18/02/2021
🌸MARCH in the Garden 🌸
Great tips from Life is a Garden
“Start off by preparing the soil for planting winter and spring annuals and bulbs as soon as temperatures cool down. Dig in compost and superphosphate or bone meal at the recommended application rates. While doing this, also tidy up the dead leaves on hellebores and mulch with layer of leaf mould. This ensures a good winter display. Divide strelitzias if necessary and move other evergreens and conifers planted in the wrong place. Feed palms with a general fertilizer and water well. Start lifting and dividing overgrown perennials like daylilies, dietes and liriopes.
Hot tip: It might still be too hot to plant Spring flowering bulbs. Store in the vegetable compartment of the refrigerator and plant out when the weather cools down in 4 to 6 weeks.
Spend lots of energy in the veggie garden: Plant seeds of peas, broad beans, carrots, parsnips, turnips and radish. Harvest the last of summer’s crops like pumpkins and squashes. Plant out seedlings of cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, lettuce, spinach. Stagger plantings at 3 to 4 week intervals. Sow more parsley, mustard and rocket. While grafting there, fertilize bananas, mangoes and pawpaw’s and cut down asparagus foliage. Early citrus crops will start ripening now. Check citrus trees for red scale on leaves and stems.
Hot tip: Waste not want not, so harvest crops like basil and coriander and process into pesto for the winter season.”
