22 February 2009

Some Jobs For Week 8

Hello everyone. This week in UK and gardeners with a likewise climate can attend to the following work.
There is a lot of greenhouse work to be done with the sowing of half-hardy annuals such as antirrhinum, Begonia semperflorens, cosmea, lobelia, marigolds, nicotiana, and petunia to name but a few. If not already done you can now bring dahlia tubers out of store if you wish to increase your stock from cuttings. Place in a box and cover the tubers with peat or old compost and set out in a warm greenhouse and soon they will start to put out shoots for cuttings. This week is the time to make an early sowing of celery. If you aren’t able to maintain a temperature of between 16 to 18C during the germination period then this may be a job that is better left for a little while. Make a sowing of maincrop tomatoes for growing on in the greenhouse through the summer. If you have a warm sheltered place in the veg garden you can make a sowing of turnips. As with a lot of veg its better to make small sowings at regular intervals of about two weeks rather than one big sowing which will probably end up being mostly wasted. It’s now getting plenty late enough for buying and planting bare rooted shrubs and trees so if you plan on doing that this year be sure to give the job your full attention this week. Anyone who has grass to cut needs to get out the lawn mower and make sure everything is working as it should. This job should really have been done before now as the mower shops will already have plenty of work on servicing equipment so if you aren’t sure about the condition of your mower you need to check it out pretty darn quickly.
Bob.

1 comment:

EB said...

Thanks Bob - a very useful reminder! I will post a picture of the state of our greenhouse to give you a laugh...