With apologies to Mike Peters, of The Alarm, and all of you for the bad pun. I thought a little missive on my thoughts of what March may bring was in order. Firstly, I am hoping that the rain will at least ease off a bit. I have just done a quick search for average rainfall for Essex for January & February 2024, and it seems that whilst January was down, February figures are way up.
For me, I will begin my seed sowing in preparation for the growing season to come. We will be looking to grow quite a bit of fruit and veg again this year, but first I will need to clean and tidy the greenhouses and polytunnel! Veg will include; aubergines, chilli peppers, sweet peppers and courgettes, as well as the usual suspects of tomato's, cucumber, spring onions and other salad crops. I planted onion and garlic late last year in a separate area of the garden, so we will keep an eye on those as well. Ornamentals have yet to be discussed between myself and the lady of the house, but may well include sweet peas and cosmos.
I will be cutting back our cornus varieties during March, we have Cornus sanguinea 'Midwinter Fire' which gives us a bright orange fading to yellow on the stems, and Cornus alba 'Sibirica' which has fantastic red stems. These will be cut back to allow the stems to re-develop to give colour next year. Another plant that will be pruned in March, or possibly into April, will be our Salvia yangii "Russian Sage" (synonym Perovskia atriplicifolia), which again can be cut back quite hard in order that it produces new shoots later in the year.
If you haven't already done so then March is the ideal month to prune bush and climbing roses. It is best to get them done before they produce too much new bud growth. I would recommend exploring the RHS website for further information on this. Other potential projects include bulb planting for summer colour and planting onions, shallots and early potato food crops.
Summer flowering perennials such as Crocosmia will benefit from being lifted and divided during the spring as this will help to re-invigorate them. We have found that if you leave the clumps to grow too densely they loose vigour and do not flower as readily.
The next thing I would add, which is obvious really, is that once the weather starts to warm up, and we get the occassional burst of sunshine the grass will start to grow in earnest, so get cutting. That said, I have one customer who for the second year running has requested that we leave some areas of the garden with longer grass to see what comes up, and what varieties of beetles and other beneficial insects are attracted. For our own garden I have plans to try and cultivate a small area of wildflower meadow, we shall see what happens with that!
My final thoughts for this month are two-fold; firstly I am intending to start a "rogues gallery", this is something I have been thinking about for a while now and we will see how this unfolds. Essentially I plan to post photographs and a little information on pests, weeds and other problems that I have spotted in my travels. Secondly, a suggestion; take a look at visiting a local garden (from here we have RHS Hyde Hall, and Cambridge Botanic Gardens within striking distance). You can glean a wealth of information and ideas from visits throughout the year, and it's a nice thing to do.
टिप्पणियां