News - Page 102
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What to do in the garden in March:
The main question this month is where to start! Don’t worry - we’ve got it sorted with our list of the essential jobs to be getting on with over the next few weeks.
General tasks:
- Steep freshly-cut nettles in water for a few weeks and decant the rich brown liquid for a potent, nitrogen-rich plant food
- Start hoeing weekly to catch annual weeds the moment they appear so they never get big enoug...
Make this the year you get the kids into gardening - it’s a wonderful way to spend time with them as well as teaching them all sorts of things from the way the natural world works to where their food comes from.
All you need is a small area, say 1m x 1m, marked off with a low fence or coloured pebbles. A raised bed defines the area clearly - railway sleepers double up as comfy child-sized seats.
Let the kids choose what to grow: you can always br...
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An orchard of ancient cider apple trees has been saved for the nation after its owners gave it to the National Trust to look after.
The internationally important collection of 300 cider apple varieties includes evocatively-named apples like ‘Slack-ma-Girdle’, ‘Netherton Late Blower’ and ‘Billy Down Pippin’, put together over 25 years by collector Henry May at his Herefordshire orchard.
Material from each variety is being used to propagate new trees to...
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School children across Britain are getting the chance to grow seeds which have travelled in space after the Royal Horticultural Society joined forces with astronaut Tim Peake on the International Space Station for a gardening experiment.
The out-of-this-world rocket seeds are currently orbiting the Earth at 17,000 mph aboard the Space Station. They return to earth next month with NASA astronaut Scott Kelly before being divided up into packs o...
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The trees planted by Capability Brown are returning to the landscape, replanted by the National Trust to mark the three hundredth anniversary of the iconic landscape designer’s birth this year.
Brown was known for creating far-reaching vistas in the rolling landscapes he designed, and used carefully-placed copses of trees to frame views and provide focal points. Many have been lost over the years, but now under a new programme of tree-planting some of Brown’s...
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The sap is rising – and it's time for early bird gardeners to get out and doing. There are veg seeds to sow, pruning to finish and a good tidy-up before the season ahead. Let’s get started!
General tasks:
Spread slow-release fertiliser like pelleted poultry manure under hedges and around shrubs and trees
Top dress containers by scraping out the top couple of inches of compost and replacing with fresh
Orn...
Sow a box of salad now to ease those itchy gardener’s fingers and get growing something, and also provide yourself with a super-early crop to kick-start your grow-your-own year.
It's a bit soon to be sowing salad outdoors – but under cover in a greenhouse, polytunnel or just a bright windowsill lettuces and baby-leaf salad mixes germinate perfectly happily.
One of the most attractive ways to produce the quantities you need for a generous bo...
Get the kids involved in gardening and you’ll keep them happily occupied outside in the fresh air, spark their creativity and teach them about where flowers and food come from. Plus you get to spend lots of time with them while you do what you love doing most, too.
All you need is a small area, say 1m x 1m, marked off with a low fence, coloured pebbles or railway sleeper edging, which doubles up as comfy child-sized seats.
Let the kids choo...
Force rhubarb for a sweet treat from the veg garden just when you need it most. Fruit can be thin on the ground at this time of year: the stored apples are almost finished and there's a long wait till the first berries appear in May. So tender, sweet forced rhubarb comes as a welcome early spring delicacy.
Choose an early variety such as 'Stockbridge Arrow', and only force plants which are at least three years old and mature enough to cope. Rhubarb need...
It’s snowdrop festival time so join your nearest galanthophiles and enjoy some of the season’s most exquisitely beautiful flowers up close on one of the many Snowdrop Days happening around the country.
Among the most famous are the fabulous collection at Colesbourne Park in Gloucestershire, begun in Victorian times and still evolving today: there are now an astonishing 250 different varieties to see. Hodsock Priory in Nottinghamshire boasts a half-mile walk t...
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The RHS Chelsea Flower Show is celebrating the Queen’s 90th birthday this year with a floral archway and an exhibition of photographs of the Queen’s 51 visits to the show since 1949.
The archway is inspired by a painting in the Royal Collection of a similar arch decorated for Queen Victoria’s visit to Reigate in Surrey. It will be one of the first things the Queen sees when she arrives at the show the day before it opens on May 24.
Also featuring at th...
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Use cloches to protect overwintering crops as the weather turns colder. Even really hardy veg like broad beans, spring cabbage and chard get battered around the edges when it gets seriously windy, cold and wet – so although they’ll survive, your harvest will be unappetisingly shredded. More vulnerable seedlings, like hardy peas and winter salads, can be downright beaten and you risk losing your crop to stem rots or wind damage.
To prevent winter gales w...