Your mid-winter gardening to-do list
It’s mid winter, but there are plenty of jobs to get on with in the garden. Here’s our top 10:
- Cut down tatty stems of perennials such as sedum and clip ornamental grasses right back if you haven’t yet done so.
- Treat yourself to scented winter-flowering shrubs such as daphne or stunning Hamamelis x intermedia (Witch Hazel).
- Finish winter pruning apple and pear trees while they’re dormant, creating a goblet shape of four to five main branches, followed by a fertiliser such as poultry manure pellets and mulch.
- Remove old and crossing branches on currant bushes to the base and cut autumn raspberries to the ground, followed by a feed.
- Deciduous trees and shrubs can be pruned now while dormant, giving late flowering shrubs such as buddleja a good hard lop. For colourful new stems, cut mature cornus down to the base now and hardy evergreens can also be pruned, followed by a fertiliser and mulch.
- This is the best time to divide or buy snowdrops, while they’re ‘in the green’ planting them in naturalistic groups of three, five and seven.
- Keep on top of weeds and rake up winter leaves from your borders to deter slugs.
- Cut summer side shoots on wisteria to 2 or 3 buds from the main stem.
- Provided the soil isn’t frozen this is great time for planting trees and shrubs including roses while they’re dormant.
- Give your borders a sprinkling of organic slow release fertiliser such as blood, fish and bone or pelleted chicken manure – so the nutrients will be available as your plants start to grow in spring.