Tidy your garden – but not too much and the chickens take dance lessons
We are just about to leave Spring and rush into Summer. This means you have to tidy your spring plants to make room for your new summer growth and seedlings. By now all the early bulbs should have gone over and all you are left with is dying foliage and seed heads. Don’t make the mistake of grubbing everything out too early and failing to let growth and goodness go back into the soil and plants.
Whilst I have been busy readying the garden for Summer Cruella (my wife) has insisted her girls should get dancing lessons in case they are invited to Summer Balls. More of this nonsense later, on with the gardening.
28th April 2026. Things I have been doing lately:
- Deadheading and tidying early flowerers
- Preparing my Chilli’s for summer
- Dealing with dancing chicken damage
Deaheading and tidying early flowerers. By now all the early Spring plants have gone over and it’s time to tidy up plants such as Daffodils, Iris, Ice plants and even Mother in Laws Tongues.
Starting with Daffodils. By now you should have completely cut off all the seed heads and your plants will be looking like the ones in the photos below.
The key to success for next year’s bulbs is to let the foliage die completely back and go brown. Do not cut it off and definitely do not tie it in a knot. By doing this you are allowing the plant to transfer the goodness from its foliage back down into the bulb.
With Iris both Spanish and Dutch should now be fully spent and you need to deadhead them to stop them spending their energy making seed. With Iris you need to cut off the spent flower at the point in the stem where you can see a distinct narrowing. In addition to cutting off the seed head, do not be tempted to cut back the mass of foliage. See photos below.
Look for the narrowingDo not cut this off yetBy now your Ice Plants (Aizoaceae) will have flowered freely for two or three months. With Ice Plants it is best not to deadhead individual stems as it will just take too long. Instead wait till they have all flowered and then get out your shears and just shear off all the flowers. Try not to cut too far into the green foliage and with a bit of luck you should get another full flowering this autumn and sometimes before. The photos below show my Ice Plants ready for their annual trim and the final trim back.
Another in the tidying up stakes is Mother in Laws Tongue (Dracaena trifasciata) which is usually ready for a tidy up this time of year. This plant is popular in Spain as it is unfussy and will happily spread through underground runners. The only problem with it is if left to its own it can begin to look a bit scruffy. The photo below shows my plant looking a bit of a scruff.
The first thing to do when clearing this plant is to trying pulling at all the dry brown stems and many will come away easily. For those that don’t you will need to get a good sharp gardening knife and go down to the base of each stem to where it’s attaches to the runner and cut these off at ground level. The photos below show my trusty old gardening knife (over 30 years old), followed by where to cut and finally the cleared plant.
Finally climbing roses need as much dead wood cut out as possible. I find it is almost impossible to find deadwood on climbing roses over winter. I get fed up scraping branch after branch to discover if there is green beneath. Instead, I find it is better to wait until the plant begins to leaf up and blossom and then it is easy to identify the dead branches and these can be cut out. The photos below show the untangling and cutting out of dead branches. Make sure you wear gloves as blood will be spilled.
Preparing Chillis for summer. For those of you who took my advice and cutback and repotted last years Chilli plants, now is the time to repot them to larger pots for their summer growth. All of my Chillis apart from one successfully overwintered and are now read y to burst into life. The photo below shows the healthy survivors in their winter pots.
Like many plants Chillis do not like their roots to be disturbed too much so it is better to use the in-pot filling method shown in the photos below. This approach minimises any root disturbance and shock and ensure the plants will produce fruit more quickly.
The photo below shows my Chillis just a couple of weeks later. As you can see they are already flowering and soon I will be harvesting Chillis.
Dealing with dancing chicken damage. Cruella (my wife) has decided that her girls could have a career in show business, but not in what she calls the “common” shows like Britains Got Talent, but more in the Royal Command Performance type of thing. To this end she has declared that they are forming a dance troupe – I keep spelling it troop and she gets really mad.
To this end they have been having dancing lessons in the garden for the past few weeks. This mainly involves them holding on to a tree or low wall and doing strange knee bending moves by slowly lowering their bums to the ground, then striking out dramatically with one foot. Cruella assures me this is their “barre” exercises and that the knee bending is their Pliès followed by Frappès.
The upshot of all this dancing is that they are digging up the membrane under my gravelled areas as they perform their barre exercises. Some of the damage can be seen in the photos below followed by a typical dance class in action.
I have spent hours wandering round with a rake pulling gravel back into position, but no matter how hard I work the garden is beginning to look like the Somme battlefield. I finally convinced Cruella (my wife) that a classier option would be to teach her girls traditional dancing. Such as dancing round the Maypole etc. I am pleased to say that they now spend their time spinning around in circles under my trees attached to bits of string. The photos below show a typical rehearsal.
#composting #flowers #garden #Gardening #horticulture #plants #pruning #seeds #trees
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