Gardening: DO IT! Jobs for the week

Sunday Mirror, Apr 3, 2005 by Adrienne Wild

DEAD EASY

BUY seedlings of bedding plants. Pot up and keep on a warm windowsill indoors for now.

POT houseplants that have outgrown their containers. Choose a pot slightly bigger and use multi-purpose compost.

FILL gaps in flowerbeds with herbaceous perennials. Bear in mind some need replacing every three years.

PUT slug traps in flowerbeds to protect new shoots of perennials such as hostas that are starting to emerge.

BIT OF EFFORT

CHECK plants for pests. Sap-suckers like aphids colonise soft shoots and vine-weevil grubs feed on container plants, roots. A torchlight tour will find slugs, snails and weevils on foliage.

PUT in runner bean supports. Beans make a great feature in an ornamental garden if used to cover tunnels that straddle paths or grown on a wigwam in the flowerbed.

CHECK pond pumps and filters switched off for winter are in running order. Fish will soon begin to stir and their activity will make the water deteriorate if bacteria are allowed to build up.

TOUGH TASKS

STOP a weed invasion from next door by digging a trench 18in deep along your boundary and lay a strip of thick black polythene vertically along it. Fill in the trench but leave an inch or two of plastic proud of the soil to stop weeds creeping in.

EXTEND beds and borders and fill gaps with spring bedding, summer perennials and evergreen shrubs for year-round colour and interest. Plant through a weed membrane to cut maintenance.

BUILD a raised bed to improve the look of your garden. This lets you import good soil (or acid soil for rhododendrons and camellias). Put wide coping on the walls to give you a seat or a comfortable perch for when weeding.

LAY new paths on lawn or beds worn away by people taking shortcuts - or cut off access with prickly shrubs such as berberis!