them leggy and weak. Yikes, it all sounds too fiddly, doesn’t it! But if you enjoy a bit of a challenge, you can save yourself a LOT of money and steal several more weeks of colour and harvest in the summer, by having a go.
Use cleaned pots and seed trays, fresh compost and fresh seeds. Mix some vermiculite, perlite or fine grit into your seed compost to help drain wetness away from the seedlings, Pick a warm, light spot inside for them where the temperature will stay pretty steady. Most of these seeds require a temperature of between 15 and 24 degrees c to germinate; I am lucky enough to have a small heated propagator which helps enormously here, but a suitable windowsill is fine as well.
Follow the instructions on the packet for extra propagation details. And here’s my biggest tip – DON’T sow all of the seeds at once! It may be that your first attempt at this early sowing lark fails, but if you’ve kept some seeds back, you’ve still got time to try again in February with them, or even early March.
Once the seedlings have germinated, be patient. Some of them take a long time developing roots before you see much going on above soil-level.
Regarding chillies, I show you in a little more detail how I sow them in a short video – the link is below.
Do have a bash at this – if you’re anything like me, it’s just lovely to have again the promise and hope of some seeds growing!
Pruning for shape and light
Back in the autumn, we 3Growbags visited a marvellous
You would normally expect to prune established evergreens like bay, yew, cherry laurel or holly in the spring, but at this quiet time of year, how about going out there and cutting off the lower branches of some of your err….woollier shrubs, and seeing if you can achieve the same satisfying, almost architectural, effect?
Gardening shorts
- If you didn’t plant some garlic back in late autumn, there is still time to do it now. Put compost into the bottom of some modules, separate the bulb into individual cloves and put each one into a cell pointed end up. Fill the cell with compost so the cloves are buried, water and leave them in a cold frame, cold greenhouse or on a cool windowsill to sprout. Plant them outside as soon as the roots have filled the cells.
- Keep on top of any weeding required in the borders when the weather permits, so that they will be ready for their spring mulch later on.
- Here’s an interesting thing- it won’t be long before it’s primrose season again, but you can take root cuttings of your favourites now, which is what I’m about, in this week’s feature pic. You just lift a parent plant, cut off a few of the thickest roots (not all!), cut them into short lengths, and press them, right way up, into a pot of damp gritty compost so that the top is just below the surface. A warm propagator will give you the fastest results but a cold greenhouse or frame will work the magic too, and they will shooting in spring and soon make great little plants.
- Check that stakes and tree ties haven’t rubbed bark off in the recent high winds – it’s so disappointing when you’ve gone to all the trouble of staking your plants to find that you’ve managed to damage them anyway!
Hardy in most of the UK, this euphorbia provides wonderful scent in summer but really comes into its own in winter. Here Louise explains why its one of her Great Plants this month…
Here is the short video about how to sow pepper or chilli seeds.
Thompson & Morgan have free delivery on EVERYTHING this weekend, that includes great big heavy things too! Offer ends midnight on Monday. Take a look here
Our top 10 plants to grow for spring
Are you wondering what plants will really make your garden sing in the spring? Here are our top 10 suggestions.
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