Flora Brons of Flora Grow takes us inside her gardening world and guides us through what needs to be done to get our gardens shipshape for spring.
Spring is such a special time of year. After the great autumn cleanup and surviving the cold of winter, it really is the greatest reward to witness the explosion of fresh green shoots and buds, signalling spring’s arrival. With this brings many jobs and we can finally start sowing seeds again. If you’re impatient like me, this is such a relief! As I always say, if you’re a gardener, patience is a virtue.
Late Winter tasks
Start sowing hardy annuals
Reminder to wait for things like Cosmos or Zinnias until it warms up a bit more. They will rapidly catch up on growth.
If you’re feeling impatient and you want some earlier flowers but you don’t have a greenhouse, then you can use heated seed mats or milk bottles cut in half to make a mini tunnel house.
Sow tomatoes indoors
Find a warm spot inside or undercover and sow your tomatoes. I like to sow them early so I can continue to pot them, a few times before I plant them out. This way you can really build up a strong root base, so they have a head start when they go into the ground.
Make teepees
You can use Hazel, Silver Birch or Bamboo to make teepees. Now is a great time to do this to prepare for your sweet peas, beans, cucumbers or even tomatoes.
Feed and prepare your soil
If you have had any cover crops in your beds over winter you can chop and drop these or cultivate them into your soil.
Add some layers of compost and make sure you remove as many weeds as you can to prepare for planting. As the soil starts to warm up, the growth of weeds starts to rapidly increase.
Early Spring Tasks
Prune hydrangeas
If you can, wait until the risk of hard frosts is over as the head of the old flowers acts as a canopy to protect the new growth.
Sow your remaining annuals
+ Now is the time to sow courgettes, cucumbers and corn indoors.
+ Sow Zinnias and Cosmos.
Tidy up perennials
Cut down old growth of perennials and seed heads from winter. The new growth should be popping up at the base of your perennials now if you look closely.
In the Flower Garden
There are still many things you can harvest now from your garden. Here is a list of the flowers that you can harvest now:
+ Hellebores
+ Muscari grape hyacinths
+ Wall flowers
+ Narcissi daffodils
+ Cerinthe honeywort
+ Tulips
If you are picking hellebores to put in a vase, remember to pick them only once the seed pod has developed in the centre of the flower to help prevent them wilting too quickly.
With an agricultural degree from Lincoln University, along with an entrepreneurial mindset, Flora Brons was inspired to develop Flora Grow to educate and influence the community on sustainable living through her knowledge of plants and the ecosystem. Her passion for plants, nature and people drives her continued success. floragrow.co.nz
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