With Spring now firmly setting in, it’s the right time for spring gardening, ensuring all those essential preparations are in place, ready for the year ahead. Read on for our top spring gardening tips that will ensure your garden blooms beautifully all summer.
Spring Gardening Task: Clear Out Your Compost Bins
Spring gardening involves a comprehensive look at your composting approaches. While the plants are still sparse, it’s the perfect time to empty your compost bins. Over the winter, the material should have transformed into a dark and crumbly substance, perfect for enriching your soil. The introduction of compost is a crucial step in spring gardening which allows your budding perennials, shrubs, and fruit trees to thrive, giving the soil a boost and suppressing weeds.
Your spring gardening schedule should certainly include applying compost to your potted plants and window boxes. It will nourish the plants, help retain moisture, and even prevent weeds from sprouting. This homemade compost is invaluable for spring gardening, maintaining soil health in any weather condition.
Prevent Plant Drooping with Stakes
Bare soil is a signal to get your stakes in place before it’s obscured by new growth and before rain makes your plants slump. Try using locally sourced hazel for an eco-friendly solution. It’s perfect for supporting everything from small peas to large beans and even climbing flowers. The National Coppice Federation can point you in the direction of where to find locally produced poles and sticks.
Take Care of Your Pond
If you have a pond, hopefully it’s teeming with frog and toad eggs. If not, it might be time for some Spring gardening maintenance! Clear out old leaves and other debris, allowing any creatures to return to the water before topping it off with rainwater.
For those without a pond, consider creating a mini habitat using a container the size of a bucket. Add stones and twigs to help wildlife get in and out, and don’t forget to plant aquatic flora like mini water lilies or herbs like Houttuynia cordata ‘Chameleon’ to help maintain a balanced ecosystem.
Propagate Your Dahlias
If you adore dahlias and want more without extra cost, now’s the time to propagate them from cuttings. This Spring gardening task is particularly useful for large varieties, as it reduces the weight of the plant and enhances flower production. Snip shoots with a piece of the tuber attached for quick rooting, and watch Sarah Raven’s instructional video for guidance.
Spring Gardening: Relocate Your Perennials
With spring’s damp soil and warmer weather, it’s an opportune moment to move any perennials that are in less-than-ideal spots. If you do it now, they’ll settle into their new location rapidly. Wait too long, and the heat and dry conditions could hinder their ability to adapt.
However, it’s too late now to relocate trees and shrubs or plants just beginning to bloom, like pulmonarias and brunneras. These should be moved after they flower in early June. Be sure to water the replanted items regularly if it doesn’t rain, until you see new growth, indicating that the roots have settled in.
Get more plants at no cost
If you’re changing your garden layout, take this chance to divide your large clumps of summer perennials, such as geraniums and daylilies. You can lift the whole plant and cut it in two, or take several good-sized pieces, each with a healthy amount of roots and shoots. A bit of repetition in your landscape can be visually appealing, and using divisions from your garden is an easy, free way to do this.
Purchase plants economically
If you can transplant perennials, you can plant them too. March is the last opportunity to buy bare-root plants, which are shipped without soil when they’re still in a dormant state. This process is easier for the grower and has less impact on the environment.
However, you must act quickly as growers won’t ship plants after March ends.
Plant everything
It’s prime time for planting, but if it’s chilly, hold off on planting directly in the garden until the end of the month, as warm soil greatly improves growth. If the soil feels cold to the touch without gloves, it’s best to wait to plant.
Still, some plants such as broad beans, peas, radishes, and sweet peas can endure the cold and can be planted directly into pots or the ground now.
You can also sow any remaining hardy annual seeds such as poppies and wildflower mixes on bare soil. For most other seeds, I use modules and place them in a protected area, like a greenhouse or on a cool windowsill, until the soil has warmed up sufficiently.
So, make the best of spring gardening season, plant wisely, and watch your garden bloom beautifully.
