Spring is just around the corner and there are plenty of things you can be doing in the garden in readiness:
Chit seed potatoes ready for planting (allow them to start sprouting shoots to give them a head start when planted)
- Prepare vegetable seed beds by digging over and raking to create a fine tilth. It’s now time to start sowing vegetable seeds. At this time of year they need protection; sow them in a greenhouse, a polytunnel, or under cloches
- Put netting over fruit and vegetable crops to protect them from birds
- Prune winter-flowering shrubs that have finished flowering
Cut back ornamental deciduous grasses such as pampas grasses and stipa
- Lift and divide snowdrops and replant the divided bulbs
- Prune wisteria
- Cut or prune hardy evergreen hedges and renovate overgrown deciduous hedges. Before starting work, make sure there are no nesting birds in the hedge
- Prune conservatory climbers
- Prune free-standing fruit trees and bushes; apples, pears