As the growing season takes off in earnest, it’s hard not to feel a little frantic. Now is the time to weed the garden, re-pot houseplants, and sow seeds.
Suddenly everything looks bigger, greener and much more flowery. As the growing season takes off in earnest, we get the beauty of blossom and the thrill of new leaves. But spring also brings a cornucopia of weeds, a growth spurt for lawns and a fast-closing window for timely tree planting. It’s hard not to feel a little frantic.
As the days lengthen and the sun gets warmer, the trick is to find the right balance between hands-on activity and put-your-feet-up pleasure.This is the season for basking in the beauty of metre-high borage, marching euphorbias and frothy crab apple trees but it’s also a time for uprooting what you don’t want, pruning hedges, trimming shrubs that have finished flowering, reviving pots and plumping up beds.
But there are really no rules, especially now that more of us are starting to think about gardening as a process of fostering whole ecosystems. Stinging nettles, say, provide food for ladybirds, which feast on aphids, which have a nasty habit of tucking into almost every plant you love most. Leaving nettles be can have an upside.
And while we are talking edibles, if you are propagating tomatoes, capsicums, eggplants and other such summer crops from seed you should be staggering your sowing indoors now. But it’s perfectly possible to skip this bit entirely and, in another month or two, buy seedlings that can go straight into the ground.Other seedlings, like lettuces, other leafy greens and herbs can be planted now, including in pots on balconies. Pamper them with fresh potting mix and your crops will reward you for it.
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