There\u2019s been a bit of a cold snap recently which doesn\u2019t suit my \u2018luxury\u2019 hound (being half Italian Greyhound he\u2019s prone to shivering) but is pretty good for getting on with things in the garden and properly cold weather is exactly what we should be getting around now. I remember that in the warmer, wetter, winter last year I got behind with my tasks because there were so many days when I couldn\u2019t get onto the soil.<\/p>\n
To a certain extent decently cold temperatures reduce the number of pests overwintering in the myriad cracks and crevices that a garden provides. I help this along by clearing up the leaf litter and associated detritus that gets trapped amongst the stems in the borders. This tends to coincide with the removal of leaves from winter flowering hellebores and Epimedium varieties where the flowers only show if last year\u2019s foliage is removed.<\/p>\n
The downside to this is that it removes one of the food sources for the birdlife that frequent the garden but at least it\u2019s preferable to doing a complete \u2018bare earth\u2019 border annihilation in the autumn. It\u2019s funny how gardening practices evolve over time. When I worked in large country house gardens, as a student, it was common for the \u2018herbaceous border\u2019 to be completely cleaned bare before winter.<\/p>\n
That was the tradition in gardens which covered many acres because it was possible to develop different areas of the garden to peak at different times and the owners merely planned their promenades avoiding the sections which were not at their best. For most people that is a luxury they cannot afford so having areas of the garden which are just flat earth, for half the year, doesn\u2019t make sense. Also, very few domestic scale gardens have strictly \u2018herbaceous\u2019 borders these days. Instead they have \u2018mixed\u2019 planting schemes with trees, shrubs, bulbs, evergreens and every other sort of plant material, including herbaceous perennials, jostling \u2018cheek by jowl\u2019.<\/p>\n
Having said that, now\u2019s the time to clean up the borders if weather conditions allow. It\u2019s not a good idea to be tramping all over the soil when it is very wet, due to the damage you will do to the soil structure by compacting it, and you won\u2019t be able to work it if it\u2019s frozen solid. During dry, but not completely frosty, spells you can go through the borders cutting down dead stems and removing last year\u2019s decaying leaves from herbaceous plants and weeding out anything that you don\u2019t want in the border\u2014not just \u2018proper\u2019 weeds but the self-sown progeny of ornamental plants which can begin to take over; forget-me-nots for example.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m at a bit of a dilemma here because usually I would try to do all my tidying, chopping and weeding along with a gentle forking, feeding and mulching. I\u2019ll still do that towards the end of the month, when spring is a little closer, but I\u2019d not want to add any fertiliser, even the comparatively low nitrogen \u2018fish, blood and bone\u2019, when it\u2019s not going to do the plants any good. It\u2019s best to \u2018play it by ear\u2019 and add the feed, followed by your chosen mulch (garden compost in my case) if you know you won\u2019t get another chance or if the weather is mild and plant growth is underway. If not used by growing plants, then any feed you add now will get washed though the soil before it can be utilised for plant growth.<\/p>\n
A very timely task is the pruning of wisteria to encourage bigger and better blooms. Ideally you will have shortened all the long, whippy, growths towards the end of the summer to prevent them from being ripped off in autumn gales. These can now be shortened to just a couple of buds, or leaf joints if no buds are visible yet. This does mean that you are removing a fair proportion of flower buds, remember \u201cyou can\u2019t make an omelette without breaking eggs\u201d, but the ones left behind will produce bigger and better blooms which is, with a showy plant like wisteria, the name of the game. Regular pruning keeps this vigorous climber within bounds and under control That\u2019s what gardening is all about; nature \u201cwhipped into shape\u201d.<\/p>\n
As I write, I am rather behind with planting bare-rooted trees and hedging. In fact, I haven\u2019t even ordered what I intend to plant\u2014mostly \u2018wood fuel mix\u2019 trees to expand my \u2018mini wood\u2019. Unless spring starts with a heatwave you can assume it\u2019s safe to plant bare-rooted material up until the end of March so I\u2019ll hold off panicking just yet. I can\u2019t resist bare-root plants because they establish quickly and are the cheapest way of obtaining common varieties of deciduous trees and hedging plants.<\/p>\n
Due to the ease of sending bare-root plants through the post there is healthy competition amongst suppliers so it\u2019s sensible to do an online search to see who offers exactly what you want and for the best price. Having said that, it\u2019s worth checking to see if you have a local supplier because collecting in person is always preferable. It saves on subjecting your chosen specimens to an unnecessary postal experience and you may get a cheaper price without the cost of delivery. You\u2019ll need to check with the local supplier, don\u2019t just turn up, as most plants are lifted \u2018to order\u2019 and may not be available for days, possibly weeks, after your initial enquiry. The nursery won\u2019t be able to dig up any stock in very wet or completely freezing weather.<\/p>\n
On a different tack, after last year\u2019s successes with growing random perennials, half-hardy and tender annuals from seed, I must get going with some more for this year. I started some too late so, this year, I\u2019ll be sowing as many as possible now. Tricky when they\u2019ll be vying for space in the greenhouse with veg seedlings, the overwintering tender perennials plus the cases of freesias and pots of arums being forced for early cut flowers. The sooner the weather warms up enough to decant a lot of the smaller pots into the cold frames the better!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There\u2019s been a bit of a cold snap recently which doesn\u2019t suit my \u2018luxury\u2019 hound (being half Italian Greyhound he\u2019s prone to shivering) but is pretty good for getting on with things in the garden and properly cold weather is exactly what we should be getting around now. I remember that in the warmer, wetter, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[19],"class_list":["post-3136","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-gardening","tag-russell-jordan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3136","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3136"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3136\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3136"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3136"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3136"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}