A week of weather

Last week was very mixed with every day offering something entirely different. Waking up each morning one did not know just what to expect.

I took a quick stroll round the garden and surprisingly it was not really cold. I did notice that the warmth seemed to be coaxing out the buds on the hedgerows and the small garden birds were making their presence known with their early morning warbles.

Seeds can now be sown indoors or on a sunny windowsill and greenhouses are still the favourite place to germinate our seeds, but watch the weather forecasts and give extra protection on extremely cold nights using either garden fleece or newspaper.

Make sure that all your seed trays and small pots are nice and clean and once the seeds have germinated, and the first true leaves have formed, prick the seedlings out into cell trays taking great care not to hold the seedlings by the stem as this will damage the plant. Hold the plant by the leaves so that you do not break or damage the stem.

If the weather is suitable sow first and second early seed potatoes either in bags, or even in the vegetable patch outside as long as the soil is not waterlogged. It is useful to add some sharp sand or perlite to the bottom of the planting hole to prevent the seed potato from rotting.

Tomatoes are best home grown

There is nothing nicer than the taste of your own home-grown tomatoes and the average greenhouse will accommodate maybe four or six full plant pots.

The choice of what type of tomatoes you want to grow is entirely yours in terms of size and colour but the important factor is to make certain that the plants are kept evenly watered from an early stage.

Do not let the young plants dry out or over soak them. By May your tomatoes should be in their final pots.

At that time do not apply any feeding, otherwise you will end up with lots of leaves and very little fruit. It can be useful, though to give each plant a one-off dose of Epsom salts. Make sure you stake and support each plant and do not let the plant grow any higher than four or five trusses high. Do this by nipping off the top truss.

As the plant grows, remove the side-shoots between the main stem and the stronger upper trusses and this will help your plant grow nice neat trusses. Give each plant a gentle shake each morning to assist in pollination of the plant or alternatively a fine spray of water.

Slow release fertilisers are a good idea

One of the best things that you can do in your garden is to use slow release fertilisers when you are planting new plants. These granular products when used at planting time will release all the nutrients that your plants will need to sustain them over a lengthy period of time and save you having to keep on feeding your plants at regular intervals with liquid feeding products. These slow release granules will provide your plants with all the nutrients they will need over a long period of time and will make life a lot easier for you. They are obtainable from many garden centres and from some of the major seedsmen by mail order.

Make use of the sun

Power from the sun is something that does not cost us anything in terms of energy and you can use it to provide you with colourful lights around the garden once darkness falls to brighten up the patio when you are sitting outside on a warm summer evening. Apart from the business of providing illumination solar energy can be used to power water features and various other features both on the garden and the patio. It is just amazing how much energy we can gain from the sun even on what might appear to be a dull day.

Annual and perennial weeds

These are the two types of weeds that are encountered in most gardens and the annual weeds grow only from seeds. It is best to remove them when the weeds are at the two-leaf stage if you can manage this. Weeds are actually by definition plants growing in the wrong place and all the annual weeds are capable of self- seeding.

Perennial weeds, on the other hand, are much more difficult to eradicate and usually require to be dug out manually. These kind of weeds have a much deeper and stronger root system and perennial weeds such as Brambles Dandelion and Dock and creeping buttercup are all a real menace.

An alternative way to control them is to cover them with black polythene to restrict light getting to them but this can take several months before success becomes effective. Often covering the weeds with cardboard is a solution. Remember weeds can be added to the compost bin and allowed to rot down.