Welcome to the new millennium. We would like to wish you all the best wishes for the new century, and particularly with your garden. We will be able to look back now and tell our children and grandchildren that we planted that in the last century or your granddad built that in the last century—a historic time indeed.
A lot of people marked the occasion by planting a tree on the 31st of December and the 1st of January. It’s a nice idea to mark the occasion and can still be done as this is the first year of the new millennium. These will hopefully be here long after we are gone, to be enjoyed by future generations, part of our legacy.
Now is a good time for planting of the barerooted or burlaped plants. These are plants or trees that are not in containers. They are available while the plants are dormant between October and March. They are lifted out of the ground with a full root system and as they have no pot or compost they must be planted immediately again or heeled in to the soil again. It is a cheaper way of planting and there is a reasonable selection of hedging, conifers and trees available. For example, in hedging there is Griselinia, Escallonia, Beech and Craetagus available at a third of the normal price of potted varieties. There is a large selection of conifers available—different varieties of Thujas such as Pyrimiadlis, Brabant, Emerald, Yellow Ribbon, etc and lots of Taxus and chamecyparis varieties such as Columnaris Glauca, Laneri, Stardust, Erecta Verdis, etc.
These would be bigger than the normal potted varieties also and cheaper in price.
In Trees, we would have a large selection of Acers, Birch, Limes, Beech, Oaks, Mountain Ash, etc. Bareroot trees can also be got in varying sizes from semi mature down to half standard 12–14 inches to your average size garden centre tree. So if you have a lot of planting to do and want to save yourself some money, get down now, pick it out and get planting. Remember after March it will be all containerised planting—no bareroot plants available after that until October.
The birds are becoming very active again with the little stretch in the evenings they are busy. It is important to keep feeding them, so top up your nut and seed feeders or put bread and fat in your bird tables. It makes for interesting watching as they compete with each other for a go at the feeder!
Anybody that planted winter bedding plants prior to December was unfortunate as they got a real blasting from the elements. Do not worry as they will recover and come back to flower. At the moment the weather has picked up somewhat and is an ideal time for planting the winter bedding plants, such as the winter pansys, polyanthus, sweet williams and forget-me-not.
February Checklist
- Lawns: Rake off fallen leaves from the lawn. Prepare ground for new lawns.
- Trees & shrubs: Continue planting deciduous trees and shrubs in good weather. Carry out any major lopping or felling of deciduous trees. Prune deciduous shrubs.
- Roses: Dig ground for new rose beds. Apply composted farmyard manure to existing rose beds. It helps feed them, acts as a mulch and prevents them drying out too much in the summer.
- Flowers: In good weather continue planting and tidying, dead heading of plants. Continue light digging in flower beds.
- Vegetables: Finish off digging over the beds. Apply well composted farmyard manure or similar. Get ready for planting all the early seed potatoes.
- Fruit: Continue planting fruit trees in good weather. Prune apple and pear trees and blackcurrant and gooseberry bushes. Apply tar oil winter wash. Apply sulphate of potash now (helps in the production of fruit) to all fruit trees and bushes. Sulphate of potash is slowly taken up so to be of use it needs to be applied now.
- Greenhouse: Tidy up and clean all debris from Greenhouse. Disinfect pots and seed trays. Bring in potted strawberry plants for forcing. The first seeds to be sown will be geraniums, anthirinhums, pansys, busy lizzies.
- House plants: Make sure plants get maximum light available. Keep plants out of draughts and cold places. Water and feed only those plants that are in flower. Keep all others on the dry side.
That’s it for now, for all you romantics don’t forget Valentines Day!
Happy gardening,
Bosco McDermott Jr, Glynn’s Garden Centre & Fruit & Veg, Lydican.
Tel: 091 799135
