I’m not going to bleat on about the weather this month, instead, I will quote the saying “April showers bring May flowers” Therefore I am expecting Mays flowers to be Abundant! The rain has been welcomed this month by the perennials particularly which this year are really beginning to bulk up. One of my particular favourite beds is just coming into flower, the Geums are always one of the first to eagerly join the party. Reliable and hardy these plants require no particular attention I just strim them down in February, throw some chicken manure pellets at them and that’s it, from now will flower until mid-summer when they become dormant in the heat.
When I moved sites in the autumn of 2020 I dug up all of my perennials for the move they had been in the ground for 3 years so I decided to take the opportunity to divide many of them. It is best practice to divide many perennials every 3-5 years as over time they become less productive and begin to die off from the centre point. Slicing them into smaller sections during the more dormant months of early Spring and Autumn reinvigorates the clumps as well as producing you many more free plants, so it is defiantly worth the time spent on what is usually quite a muddy and maybe at the time unwelcome task. Last year the Peonys seemed still to be sulking from my, I admit a little overeager division. But thankfully after a good layer of manure in winter, they are now beginning to erupt from the ground with vigour and a lot of flower buds. I am hopeing for a mass beauty from the peony bed this year but time will tell.
Sadly not all plans run smoothly when you do this job. I have written before about planning and patience being some of the keys to getting things right when it comes to growing. But annoyingly these sometimes don’t produce the result you had hoped for and more annoyingly sometimes there is not even anything you could have done differently to make things better. This is the story of my Spring so far due to a compost-based disaster.
Watch with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Picked at Dawn to watch this video and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.
