By Rebecca G.
Lockdown has led to many people taking up homemaking activities. Baking, sourdough, DIY, crafting, and gardening have all been filling people’s time and Instagram feeds. If you have not caught the green-fingered bug yet, but fancy having a go at nurturing some plants to full bloom or harvest, fret not! You have not left it too late to sow some seeds, in fact now is the best time to grow certain brassicas that we are always being told we should eat more of!
Here, we share with you some simple horticultural projects that you can try at home, and we’ve even come up with some projects for those without gardens or short on space. Read on to discover more!
Summer Salads
Who doesn’t love a crisp crunchy salad, and picked fresh from the garden tastes so much better than shop bought salad. Salad ingredients can be sown now and grown to harvest in just a short window of time, some in just a month. And, you don’t need much room to grow them, so this is the ideal project for city dwellers with little or no garden space- all you need is a window box.
Make sure your box is at least 15cm deep for good root development, has good drainage and a drip tray. If you choose a metal box, line it with cardboard to ensure the roots don’t get burned by the heat absorbed by the container in sunnier weather.
When it comes to choosing what to grow, the best advice is choose what you like to eat! Some of our favourites are summer lettuce, rocket, chicory, fennel and radishes. If you choose cut and come again varieties then you will have salad indefinitely - just bring your window box in before the first frost and place on a sunny windowsill.
Autumn Eats
For those with bigger outdoor spaces, now is the ideal time to plant cauliflowers, broccoli, carrots and onions for Autumn harvest. These are all what are known as “hardy” vegetables which means they can survive a frost or cold snap. They all also love full sun, so be sure to plant in a spot with at least 6 hours of direct sunlight a day.
Beautiful Blooms
If you’re looking to inject a bit of colour into your garden for this Summer, we’re afraid it’s a bit late to start from scratch. However, if you choose your plants wisely you can have beautiful flowers in your garden well into Autumn. If you’ve struggled with keeping plants alive in the past, we highly recommend geraniums to brighten up your garden. They can survive in sun or shade, flower from Spring to the first frost/early Autumn (although bring them indoors and the flowers can last year round), and don’t need much watering. Other flowering bushes, such as rose and dahlia, can be deadheaded to help encourage new flowerheads to grow. Again this process should keep your garden in bloom till Autumn.
Those wanting to prepare their gardens for next Summer, September is the time to plant hardy annuals that will overwinter and flower early Spring. The advantage of planting now is that you will get much earlier blooms. Varieties to try include calendula (pot marigold), cornflower and flowering flax.
