insideKENT Magazine Issue 24 - March 2014 | Page 133

OUTDOORLIVING
here comes spring! cont.

Fruit
FRUIT AND NUT TREES
• Last chance to plant bare-root fruit trees, and ideally plant containergrown ones too.
• Protect fruit blossom from frost, but make sure insects can access the
flowers or else hand pollinate them.
• Carry out formative pruning of newly planted stone fruit if the weather
is dry.
• Apply a nitrogen feed to plums, cherries, cooking apples and pears as
they’re hungry feeders.
• Switch to a summer feed for all citrus trees.
• Increase the watering of citrus as growth resumes.
SOFT FRUITS
• Pollinate strawberry flowers under glass by brushing over them with your
hands.
• Plant cold-stored strawberry runners.
• Sow seeds of alpine strawberries.
• Plant cranberries and lingonberries.
• Mulch raspberries, blueberries, cranberries and lingonberries with wellrotted farmyard manure (not mushroom compost as it is too alkaline).
• Apply a high nitrogen feed to blackcurrants.
• Prune blueberries.
• Apply sulphur chips to beds of blueberries, lingonberries and cranberries
if needed.
• Untie canes of blackberries and hybrid berries that have been bundled
together for the winter, and train into arches before the buds burst.
VINE FRUITS
• Never prune grape vines after late winter to avoid sap bleeding, otherwise
vines can be seriously weakened or even killed.
GENERAL CARE
• Apply a mulch around fruit trees, nuts, and bushes as long as the ground
isn’t frozen.
• Repot or top dress container-grown fruit if needed.

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Vegetables
SOWING AND PLANTING
• Plant onions, shallots and garlic sets.
• Plant Jerusalem artichoke tubers.
• Chit early and maincrop potatoes.
• Plant asparagus crowns.
• Sow seed outdoors in mild areas with light soil, eg: broad beans,
carrots, parsnips, beetroot, onions, lettuces, radish, peas, spinach,
summer cabbage, salad leaves, leeks, Swiss chard, kohl rabi,
turnip and summer cauliflower. Be guided by the weather, and
sow only if conditions are suitable.
• Sow seed indoors of sweet peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers,
aubergines, celery, salads and globe artichokes.
GENERAL CARE
• Cultivate and prepare seedbeds, covering them with clear
polythene or fleece to warm up the soil before sowing.
• Protect early outdoor sowings with fleece and polythene.
• Feed crops that have been standing all winter.
• Continue to force chicory.
• Put supports in place for peas.
• Start preparing runner bean supports and trenches for sowing
(in May) or planting out (in June).
• Prepare celery trenches.
• Try to avoid digging in wet weather, but if gardening on wet soil,
work from a plank of wood, to avoid treading on the bed and
compacting the soil.