Action plan: Ciar Byrne's essential jobs for your garden this week

Action plan: Ciar Byrne’s essential jobs for your garden this week

  • Ciar Byrne advises on how you can now propagate your own houseplants  
  • UK-based gardening expert says the easiest way to do this is in a jar of water
  • READ MORE: Ciar Byrne says grow your own fruit and veg to avoid price rises and shortages

MULTIPLY YOUR HOUSPLANTS

Feeding a houseplant addiction can be costly. This is a good time of year to propagate your own, saving money while adding to your collection.

The easiest way to do this is in a jar of water. This method works for Begonia semperflorens, peperomias, busy lizzies, spider plants and heart-leaf philodendrons. Cut off a 5cm to 10cm healthy growing tip, strip off the lower leaves and place the bottom of the cutting in water. After a few weeks, roots will appear, and your new plant can be potted up.

Alternatively, cuttings can be placed straight into soil. This works best if they are kept warm and moist, either in a greenhouse or on windowsill covered in a clear plastic bag, or using a heated propagator and mistspraying regularly.

Begonia rex and Saintpaulia, also known as African violets, are propagated by leaf cuttings. For Saintpaulia, cut off healthy leaves with 3cm to 5cm stalks and push into pots filled with a half-andhalf mixture of peat-free compost and sand. When new plants emerge, pot them on.

Feeding a houseplant addiction can be costly. This is a good time of year to propagate your own, saving money while adding to your collection

Begonia rex requires a slightly more complicated procedure. Fill a pot or tray with a mixture of compost and sand, place healthy leaves flat on the surface, then using a sharp knife make small cuts where the veins meet the rib. Weigh the leaf down with small pebbles, keep warm and moist and new plants will grow from the cuts. 

ART OF ARTICHOKES

Artichokes are grown both for edible flower buds and as architectural plants. I’m trying Violetta di Chioggia, a purple-headed variety. Sow seeds under cover in 9cm pots to plant out in early summer. Harvest buds before the scales open. Soak in salt water for a couple of hours, rinse and boil until tender. Serve with butter. In autumn, cut off flower heads and stalks and cover with straw. Then mulch in early spring.

Artichokes are grown both for edible flower buds and as architectural plants. Ciar is trying Violetta di Chioggia , a purple-headed variety

TIME TO FEED ROSES 

From the end of March to early April is the best time to feed and mulch roses, before the leaves reappear. Remove any weeds around the base of your rose. Then apply rose feed, taking care not to overfeed. Scatter feed in a circle around the rose. Use a hand fork to work it into the soil, then water sparingly. Mulch by adding 1in to 2in layer of compost around the rose base to suppress weeds and aerate the soil.

From the end of March to early April is the best time to feed and mulch roses, before the leaves reappear

READER’S QUESTION

What are good ground cover plants for shade?

Graham Walker, Reading, Berks. 

Siberian bugloss (Brunnera macrophylla) is happy in partial shade, with attractive silvery heart- shaped leaves and small blue or white flowers in April and May. Jack Frost is a lovely variety and so is Hadspen Cream, with a cream edging to its leaves. ­­­­­Bigroot cranesbill (Geranium macrorrhizum) doesn’t mind full shade and is semi- evergreen with magenta pink flowers in summer. The lesser periwinkle (Vinca minor) is a mat-forming evergreen shrub with violet blue flowers in late spring, and is not as invasive as the greater periwinkle. 

PLANT OF THE WEEK: EUPHORBIA CHARACIAS SUBSP. WULFENII

Edwardian garden designer Gertrude Jekyll described this evergreen shrub as ‘one of the grandest of garden plants’.

In spring, it bears tall bushy spires of chartreuse green flowers with bronze ‘eyes’. It’s a great foil to other plants in a border or makes a fine specimen plant.

Originally from the Mediterranean, it prefers a dry, sunny position. It is biennial, producing leaves in its first year and flowers in its second. After that it should be cut back down to its base and will produce new shoots.

Wear gloves when cutting as its milky sap is a skin irritant. 

In spring, it bears tall bushy spires of chartreuse green flowers with bronze ‘eyes’

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