Life in the garden is just about to get very busy. After the more peaceful days of winter when I can decide when and if to garden the jobs that need doing are mounting daily and there is always something to catch up on in my greenhouse. Since early January I have been running a daily gardening prompt on Instagram and more recently I have started to add some IGTV videos to my feed, so do pop over and visit me there if you would like to see what I have been up to.

I feel that I have been neglecting my blog and am very sorry about that, so I have decided to try and reintroduce some old favourites such as a monthly cutting garden and greenhouse review and a weekly list of the jobs on my to do list. Hopefully this will provide a little light entertainment for you whilst we go through this very difficult world health crisis and perhaps I will inspire you to get outside and do more in your own garden.

Hellebore Double Ellen Picotee

As we reach the end of March my to do list is focused on finishing my winter jobs before the spring jobs start mounting up. Most of the winter pruning of fruit trees and bushes and roses has been finished and the early sowing of sweet peas, hardy annuals etc is done. This has been a dishearteningly wet winter in my garden, with many of the beds underwater for long periods of time. I am only just able to get on to weeding and preparing them for spring and I have a lots of compacted dank ground to work over. My roses in particular are looking very sad and I am keen to start a regular feeding programme to hopefully perk them up. This year I am going to spray them regularly with Uncle Tom’s Rose Tonic which I am buying from Amazon. This will be my first year using this product so I will let you know what I think as the year goes on.

Daffodils in the woodland

This week I hope to:

  • Finish feeding my roses with a granular feed to kickstart their growth. I am using Plantworks After Plant Rose Food for this job.
  • Plant some new roses that were delivered in February when the ground was sodden – they are currently heeled in and need moving to their final positions asap.
  • Plant out shallots that are growing in plugs in my cold frame.
  • Finish planting out hardy annuals that were sown sown last October – these include orlaya, ammi visnaga, larkspur, cerinthe and calendula.
  • Sow plenty of vegetable seeds that can be planted out in a few weeks time – given the possible food shortages coming our way I am increasing the number of vegetables I had planned to grow to try and produce plenty of food throughout the summer and autumn.
  • Finish potting up dahlia tubers.
Early plum blossom

That is quite a lot to finish in one week, but hopefully with the extra time that is available now that I have to stay at home I will get through it all. Please let know if there is anything you would particularly like to see again here on the blog as a regular feature – I am keen to ensure that you can find things to look forward here so it would help me to know what you miss and what you most enjoy.

I do hope that you and your families are all keeping well and that you are not finding the current restrictions on our daily lives too onerous. As gardeners we all enjoy time spent in our gardens and have the advantage of a passion that is always looking to the future – hopefully we can harness that gift at this difficult time and use it to keep our own and our families spirits up.

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