Tasks for March

Plant your new potatoes now and you’ll give yourself the best chance of an early harvest. Timing your planting is a bit of a lottery as there’s always the chance of a late frost, but you can usually risk it by late March. Just in case, keep some horticultural fleece handy and throw a couple of layers over emerging foliage [...]

Sow beetroot for delicious early crops within a few weeks’ time.Beetroot are among the quickest and easiest of veg to get going in spring, and are just as happy in a roomy container as in the ground. Sow Beetroot Varieties include traditional purple ‘Boltardy’ and unusual striped heritage variety ‘Chioggia’, but there are lots more, including golden ones which don’t [...]

Plant Asiatic lilies nowfor a fabulously exotic display later this summer. Asiatic lilies are among the easiest lilies to grow, and certainly the most spectacular. They tend to flower a little earlier than other lilies and include brilliantly coloured varieties in shades of copper, pink, deepest purple and pure white. For even more wow factor there are also two-tone and [...]

Clear green manure crops planted last autumn to cover soil over winter, like winter tares, field beans, or winter rye. These useful cover crops are invaluable in the veg garden, where they break up heavy soil and add nutrients to benefit your veg throughout the season. Useful cover crops About four weeks before you need the area for growing, get [...]

March is such an exciting month! There are seeds to sow, new plants to choose, and spring to enjoy. Here are a few of the jobs you can get on with this month: General tasks: Get flower beds ready for the year ahead by scattering general fertiliser between plants and mulching with well-rotted manure or soil improver. Treat lawns for [...]

Plant a rainbow of colour to welcome in spring by packing patio pots and filling flower beds with primulas and polyanthus. These cheerful bedding plants offer great value, flowering their hearts out for weeks on end to brighten your outlook on even the dullest of days. New varieties are continually being bred offering outstanding garden performance, larger flowers and [...]

It’s time to prune your late-flowering shrubs including Buddleja davidii, Caryopteris and hardy fuchsias. These shrubs are a mainstay of the summer garden, producing waterfalls of flower for months at a time, from mid-summer onwards. They’re also incredibly easy to grow, requiring little care other than a spring cut-back to keep them young and flowering well. All these shrubs flower [...]

Give fruit bushes and trees a good feed so you send them into the new season in tip-top health, ready to provide you with a bumper harvest later this summer. After a long winter hunkered down against the elements, gooseberries, blackcurrants, redcurrants and whitecurrants will be starting to wake up as spring warms up. Top fruit, too, like apples, plums [...]