What a fantastic spring it has been for daffodils! They have looked superb for the past few weeks, and are in full bloom in both gardens and countryside. It is always a good idea to photograph ones which are looking good now in order that you can remember the ones you like when changing bulbs in the autumn.
Some jobs in the garden this week - doing some spring work on your fruit bushes will give good results in the summer and autumn:
• Now is a good time to plant blueberry bushes – or if you have existing blueberry plants then feed them now with ericaceous plant food.
• It’s not the best job in the garden, but now is the time to prune those gooseberry bushes.
• Mulch your fruit trees with well rotten farmyard manure – this will provide the nutrients to help give a great crop of fruit in the autumn.
• Trim the tips of summer fruiting raspberry canes – cut just above a bud and prune to the height of the plant support. If you have autumn fruiting varieties, cut the canes to the ground and this will stimulate that plant to produce new canes.
PLANT OF THE WEEK: PRUNUS ‘KOJO NO MAI’
A brilliant plant for the springtime is Prunus ‘Kojo no mai’. This is one of the earliest flowering cherry varieties around and is grown as a bush or sometimes grafted to form a small standard tree. It produces thousands of shell pink flowers in early spring and is ideal to be grown in a container or planted in a border – it has the added bonus of producing great autumn colour and winter interest with its twisted stem structure – a great, hardy plant for Scotland!
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