3 Key gardening tasks for early 2017

 
Sweet Peas – Additional colour for your garden
your very first gardening task for 2017 is to start some sweet pea seeds on your kitchen windowsill.  Sweet peas provide a great show of summer colour and an abundance of cut flowers for the house and they are so easy to grow. – the more flowers you cut the more flowers you will get.
The seeds are best sown early in the new year, take the seed and lightly scratch the seed on a rough brick wall or a nail file just enough to scuff the hard coat to allow water to enter the seed. Stand on some tissue paper on a kitchen plate and water, leave the seeds for 24 hours. They will start to germinate and can then be placed one or two seeds into a three inch pot with compost on a windowsill. Within a few weeks you will be on the way to creating some plants that can be planted out in the spring. Click Here
 
Fruit Tree care – lots of our views and clients have found that fruit trees have been infected with fungal and bacterial diseases. January is the time to start to deal with these problems by treating your fruit trees and bushes with a winter wash that will help to remove the overwintering spores and pests eggs on your fruit trees and bushes so they will start with a clean bill of health next season. For some advice email us a few pictures of your fruit trees and bushes and will will come back to you some advice. Click Here
 
Dahlia – once a very popular flower but now unfairly underrated. Such a brilliant flower for adding summer colour for the summer garden especially the new garden in its first year. Possibility underrated because of the need for staking and earwigs these issues are easy to solve by staking early to provide support so the plants grow through the stake supports and simply earwig traps or encouraging garden birds such as blue tits make short work of earwigs. Click Here