Nigel's Gardening Hints and Tips
Created | Updated Jul 13, 2009
A variety of tips
Spring has sprung; the nights and mornings are getting lighter and the birds are singing away happily. Just a shame that the weather has not been brilliant, first it is warm, then raining, the poor plants don't know where they are. It has taken three weeks for my leeks to show through and the potatoes have been put in a couple of weeks late due to cold, wet soil. They will soon catch up as the weather settles, hopefully!
Some of your plants will have flowered by now, and it is important to keep dead-heading azaleas, rhododendrons and heathers to encourage new flowers or growth. Remove any weak or straggly stems from your plants to keep them generally tidy and neat.
Keep up to scratch with weeds, hoeing annuals and digging out perennial ones such as bindweed, dock, nettles and thistles etc, using a fork to remove as much root as possible. Do not put perennial weeds into your compost bin, instead burn them or dispose of them appropriately. I say 'appropriately', so don't throw them over into the neighbour's garden!
If you haven't already, lift spring flowering bulbs such as daffodils and tulips to make room for summer bedding. Lift and dry off the bulbs in a dry place such as your shed, storing them away for next year's season.
Keep your eye on the patio pots and containers, watering if needed. They can dry out very quickly in a sunny position, so check daily.
As for your vegetables, sowings in June can be made of beans, carrot, lettuce, radish, turnip and many more. I always start mine off indoors as I have a clay soil and very hungry wildlife! When they are large enough, transplant them outside remembering to keep watch for slugs and snails. Use bio-friendly slug pellets or try putting a little grit around your plants.
Potatoes should be earthed-up if they are showing through the soil. Earthing up basically means raking or digging soil from the sides of the trench, covering the potato stems. You earth up approximately three times to prevent green potatoes, which are poisonous.
A useful tip is to plant marigolds around vegetables which are prone to whitefly, such as tomato plants. Their smell and the brightness of the marigold flowers deters them.
Give layering shoots of clematis a whirl by pegging them with U-Shaped wires into peaty soil near the parent plants. Cut and replant when rooted and growing.
Nigel's Gardening Hints and Tips
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