March Gardening

March! The gardening year starts here. The milder weather means keen gardeners can get busy in a month of preparations for a blooming summer garden. Order your mail order seeds and buy summer-flowering bulbs.


How To Sow Vegetable Seeds
Now's the time to clear a spot for your kitchen garden or sow carrots, parsnips, summer cauliflowers, rhubarb, Brussels sprouts, leeks and onions.

1) Prepare the ground where crops are to be grown by raking the soil to remove stones and weeds. Level the surface.

2) Mark out rows with cane and a length of strong, then take out a shallow groove or seed drill with the back of a rake or tip of a cane.

3) Sow seeds thinly along the drill, spacing them evenly, or sow several seeds at regular points and thin out once the seedlings appear.

4) Cover seeds thinly with soil and tap down with a rake. On heavy soil, cover with potting compost for a more even layer.

Get to grips with weeds before they get grips with your plants! The most common culprits are bindweed, couch grass, nettles, docks and thistles. Banish them from borders using a hoe to uproot them or use a spray to clear paths and patios.

If you have roses they will need a feed of rose fertiliser. Give shrubs a general feed. Scatter around the base of the plants. A layer of mulch, compost or bark, will also prevent the dreaded weed seeds from taking hold and protect the plants from late frosts!

A bit of this and that

Hi everyone, it's Gill,

I hope you have all had a lovely week. Last week and this believe it or not I haven't been to a garden centre - that has to be a record for me! I know that if I go, I will be tempted to buy plants that simply won't fit in the garden, there is no space left. There is so much to do in the garden at the moment, mainly weeding, the dreaded weeding is always there. However many you pull out, they still appear to be there the next day. I have stinging nettles and blackberry to pull up, at least with all the damp we have had it shouldn't be too hard (thats if I get round to it) hehe!!

If you haven't done it already, you should be planting up your strawberry runners ready for next years crop. We have a water barrel with holes drilled in the sides with some of our strawberries growing in, and a few in a small beds in front of the greenhouse.

My first cucumber is about 10 inches now, maybe it will be eaten by the time I do the next blog. I was given a few tomato plants by a friend that she had grown, they are large plum shaped ones. There are loads of fruit but so far when they have swollen the bottom of the fruit has rotted, does anyone know why please? My runnerbeans seem to be really plentiful this year. I have experimented with the common one with orange flowers and a white flowered one to see if there is any difference with yields. If there is I will let you know.

My buddleias continue to be the centre of attraction for the areas butterflies, I could watch them all day! These lovely shrubs are supposed to attract bees too but I haven't seen one on them yet, very very scary. If you dont like buddleias, I think you should try and put one in a corner because they do bring in all sorts of insects. I know they have a straggly persuasion, but they can be trimmed virtually to any shape you like. Also if you want to cover up an ugly bare corner, mine have grown about 10 feet in three years.

In today's Daily Mail they were saying that we should all be putting a sugar solution out to attract bees, 2 parts sugar to 1 part water, then place between the flowers. I will do this tomorrow and maybe you could all have a go too.

Don't forget to ask your neighbours to water for you should you go on holiday or for a weekend away, it's surprising how quickly they dry out, especially the greenhouse.
Still not getting many eggs from the girls, they had better sharpen up or they will end up on my table. I wonder if it is anything to do with the weather, the lack of eggs I mean. Maybe one or two of you might keep chickens and could give me the answer. We have 10 chickens and 2 cockerels and are getting 3 or 4 eggs a day, we were getting that through the winter. One day about 6 or 8 weeks ago we had 8, I nearly dropped them when I counted them!!!!

Okay all that's it for now, do take care and of course happy gardening. Bye for now, Gill