Pat’s Jobs for March 2025

1. Time to pot up those Dahlia tubers in 3 litre pots, making sure the tubers have an ‘eye’ which will shoot. Cover in compost, allowing the stem to rest at the surface, then label and water and keep somewhere reasonably light and frost free (greenhouse or windowsill) until they start growing.

2. Now is the time I start sowing sweetpeas: five seeds to a 3 inch pot and keep on a light windowsill or greenhouse until they germinate. You can try sowing directly into the soil which I think works well for some.

3. Check large clumps of perennials like phlox, rudbeckia and sedums which may become woody in the centre and have fewer flowers. Dig up and discard the centres and split the plants and replant, incorporating some compost into the soil. Please pot up a few for our monthly plant sale table or the big plant sale in May.

4. Remove protection carefully from large pots of bulbs before the shoots get squashed, making sure they are well established and less of a delicacy to squirrels – and hope they survive the onslaught! I use wire netting, metal grids and bricks which looks awful for the winter but worth it in the end hopefully.

5. Mulch the soil around plants and shrubs with any compost or composted horse manure you have, adding in any food like pelleted chicken manure: gently forking in so as not to disturb roots. The worms will do the work.

6. Dig up and split large clumps of snowdrops and separate and replant, either singly or in small amounts in refreshed soil. Mine flowered poorly this year and a lot of the flowers were eaten by slugs and snails. Yet everywhere else they looked lovely.

7. Sow some tender climbers this month like Thunbergia and Ipomea on a sunny windowsill. They can look lovely in pots, with supports adding another dimension.

8. In the veg garden sow another lot of broad beans, providing some netting for protection, and mark the spot with canes so you don’t forget where they are.

9. Plant up your early seed potatoes towards the end of the month, either in pots or in the ground after digging a trench then drawing up the soil as the foliage comes through. In a pot just add compost as the foliage grows.

10. Leave hedge trimming until late summer when birds have finished nesting. I’m enjoying watching them taking moss I left for them in the garden to line their nests.

Happy gardening all!

Pat K