Gardeners Tips

Plant and Floral Resolutions

• Grow the plants and flowers you like.
• Grow more flowers for cutting.
• Grow plants for shape, texture and form.
• Tie to supports Clematis, Chimonanthus and Climbing Roses to prevent wind damage and improve flowering.
• Increase the planting of scented Witch Hazel (eg. Hamamellis x intermedia Jelena).
• Sow Sweet Peas in deep pots and pinch out the tips when they have 5 leaves.
• Plan how the colour of flowers will look when planted. Use single colours rather than mixed seed packets.
• Collect and replant or distribute the seed from your own star plants.
• Grow plants that contribute over long periods of the year.
• Select and grow a shock and awe plant.

Eco and Environmental Resolutions

• Remember we must leave this environment for future generations.
• Grow fewer varieties but focus on nectar and pollen rich flowers that are local and help wild life.
• Improve soil with rotted compost and try not to compact the air out of wet soil by walking on it.
• Increase water collection and storage with linked butts or new collection points.
• Fumigate the greenhouse to get rid of fungal spores and overwintering pests
• Provide a range of different bird foods to attract various species. Blackbirds love a bit of a bite of an apple.
• Keep lawn edges neat and trimmed but have natural areas for wild grass and flowers.
• Use natural fertiliser and non-chemical controls.
• Reuse and repurpose old items rather than sending them to the tip.
• Use local and natural stone for your construction work. Airmiles on Indian paving and energy used to manufacture composition paving slabs are unnecessary uses of resources.

General Gardening Resolutions

• Reduce the size of plant clumps and shrubs and trees that are beginning to take over their allotted spot.
• Deadhead faded flowers to extend flowering time.
• Prune and trim when plants need it not just when you have the secateurs in your hand.
• Sow seeds thinly and thin out. Give plants appropriate space.
• Make succession sowings, only sow small quantities of a crop at each sowing.
• Split clumps of Snowdrops and Winter Aconites after flowering. They split best ‘in the green’.
• Create a low maintenance area to spend time elsewhere in the garden.
• Take full enjoyment out of your garden.
• Listen to advice but do as you please.
• Work with the weather it is all you’ll get.

Houseplants and Indoor Pots

• Check plants for pests before bringing them into your home.
• Keep Azalea and Cyclamen pot plants moist at all times.
• Flowering plants need bright light so position accordingly.
• Repot plants into larger pots if have consumed the compost or are in need of space.
• Add fresh compost to the top of pots when the houseplants are not growing as strongly.
• Keep pots of bulbs and flowering plants cool to prolong the life of the flowers.
• Many houseplants will benefit from some time outside in the middle of summer.
• Water the plants not the windowsills.
• Move plants around in the home.
• Try the exotic not the commonplace.

Win Friends and Influence People

• Grow more flowers and greenery for cutting and flower arranging. It should please those indoors
• Grow pots and containers of plants to give away. It is an easy way to use your surplus.
• Sharpen your blades and tools using a sharpening stone and wipe over with oil
• Look at your garden from your boundary and aim for at least one crowd pleasing feature for passers by to admire.
• Join your local horticultural society, you will get advice, make friends and may be offered free or cheap produce.
• Use the RHS and AGS for information and join these societies if you want to use the benefits of membership.
• Plant to visit flower shows and open gardens to see how the professionals design and execute a garden scheme.
• Beg cuttings or advice from other gardeners, they are usually a friendly bunch. I was once told ‘Everyone is entitled to my opinion’.
• Enter your local village show. It is the taking part that is important not the winning.
• Keep your boundary and pavements neat and tidy. Pick up litter and kill off weeds outside your house to make the street a better place to live.

Allotment Focused Resolutions

• Get an allotment!
• Alternatively increase cultivated area by a deal with a neighbor
• Mastered the art of successional sowing to avoid gluts.
• Grow more winter crops
• Store potatoes, butternut squashes, onions and shallots.
• Pick courgettes and runner beans regularly.
• Protect against carrot root fly, cabbage white butterfly and Pigeons before it is too late.
• Get more manure to hearten up the soil.
• Talk to other allotmenteers about successes and failures of the past
• Grow what the family will eat.

Gardeners Tips Resolutions

• Read Gardeners Tips regularly
• Subscribe to gardeners tips RSS feed
• Get Gardeners tips by email.
• Buy from Jersey Plants or Thompson Morgan by using Gardeners tips links.
• Comment on Gardeners tips.
• Link your web site to Gardeners tips.
• Advertise on Gardeners tips.
• Tell your friends about Gardeners tips.
• Nominate the best resolution from the list of 101 Gardeners tips new year’s resolutions
• Did I mention Gardeners tips for the best gardening tips?

Fruit and Vegetable Resolutions

• Grow more fruit and disbud so that apples, pears and plums grow to a good size.
• Grow early potatoes in containers or sacks such as International Kidney or Vales Emerald for something newer.
• Start chillie seeds early on a sunny windowsill.
• If I grow Chard Bright Lights in a decorative bed I must remember to eat the crop not just look at it.
• Two or three Marrow plants can provide all the courgettes a family needs. Try Defender or Green Bush
• Reshape old Apple trees during winter by pruning to get a bowl shape that lets in air and light.
• Divide congested clumps of Rhubarb .
• Feed the area around the roots of fruit trees.
• Consider more space for fruit such as Stone fruit, Bush fruit, Cane fruit, Soft fruit and Apple and Pear trees.
• Add lime to the soil where you plan to grow brassicas and leafy greens.

Fun Resolutions

• Give me patience but hurry!
• Apply perspiration in the garden regularly.
• If it dies its a flower if it lives its a weed.
• With a flower in one hand and a cold drink in the other, tell somebody else where to dig.
• Have pride in how bad your hands look.
• Learn by by trowel and error.
• The four seasons are salt, pepper, mustard and brown sauce.
• It is knowledge to know Tomato is a fruit but wisdom to stop putting it in a fruit salad.
• Go to the Yorkshire garden center where you can buy one – get one
• Grow your own dope … plant a man.

Restate the Blinking Obvious

• Do more weeding.
• Cut the grass regularly.
• Keep everything tidy.
• Water deeply when needed.
• Excel with the plants you already grow.
• Kill insects that cause damage.
• Stop infectious rot and disease.
• Turf out the dead and dying.
• Nature causes living things to suffer and die.

• Do not believe all you read in lists like this.

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