garden
Jobs to Do
By Ronnie Ogier
IN THE GARDEN
Ronnie is a passionate gardener and now loves sharing her years of experience of success and failures in her own garden and sharing it with you. Also a keen runner, having been bitten by the ‘Couch to 5K’ bug!
When we first started hearing about COVID-19, I thought it was a ‘lot of hype’, a fuss over a flu bug, but no, this is something very different! We have a daughter in the UK who is a GP, the type who tells me, and her family, not to make a fuss over nothing. Her attitude to Covid-19 has been very different right from the start of the outbreak, advising us to keep safe and self-isolate. So, here we are after many weeks of confinement, and what a difference it is making to my garden! We have been able to catch with many of the jobs we hadn’t completed this winter, and probably for the past two winters, and to start (and even finish) some on my wish list.
As we go into May the bulbs are fading, and herbaceous borders have started to grow in leaps and bounds; it is now clear that summer is approaching. But take care, as May can still bring some late frosts to damage tender plants. Since we came to live in France I have learned about ‘Les Saints De Glace’ (11th-13th May 2020) and ‘La Lune Rousse’ (23rd April – 22nd May). The first is selfexplanatory, the ‘Ice Saints’, the second is the first full cycle of the moon after Easter. At this time of year, the buds are emerging, full of vigour and rising sap, but it’s not uncommon to have still, cold nights with low temperatures extending into the early hours which will burn the new buds, giving them a scorched appearance. Hence the name ‘La Lune Rousse’, so it isn’t the moon that’s red, it’s the tips of our plants! So be patient, it is not yet time to safely plant out tomatoes, peppers, aubergines and tender annuals. But it is the time to… ● hoe off weeds – it’s easier to stop weeds getting a hold than taking out full grown weeds later in the summer; ● start controlling the activity of slugs and snails - trap them under tiles, grapefruit skins or beer traps and dispose of them; ● collect rainwater and investigate ways to recycle water for irrigation, as we are likely to need all the water we can get in July and beyond!
● Put supports in place for herbaceous plants before they are too tall. In the vegetable garden ● Plant out brassicas and leeks to their final positions. ● Pinch out the growing points of broad beans to reduce the risk of blackfly attack. In the fruit garden ● Hang pheromone traps in fruit trees from May to August to reduce ‘moth’ activity. ● Surround strawberries with straw to protect fruit. Net them to keep birds off the fruit. In the greenhouse ● Ventilate your greenhouse on warm days. ● Hang fly traps throughout the greenhouse to catch whitefly, thrips and other pests. Looking after your lawn ● Start mowing your lawns once a week now, but still keep the blades fairly high. And finally, one of my regular obsessions, if you haven’t taken photographs of your garden in previous years try to get into the habit of doing so now. Monthly photos of your garden remind you where plants are and where there are gaps. They let you see what went well and what didn’t work, plus it’s very rewarding to look back at your successes at different times of the year.
In the flower garden ● Feed spring bulbs to encourage good flowering next year, but allow the foliage to die down. ● Prune spring-flowering shrubs after flowering.
Happy Gardening!
(And keep taking photo�!)
etcetera 29