Your Garden this Month

David Herbert For the green-fingered customer, Mole Valley Farmers provides a full range of garden products. It might interest you to know that during the last financial year, Mole Valley Farmers sold 80 tonnes of daffodil bulbs, 14,000 litres of tomato feed, 90 tonnes of lawn seedand 77,000 pairs of wellies!

In the summer of 2009, several of our branches underwent a facelift. The garden areas at our Frome and St Columb branches now look fantastic. This is our Garden Product Manager, David Herbert finding a bargain at St Columb on the branch's open day:

An archive of past gardening articles is available.

For advice on what needs doing in your garden this month, read on!

March 2012

Busy Times in the Garden

Your Garden in March - Busy Times in the Garden During March, things start to get busier in the garden, as the winter chill starts to lift and the garden slowly begins to burst into life. Every year is different but the chances are that at some stage during the month temperatures will start to rise and then everything will start to move up a gear.

Hopefully, you have found time before now to do your winter digging, but if not then do so now. This only really needs doing on that has been left bare over winter, such vegetable plots and flowerbeds that are normally planted up with annual bedding. Try to work in some well-rotted manure by spreading it over the plot before you start digging so that it is worked into the soil.

If you have already prepared the soil in the vegetable garden, during March you can sow many crops including beetroot, early broad beans, peas, spinach, sprouts, radish and parsnips cloches.

You can also plant shallots and onion sets and towards the end the month, you can start to plant early potatoes, which you have previously chitted.

If you have a greenhouse, sow tomatoes, chillis, sweet peppers, cucumbers,aubergines and bedding plants in a heated propagator. Also sow hardy annuals, such as sweet peas in pots.

In the shrub beds, fork out weeds between shrubs and sprinkle round general-purpose fertilisers, such as Growmore or chicken manure pellets.

March is also a good time for planting potgrown shrubs, trees, roses and climbers. Again, use a handful of fertiliser in the hole when planting and stir in with the compost to give the plant the best possible start.

Plant and divide perennials during March and prune modern bush roses, vigorous climbing roses, buddleia, dogwoods, willows and eucalyptus. Pick over pansies to prolong flowering and plant gladioli and lilies.

During March, providing it is dry enough, you should think about giving your lawn its first cut of the season. For the first cut set the blades as high as they will go and leave the grass slightly longer than in summer. For the first few cuts you should ideally use the grassbox even if you do not normally do so, in order to allow the turf to dry out better.

Once you have carried out the first few cuts you should mow regularly and lower the blades gradually.