Quality Garden Tools Blog

Sunshine (for a while)

Posted on 15/03/09 | Posted by The Fat Gardener

A beautiful Sunday is always a great day for gardeners, but even better when it’s in March!

I have spent today tidying up my ‘patch’. The most pressing job was to remove a dead branch from a Sweet Chestnut (Castanea Sativa I think – but could be wrong!). I hate to remove limbs from big, healthy trees, but in this case the whole limb had died suddenly leaving me with little choice. When removing a dead branch, try to cut back into living, healthy wood which is much less likely to spread disease and much more likely to heal properly and send out new shoots. I always think that if you remove a lot of wood from one side of a tree, you should try and remove a similar amount from the opposite side. This is not just for aesthetic reasons, but also to ensure the tree does not become lopsided in weight which is a cause for trees falling during storms.

I removed the branch with my favourite Silky Hayauchi pole saw which makes short work of anything wooden and then used my Silky Zübat hand saw to chop the branch into more manageable pieces. As with all debris in my garden (please read previous blog entry ‘Mulch Ado about Nothing’) the smaller branches are shredded with my Bosch garden shredder and the resulting mulch put into the compost and spread on the woodland garden.

I have also planted up some basins with early flowering Tulips which I had been growing in pots and add a bit of Spring colour to the patio garden. Also the potted Alliums ‘Purple Sensation’ have been planted deep into the borders – when these flower I really feel Spring has ‘sprung’. After writing this I will start to plant out some of the Summer ‘stars’ like Lupins, Penstemons and Delphiniums in the sheltered borders which have been growing in pots under glass over Winter.

Let’s all enjoy the sunshine today and hope that it lasts a while longer.

The BBC weather forecast can be seen at: www.metoffice.gov.uk/

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