If you haven’t already planted them then there’s no time to waste, get yourself down to your local garden centre today and get them planted this weekend.  Try spring bedding plants like violas, forget-me-nots and ranunculas. Read the rest of this entry »

When the daffodils die down they don’t half look tatty!  You’ve followed all our advice, cleaned up your borders and fertilised the bare soil and now you’re left with the leftover tatty looking daffodil foliage.

My next door neighbour ties hers up with elastic bands, it drives her so mad!  Don’t do it, and certainly don’t run over them with the lawnmower.

Let the leaves complete their job, they soak up the sunlight Read the rest of this entry »

I don’t know about you but my hedge is the last part of my garden that I consider.  I tend to leave it until it looks really bad so why not start the spring afresh and give it a treat!

Go along the bottom of the hedge and remove any ivy, weeds, snails or rubbish (I tend to find half the local tip under my hedge).  Then - my favourite tip - sprinkle it with fertiliser and mulch Read the rest of this entry »

Bare patches are really bad news in a lawn.  They pick up seeds from weeds more easily and turn into mud baths with just the slightest bit of rain, taking ages to dry out - so you need to do something about them as soon as possible. Read the rest of this entry »

April is the perfect time in Spring to sort out your garden borders.

Dressing - dust some general purpose organic fertiliser over the bare soil between plants so they can pick up all the nutrients they need.  Fork it in, but do it gently Read the rest of this entry »

Tulips really start to flower in April if the weather is mild as it has been, otherwise they will flower in May.  Here are a few of our favorite varieties of tulip: Read the rest of this entry »

Flea beetle leave tiny holes in leaves. They get their name from the small, flea-like insects you’ll see jumping around the plants.

Flea beetle mainly affects crops such as rocket, radishes, turnips or brassicas and usually make an appearance in early summer. They can also affect Chinese cabbage or pak choi late in the season. Unfortunately, there’s not much you can do once they’ve arrived, short of spaying, so the best defence is to encourage growth in the plants to they can outstrip any attack.

Here are our top tips:

Use lots of organic matter to prepare the ground and water the plants well

Make organic flea beetle traps. If you put small pieces of rotten wood close to the crops, the fleas will sometimes use the cool, damp area beneath the wood as a nursery and then other insects will hopefully find them and remove them for you!

April is the perfect month for taking leaf cuttings, here’s how to do it:

Cut off the leaf, complete with short stalk. Be sure to use a sharp knife. If you just want one or two new plants, simply push the stalk into a small pot of seed compost and leave the leaf exposed at the top

To get several plants however, cut the leaf in half or even into four pieces if its especially large. Slice it across the midrib in the middle - the bit sticking out. Put each section into a larger pot of compost so that the section is half buried and half exposed

Water the compost slightly - that makes a change from me telling you to water it well. Slip a loose, large plastic bag over the pot and keep it on a warm windowsill but out of direct sunlight or the leaves will just burn and die.

In a couple of months you should see small plantlets growing from the inserted edge of the leaf - they will grow from where the midrib was cut

Once they’re a few centimetres (1 - 2 inches) tall, they should have a large enough root system to survive on their own so take them out of the pot and pot each one individually. Occasionally, more than one plant will grow from one leaf so be careful when you divide them up

Yesterday we wrote about the benefits and drawback of using insect-proof mesh instead of pesticides.  Here, we give instructions on how to use insect-proof mesh:

To lay the mesh, simply place it over the crops and bury the edges.  If that’s not possible, you can hold them down with bricks but be careful not to leave gaps for pests to crawl underneath

Decide on using insect-proof mesh as early as possible.  If you use it on halfgrown crops then the chances are you may be trapping pests inside

If using mesh, sow all the leaf and root crops closely together so they can be left covered all through their growing life

Keep tall-growing crops away from low crops, for example Brussels sprouts grow tall but lettuce grows low, because the tall-growing ones can only be protected for so long

Bear in mind that as soon as plants begin to flower, they will need pollination to produce a crop so you’ll need to uncover them once they start to flower

If you aren’t a big fan of pesticides and prefer to stay well clear of them then the best way to protect your crops is to cover the plants with some very fine insect-proof mesh, which you can buy from organic gardening supply firms.  This mesh willkeep out insect pests like greenfly, blackfly or carrotfly and additionally will keep cats and birds away too.

Rain will still pass through it so you don’t have to worry about watering but it still provides a bit of shelter from hail or wind.  The soil won’t dry out as quickly when it’s sunny too so there are multiple benefits to using mesh.

The only downside is slugs and snails.  It doesn’t stop crawling pests from crawling underneath it and you’ll have to lift the mesh in order to hoe or weed.

Note that insect-proof mesh is different from horticultural fleece because it won’t trap the heat inside it so it can be used all year long unlike horticultural fleece which has to be lifted in the summer to avoid cooking your crops.