Preparing For The Planting Season

As a gardener I am always thinking or preparing for the upcoming garden planting season.  Now is the time to really focus on what you want to achieve this year in the garden.  The weather is too hot to do a lot of large – scale planting out but this does not mean you can’t assess your garden.  Look at what parts of your garden needs changing, where do you need to fill in any gaps in the planting, which plants have done well, and which ones haven’t done well through Summer. You must be critical about the plants and their health.  Make a note about those that have done well in the summer months, these are the species you should use again throughout the garden.  Those plants that are not looking well, think about how much water you have used on them; do they need to be relocated to more protected shadier locations.  If you are aware of which plants suit your garden best, you can make educated decisions in the nursery when you are buying your next batch of plants.

If you have areas where you need to plant out new plants start preparing the soil. Remove all weeds and coverage from the area, start cultivating the soil, dig through organic matter such as compost.  You can also add organic fertilisers at this time.  Start watering the soil as though there are plants growing in the space so that the water holding capacity of the soil starts improving. You can even spread a layer of mulch in these areas to start suppressing weed growth.  There is always something in the garden to do and the more time you spend preparing the soil now, the less work there will be to do whilst your plants are establishing.  I can not stress more highly putting time and effort into the soil preparation before you plant out garden areas.  This will give your new plants the best opportunity to get their roots down into the soil and become established before the hot weather of next Summer.