style | gardening gardening by season
Seedy Collect seeds for springtime sowing. Cut heads and let your fingers enjoy the crush and crumble of the spent flower as you spill its seeds onto paper-lined trays – or shake out in situ to retain the plant’s architecture for your winter garden. Dry out seeds and keep in the garage if dry and the fridge if not.
Leave the papery packets of Honesty as long as you dare. They catch and diffuse the sunshine and dance in the breeze.
Weedy Time to confront that perennial question, what is a weed? Dusty blue Aster amellus – Michaelmas Daisies – are considered weeds by many but they shout of the joys of harvest festivals and the impending autumn. Leave them but take out tatty weeds and bits of grass that spoil your garden’s good looks.
Breezy Cover your pond with protective netting if you’ve got trees about to drop their leaves.
Fruit Keep the doctor away. Harvest apples and pears.
Vegetables Plant spring cabbage: anticipate spring chicken. Protect your crop with bird- proof netting. Ensure your squashes and pumpkins have adequate space to expand. Their day will come.
Lawn It’s questionable whether you or the grass benefit most from a good seeing to. As therapy there’s nothing so stress-busting as dragging a lawn rake through your garden, and the grass seems to like it too. Bag up raked leaves to make lovely leaf mould. Fit in a final mowing if possible and lay turf if necessary. Water in well if the rain holds off.
Inside Stop it, now. Don’t overwater your inside plants: you can kill with kindness. Group houseplants together for a better show and a collective fight against central heating drought.
Pot up hyacinth bulbs, or better, make the annual pilgrimage to the back of your cupboard and unearth your hyacinth vases. Let the bulbs sleep in the airing cupboard for heady scent and showy blooms at Christmas. It isn’t far off.
September and October It’s that gorgeous time of year when the summer, thought to have fizzled,
returns resplendent for the long-shadowed Indian September. The first of the chilly frosty nights follow, with the scent of gardeners’ bonfires on the air.
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