Well, perhaps not just for a leap year, but it seemed an entertaining way to suggest 29 gardening tips, large, small, design orientated and tasks to do!
General Gardening Tips
Get yourself a pot cleaning tool or an old toothbrush and clean out all your plant pots before re-using them.
Make a note in your diary to take the lawnmower in for servicing before Christmas and not in March when everyone else wants theirs done.
Take time out of your day once a month to reflect on some of the positive features you would like to find in your garden. List what you’d need and start planning. (see links below for some ideas)
Through the Seasons
Check your hanging basket chains before planting up in the spring! It may sound stupid but rusty worn chains can create a major hazard as the container may decide to crash onto your head…
Hot summer weather: most lawns will be fine without any extra watering, but this is one area where you could safely put ‘grey’ water to good use.
Summer holidays. Arrange for someone to water patio pots and thirsty plants when you’re away. To reduce the pot plants’ demand for water, move them into part shade if you can, but not too close to the house where they won’t get rained on.
While scrunching through fallen crispy leaves is fun, they can be a nuisance in the garden. Why not make some lovely compost for acid loving azaleas and blueberries at no cost to peat bogs?
Check regularly on plants in unheated greenhouses and cold frames. Plants touching the greenhouse could get frost damage and too much warmth and condensation will encourage rotting off.
Be prepared for frost and snow. Do some early Christmas wrapping by covering any large outside containers with bubble wrap, fleece or hessian, to help prevent the pots cracking in the cold frosty weather and to protect roots.
Garden Pests and Weeds
Rosemary beetle: a beautiful iridescent green and purple but deadly to your Rosemary, Lavender, Sage, Santolina and more… Pick off and then squish is the best technique for removing them. Keep your hand or a cup underneath as you pick off – they have a habit of landing where you can’t see them!
Tackle Bindweed when it appears in a border. Gardening tip – Placing bamboo canes where you suspect bindweed encourages it to grow around the cane and not your plants. It makes getting rid of the weed easier too.
Ornamental Plants to enjoy
Use the vertical spaces in your garden #1 – you could have different Clematis flowering nearly all year round if you choose the right varieties – even at Christmas time.
Enjoy your evergreen shrubs and trees – and think about adding variety so not everything is solid green. Photinia variegata is an evergreen proving that green isn’t an essential colour. It has lovely pinky-red stems and silver edged leaves.
Tulips are in full flower during May; if they become irretrievably damaged by wind and rain, all is not lost as they should still give you a show next year. Are they in pots? Put the pots somewhere out of the way, remove flower heads and leave the foliage to die back. If the compost is free draining you could probably ignore them until the autumn or treat as for border tulips. Where tulips are planted in the border, remove flower heads, let foliage die back and then lift the bulbs and store until replanting time in the autumn.
Use the vertical spaces in your garden #2 – make sure air can circulate around the plant to maintain its health; stretch wires across a wall of fence leaving a gap behind; or fix wooden trellis on battens that are fixed to the wall.
Never underestimate a ‘common’ garden plant! Together Red valerian (Centranthus ruber) and Lunaria annua (purple honesty) make a warmly coloured combination for late spring into summer and grow happily in difficult areas such as under conifer hedges.
Gardening Tips for the Edible Garden
Grab yourself a bargain and order a bare root fruit tree before the end of March. If you run out of time – or they don’t have one you want – then order one in the autumn instead. That way you’re planting a tree and allowing yourself to enjoy the blossom and eat the fruit. Result.
Peg down the runners on summer fruiting strawberries into pots of compost that you’ve sunk into the ground. This makes it easier to lift the new strawberry plants once they’ve rooted and you cut them away from the parent plant.
Chitting simply means encouraging the seed potatoes to sprout, this means once planted they will begin to grow away quicker. It is only advised to chit First Earlies and Second Earlies – there is no real benefit of chitting for Main crop potatoes
Rhubarb is a vegetable, even though we treat it as a fruit and put it in puddings. It is a leafy vegetable, and therefore needs lots of nitrogen; so give your emerging rhubarb crowns a good feed. Organic fertilisers alfalfa and bone meal will both give a rapid release.
If you have a small garden do not be put off planting a fruit tree because you think they need a lot of space. Most modern varieties from specialist suppliers are grown on dwarfing rootstock and do not take up too much space. Fruit trees can also be trained and grown very successfully as a fan or espalier against a wall.
Gardening Tips – Herbs
Do you like cooking with garlic? Plant garlic bulbs (cloves) in the autumn for a good crop the following year. They need a free draining soil so they don’t rot in a wet winter. If that might be a problem you could grow them in pots and transplant bulb and soil into the ground come spring
Grow sage to clean your teeth with. Did you know sage has been used for teeth cleaning since at least the 17th century? Rubbed on the teeth it’s quite efficacious, leaving a pleasant taste although you may want to floss as well…
Herbs planted next to steps give you a both scented walk and easy access when you need to add them to your dinner.
Basil is great in pasta dishes & pesto: growing your own is so easy: you can ‘cheat’ with the usual shop bought fresh rooted pots; prick out and grow on separately. Or you can look for some interesting varieties at the plant nursery. Basil ‘purple ruffles’ has a cinnamon flavour to it; whilst ‘lime’ has, well, a lime flavour!
Landscaping Tips
Sometimes it pays to start with the basics. A stiff broom will sweep away moss as well as soil from a brick path.
Check fences and fence posts – to make sure they’re not just still in place but also standing firm after the storms. Or be really organised and check them over in the summer.
And lastly in our list of 29 Gardening Tips for A Leap Year
Plant a romantic rose, perhaps the floribunda Rosa Eyes for You, with clusters of mauve flowers with a superb fragrance. Then propose in the garden (obviously).
And for some light relief when the weather is driving you to distraction – Flanders and Swann wrote this song loosely based on the nursery rhyme “January brings the snow”, it always makes me laugh
Why not ask about our bespoke Gardening Lessons, where your classroom is actually your own garden? We can help with both gardening basics and more ‘expert tasks’, carry out worm and other experiments and for example, also show you how to plan a wildlife friendly ornamental border.
For further gardening advice and inspiration, check out Plews Potting Shed blogs, including the selection below and our monthly Tipsheet – You could come and find us on Instagram Pinterest and Facebook too.
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