Essential Gardening Jobs for Mid-Spring

As we move into mid-spring, it's a great time to give your garden a little attention to ensure healthy growth for the upcoming season. Whether you're focusing on your outdoor ornamentals, vegetables, or fruit trees, these tasks will help keep your garden thriving. Below is a list of essential tasks to focus on this time of year:

Ornamentals Outdoors

• Finish planting out herbaceous perennials, incorporating a small amount of well-rotted compost and lightly forking over the border.
• This marks the end of the planting and transplanting season for root-balled evergreen shrubs, trees, and coniferous hedges. These may need to be staked to help them establish properly.
• Container-grown evergreens and conifers can still be planted after this time. If cold winds persist, protect newly-planted shrubs with a shelter made of sacking or plastic woven mesh sheeting.
• Established conifers can be pruned now if required, preferably using secateurs and not shears or mechanical trimmers.
• The seeds of hardy annuals can be sown into the open ground now, and in very sheltered districts, some half-hardy annuals such as antirrhinums can also be sown outdoors.
• As daffodils finish flowering, cut off the old flower heads to prevent seed formation, but allow the stems and leaves to die down naturally. Apply a general fertilizer to feed the bulbs if they are to remain in situ.
• Start dahlia tubers in the greenhouse or cold frame and plant them out later in the month. They will then produce earlier, extra blooms for displays and cutting.
• Plant out alpines, pansies, and violas. Also, plant new water lilies and other aquatics, or reorganize the existing planting of the pool.

Lawns and Meadows

• Sow grass seed for new lawns or to renovate bare patches on established lawns, provided the soil is not still cold and wet (soil temperature should be 10°C / 50°F minimum).
• If established lawns are weedy, apply a selective weedkiller according to the manufacturer's directions.
• As the grass begins to grow (above temperatures of 10-12°C / 50-55°F), roll and mow the lawn, keeping the blades of the machine set high.
• Where moss has established in a lawn, apply a mosskiller, but do not rake out the moss until it has died and turned brown. Where bulbs are naturalized in a lawn, use an organic moss killer such as MO Bacter.

Vegetables

• Harden off seedlings of outdoor varieties of tomatoes in readiness for planting them out in early summer.
• Harden off the young plants of cauliflowers, onions, and leeks sown under glass in mid-winter, in readiness for planting out in mid-spring.
• Thin the seedlings as soon as they are large enough to be dealt with, and hoe regularly to suppress weeds.
• Plant out autumn-sown cabbages and cauliflowers that have been overwintered under cloches or in polythene tunnels and frames.
• Plant tubers of potatoes and seedlings of broad beans and lettuces.
• Prepare marrow beds and incorporate plenty of well-rotted manure or composted garden waste.
• Inspect established asparagus beds for early spears to harvest. Also, plant out new crowns in beds if this was not done in March.
• In mild districts, sweetcorn can be sown outdoors at the end of the month.
• Provide support for peas by pushing in along the rows of pea sticks gathered earlier in the year. Use sticks about 15cm (6in.) taller than the ultimate height of the peas.

Fruit

• Spray apples and pears to control aphids, apple blossom weevil, and capsid bug, using a general insecticide based on Lambda-cyhalothrin or Deltamethrin. The timing will depend on the development of the blossoms.
• Bark ring over-vigorous apple and pear trees by removing a ring of bark 2-3cm (1in) wide all around the trunk, or a half ring on one side and another about 15cm (6in) lower on the opposite side of the trunk. The result will be a better formation of fruit buds and the cropping capacity of the tree will be increased.
• Thin out the blossoms of wall-trained outdoor peaches and nectarines, but bear in mind that there will be a natural drop of fruitlets during the next few weeks which will act as further fruit thinning.

Glasshouse (Including Conservatories and Polythene Structures)

• Plant out cucumbers and tomatoes into large pots or growing bags in the greenhouse, frame, or directly into the border. Support them and tie them carefully.
• Continue to prick out all seedlings as they grow large enough to be handled by the seed leaves (cotyledons).
• Rooted cuttings of chrysanthemums and perpetual flowering carnations, taken during the winter, will be ready for potting. Keep them growing slowly, but evenly, and shade them from sudden bright sunshine.
• Continue to pot on tomato seedlings into pots. Keep the plants slightly dry, which will keep them growing steadily and encourage the formation of the first flower truss.
• Take cuttings of dahlias as they are ready, and insert them into small pots or cell trays filled with sandy compost.
• To produce flowers during the coming winter, sow early batches of Primula sinensis, P. obconica, and P. kewensis in trays and maintain a base temperature of up to 16°C (60°F) until the seeds have germinated.

Ornamentals Indoors

• Harden off seedlings that are to be planted out earlier in the season, but tie each to a small stake and make sure they are protected from cold at night.
• Air layering indoor plants can begin now for those plants that are suited to this type of propagation, e.g., Ficus and Monstera.

Propagation

• Finish lifting, dividing, and planting herbaceous perennials. Do not mulch herbaceous plants yet, as it is too early in the season; wait until the new shoots have emerged.
• To start a herb garden, sow seeds of herbs or use stolons of mint for new plants and rooted cuttings of sage.
• Take cuttings of dahlias as they are ready, and insert them into small pots or cell trays filled with seed sowing/cuttings compost. Leave the tubers in moist compost to produce more cuttings as required.
• Continue to sow vegetable seeds, making a succession of small sowings of each type rather than one big one.