April 15, 2021 – 3:01 pm BST
Georgia Brown
Quick Gardening: When it comes to maintaining your garden, time is not always on your side. Transform your garden with these quick gardening tips.
With garden parties and outdoor gatherings back on the agenda, there’s never a better time to transform your outdoor spaces. But when the social calendar fills up and the long-awaited hair appointment devours your free time, garden maintenance isn’t on the priority list.
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Green fingers and plant lovers will know that gardens are long-term projects. The key is to keep smaller jobs often and be patient with the results. If you start smaller chores now, you’ll be grateful when you have a lovely flowering garden to maintain later this summer.
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Calum Maddock, gardening expert at HomeHow.co.ukshared his tips on how to transform your garden in an hour or less.
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1. Prune hedges
Overgrown hedges can easily become a nuisance and create large patches of shadow – not ideal if you’ve been indoors for a year. Pruning your hedges is important to prevent dead and dying branches from harming nearby plants and people. This can take up to an hour depending on the size, but regular embellishments keep it looking neat.
Watch out for birds nesting in your hedges before you start pruning – the breeding season is usually March through August.
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2. Sow seeds
Growing vegetables is a fun and sustainable way to transform your outdoor space. It’s a quick, inexpensive, and fun way to grow new hardy flowers or vegetables and can be enjoyed by the whole family.
Potatoes, peas and strawberries are easy to start off with if you have no experience – the perfect crop for summer salads and smoothies! Pick up seeds online or at your local garden center and follow the step-by-step instructions on the package.
All you need are the basic requirements for germination: warmth, moisture and oxygen. Most flowers and vegetables need a warm, sheltered area that will attract the sun as this will keep the compost moist.
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3. Irrigation
Before you roll your eyes, watering is actually a more complicated task than it seems. Get it right and your garden will thank you with beautiful blooming flowers and lush green grass. Forget it or over water and you could end up with a very dead outside space.
Before watering your plants, use your finger to check if the soil is moist, watery, or dry. Cacti and succulents are the only plants that survive with infrequent watering. Plants in containers need more watering than plants in borders.
Plants depend on constant moisture. If you keep your time limits, root growth will be encouraged. As a rule of thumb, the floor should be water-cooled in the evening and not on the day when less water evaporates.
A quick tip for thirsty plants like tomatoes is to bury a flower pot next to it. As soon as it is filled with water, it is absorbed into the soil.
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4. Clean your patio
When you clean up your patio or rearrange your seating area, all of your outside space will be refreshed! Callum recommends setting all pots and furniture to one side and removing dirt with a thin brush.
To remove any traces of dirt, mix together soap and water or patio cleaner and scrub everything for a clean finish. If your patio has weeds, spray weed killers or boiling water directly on them. Avoid praising them as this will give more weeds room to grow.
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5. Remove tired plants
Unfortunately, even the most seasoned green thumbs get dead, tired plants every now and then. If you have old shrubs or flowering plants that need revitalization, don’t be afraid to remove them. Plants that look old can negatively affect the overall appearance of your garden.
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Weed killers will help you remove as many unwanted plants as possible. Read the labels to determine which product is best for you. Avoid ripping the plants out of the ground as you will be robbing your soil microbes of a good meal and reducing your long-term soil fertility.
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