Give your garden a spring cleaning – part 2

 

It is still a bit too early to be doing a lot of gardening, but there are lots of great spring cleaning jobs to be getting on with in the garden at the moment. Such as:

• Check over all tools, sharpen your cutting tools, including your lawnmower blade so that you’re ready for action once the weather improves. But of course take great care with sharp items.
• Algae, moss and weeds will also have grown on your paths, steps and patio. You can use a narrow wire brush to get the detritus out from the cracks in the paving, use a weedkiller where you can’t get access to their roots and a path and patio cleaner on all the stone areas to clean and restore the colour. Decking will also need a vigorous sweep and treatment with an algicide as when wet these areas can be very slippery.
•  In the garden it is a good time to get your spring pruning done. So prune roses before they start back into growth. Newly planted roses should be pruned hard but established bushes only need a light prune, unless they are a weak growing variety, then its best to always prune hard to promote some strong re-growth.
• Feed with a good rose feed once pruning is complete. You should also now be completing the cutting back of Buddleias, Leycesteria and Lavateras, trimming Lavenders and other herbs, cutting all old growth off herbaceous plants and cutting back hardy fuchsias to where strong re-growth is visible. Again, once completed, give a good feed with either Growmore or Vitax Q4.