It pays to deadhead hellebores (winter roses). The spent flowers provide a splendid nursery for aphids and the seed which eventually falls can germinate too freely and over time the seedlings will compete with established plants and all become choked. It is also a great deal easier to pull out freshly germinating seedlings rather than leaving them until later when you have to dig them, rather than pull them. Being promiscuous flowers, unless you have isolated your plant, the seedlings will not come true to their parent.

• If you are saving hellebore seed, sow it while still very fresh. It does not like being kept and germination rates fall dramatically.
• Trees and shrubs tend to follow a sequence where they flower and then go into growth, so optimum pruning time is often as flowering finishes. Tidy up daphne bushes now but the common odora types are best with light pruning, rather than radical hacking back. If you have a scruffy bholua (the Himalayan daphne), it can be subjected to heavy pruning though it can take a year or two to recover.
• Moss growing on paths can be hazardous, making them slippery and is a common occurrence in our damp climate. There are various products you can buy, though if you price out common household bleach you may find it is cheaper. Heavily diluted swimming pool chlorine will also work. If you want to avoid using chemicals, including chlorine, where the moss is thick you can push hoe or scrape it off and then rake it up. The path will then dry out better and remaining moss spores are more likely to die. Or a water blaster will give a thorough clean up if the path surface is up to it. Be very cautious about laying paths out of old bricks, especially in shady or damp areas. They may look quaint and rustic but they can become veritable skating rinks quite quickly.
• Gaps in perennial beds will be apparent by now and it is a good time to dig up clumps of plants to split up and spread into gaps.
• It is still a little too cool to get too carried away planting out the vegetable garden, except for seeds such as peas and beans. Labour Weekend is the traditional D Day for getting baby plants and summer crops in because the risk of cold snaps is greatly reduced by then. As it is only 2 weeks to Labour Weekend, you need to ensure the garden is cleaned up, dug, raked, rested and ready to receive its crops.
• If your deciduous fruit trees are at the green tip stage (new shoots showing but not yet in flower), you have time to get the critical copper and oil spray on. The oil is to deal to over wintering red spider eggs as well as other nasties, including codling moth. It is best done in winter, but a summer strength oil with copper is better than nothing.

We are heading quickly towards mid spring and plants are romping into growth. This is the time to finish major pruning and shaping. You then follow up later with a light hair cut on the new growth if required.

• As plants put on their new growth, it is the optimum time for feeding them. At a recent dinner party of a number of seasoned gardeners, we all agreed that the local product of BioBoost is as good as any and better and cheaper than most.
• Slugs and snails are at their most active. If you use slug bait, remember that one bait can kill a number of offenders so do not use it like fertiliser. Slug bait is pretty nasty stuff so wear gloves and/or wash your hands thoroughly after handling it. If you don’t like slug bait, getting out at night with a good torch and digital control can effect a reasonably good hit rate, especially on damper nights though it is tricky to manage both torch and umbrella. Spreading gritty material such as sand, sawdust, crushed egg shells, pine or rimu needles discourages many slimy crawlers although they only head off to easier pastures. The old favourites of a buried beer can with a few centimetres of beer at the bottom (they are drawn by the scent and then get trapped or drown) or hollowed out orange skins can attract them until you do a killing round in the morning. It is not friendly to liberate captives into your neighbour’s property. Don’t be sentimental. Squash them.
• The cold blast this week is a timely reminder of the value of cloches in establishing early vegetable crops. The usual modern cloche is a series of hoops with an opaque or clear plastic cover and allows you to cover a decent length but you can get cheaper alternatives for smaller areas. Even opaque plastic milk containers will act as a mini cloche for a single lettuce.
• Plant climbing and dwarf beans, carrots, peas, cauli, broc, beetroot, spinach and salad veg. These can all go directly into the garden as seeds or plants…
• If you didn’t do it last weekend, then get onto planting seeds of melons, cucumbers, tomatoes, zucchini, aubergines and capsicums into containers as soon as possible. Keep them in a warm spot and you will be ready for planting out at the end of the month. If you have bought little plants of them already growing, don’t check their growth by putting them straight into the garden. It is still too cold in most areas. Pot them on to a larger container if needed and keep them warm and in growth.
• Top dress garlic and strawberries with a light dusting of blood and bone if you haven’t done so already.

In 1939, Jens Jensen pontificated:

In the plan of human conduct there is a marked difference between the mind which sees beauty in a simple violet and which sees it in a pompous rose or dahlia. On the one hand we have a love for the free and untampered flowers of God’s creation and on the other hand for a flower of social ills, sophistication, and conceit.

Well dang me. And there I was thinking that indeed violets are lovely; it is just a shame they can be so invasive. But we had no concept that Mark’s plant breeding could be held responsible for social ills!

The Curious Gardener’s Almanac tells us that the apple can grow at the highest latitude of all fruits. Apples need about 40 days of cold to produce their flowers which is why they can not be grown in the tropics. Raspberries, however, can allegedly be grown anywhere between the Arctic and the Equator.

If you wonder why we rarely see blackcurrants or redcurrants in Taranaki, it is because we are not cold enough for them. They need a chilly winter to thrive and fruit. Gooseberries also prefer colder conditions but can be grown here. However you need to keep refreshing the plants to keep them going in our soft climate and mildew can be a problem. The home gardener can, however, get enough to have a pie or two and to combine with rhubarb.

As spring bulbs finish flowering, a light feed will encourage them to build up strength for next season’s performance. After exhausting themselves with their floral display, the period immediately after is the most important time for fattening the bulb again. Never remove the foliage until it starts to die off naturally and even tying the long leaves into naff little bundles affects the natural replenishment process.

• Dahlia clumps can be lifted and divided now. They perform much better if the clump is tended to every few years so will reward you for your efforts. Congested clumps tend to fall apart too easily when they put on all the top growth.
• Grasses may be used as low maintenance plants but it doesn’t mean they are no maintenance plants. They can start to look very scruffy and unkempt and develop dead patches in garden situations unless you lift them and split them up occasionally, replacing them in soil which you have dug over and cultivated. Dividing now means that they will spring into healthy fresh growth immediately. It also helps to groom them once a year, pulling out the dead foliage either by hand or with a rake.
• Don’t delay on pruning and feeding feijoa bushes. They will produce larger fruit if you take a little care with them and keep the bush reasonable open.
• Make sure you have your old raspberry canes cut off and cleaned up before the new growth gets away any further. It is time for their spring feed.
• If you have young strawberry plants, it is usual to remove the first round of flowers so that the plants can build up strength and size before they pour all their energy into fruiting.
• You can still plant onions, carrots and beet direct into the garden. The onion family goes beyond the usual brown skinned variety (Pukekohe Long Keepers are the most common variety here though goodness knows what the cheapies that are imported from China are, let alone what chemicals they have been exposed to). Try shallots and red onions as well. Onion thinning can later be used as spring onions.
• Sow corn, courgettes and tomatoes into containers to get the leap on the great Labour Weekend plant out tradition. It is a little early for planting green beans direct into the garden unless you have a really favoured position, but they too can be started in containers if you want early crops.

If you are planning a new garden, you may wish to take notice of the dictum from Philip Miller from 1724:

The area of a handsom Garden may take up about thirty or forty Acres, not more.

While the rain has returned, last week was a good reminder of how fast we can dry out. If you still have plans to relocate trees and shrubs in your garden, don’t delay any longer. Move the largest ones first because they are likely to suffer the most stress.

• If you have deciduous perennial material (in other words it hides underground in winter – plants such as hostas) be careful where you walk on the garden or you may find you have just snapped off all the new shoots.
• You are running out of time to sort out your lawns. Oversow bare patches if you haven’t done so already. Don’t delay on getting new lawns sown. The false bed approach to laying a new lawn is to cultivate the ground to its final tilth, let the first crop of weed seeds germinate, then recultivate (to kill the weeds) and sow the grass seed. This technique works well in the vegetable garden too. If you feel you must fertilise your lawn, use a natural product such as Bioboost.
• Camellias can be shaped and pruned as flowering finishes and do not delay any work you want to do with shaping conifers as they will making their spring flush shortly.
• If you have mixed or herbaceous borders which are relatively self maintaining, it still pays to fork over the soil between the plants to stop compaction and to lay mulch. Fertilise with blood and bone.
• It is more of the same as last week in the vegetable garden. This is the most important time of the year to start your early crops and to prepare the beds for the planting of main crops in a month’s time. Keep on top of the weeds, cultivate the soil, add compost as a mulch. Research has shown that compost does not have to be dug in but does the double job of suppressing weeds as well when laid on top. There is now enough heat in the sun to hoe weeds and leave them to dry on top.

While on the topic of hoeing, we have a quote from American humorist Henry Beard this week (this one is for you to quote, Valmai).

Hoeing: a manual method of severing roots from stems of newly planted flowers and vegetables.