Late winter - what are you up to?

[StrongerThanYouTh1nk]

It's not really spring yet but it doesn't feel quite like winter either today with +10C during the day. My tulips are growing at 100mph do I water them, do I leave them alone? My primulas have also done well throughout the whole winter and continue to flower so it's nice to have some colour! What do you do in your garden or yard at the moment?

Not a lot, certainly no watering of anything.
I have planted about 200 bulbs that have been in the greenhouse for the past 4 months and given the borders a tidy up. I pruned my roses back too, along with the clematis.
Beyond that i’m having a new patio laid and then I will sort out the borders adjacent to it and probably get rid of a lot of my pots. The bulbs in those pots will be transferred to the borders and front garden.
Then I hope I will have an easily managed garden; it’s pretty small but my health isn’t good, hence a radical sort out!

Lots! Just spent the last 2 weekends doing any hedge cutting/pruning fruit trees that I want done this year, so it's all sorted before bird nesting kicks off (will always love that they start after Valentine's day! Too cute). Also did the pre-spring mow today, as I found March was too late last year and the flowers has already started to come through.

@MavisFlump I want to get rid of pots too, and transfer my plants into new (to be fitted) raised beds. May or may not happen this year, mind... Still debating if it's a wise expense - I can certainly live without it, for another year. But it would be quite an improvement to my back yard.

@SleepyHedgehog - nice! It's good to do these jobs in preparation for the season. Makes you think about spring doesn't it? 🙂

I saw camellia in Aldi today, couldn't get it as had a full trolley already but would like to get one. It's small but only £7 as opposed to £15 in b&m.

I’ve got a huge list of pruning to be done, everything from neat pruning of apples and roses to wholesale removal of chunks of overgrown clematis and Vitis coignetiae that has stepped across into the neighbour’s trees 30m above ground level, I should be starting up the propagator and sowing tomatoes and chillis. Sort all my other seed packets into month of sowing. Weed the orchard beds so I can mulch them. Sweep up the leaves I didn’t get round to in the autumn. Finish the Big Clean of my greenhouse before it’s too full of seedlings. Empty out the big pots I grow veg in and fill them with new soil.

it’s no wonder I’m procrastinating.

😍going to plan an Aldi trip and adds 'plant loads more camellia' to the list!

Too much! I am planting bare root hedging and fruit trees, and putting in supports for espaliers and doing the preliminary pruning for those and for roses. I'm trying to get all the weeds out while the ground is still soft, and I'm definitely noticing things drying out so have been watering. Now things are coming out of dormancy I can see things that have died or died back that need sorting. In the autumn I planted pots of bulbs so I can quickly tuck them into any empty spaces at this time of year, just as they're coming up, so I am doing that, and I am also planting bulbs that need to be planted in the green. I need to clean out the pond. I'm clearing and cutting back things that were sculptural interest over the winter but are now past their best - seedheads; dry stems.

I'm going to coppice my hazels in a week or so, and will start setting out support frames for the veg while the ground is still soft enough to take them. Pretty soon I'll also start planting dahlias under cover, and lilies and gladioli. I will mulch things if I can. I might order some seeds if I feel flush.

I have mulched the border with cardboard and bark and have planted a bare root rose.

I've been buying more pots (upgrading from plastic to terracotta) and researching the best things to plant in them depending on the position they're in.

I think I've lost a few shrubs to the frosts but although they currently look awful and very dead I'm just leaving them until the weather warms up to double check they're not going to spring back into life.

I'm feeding the birds and enjoying watching them.

I've set up a bug hotel with DD1 in a corner of the garden.

I've ordered some snowdrops in the green that I'm going to plant in my lawn.

I need to sweep up the leaves that I didn't get round to clearing in autumn.

I'm looking forward to the bulbs flowering, the tulips and daffodils are popping up.

I need to hang some fairy lights in the garden.

I need to buy a bird box and hang it up.

I need to treat and overseed our lawn that is currently a patchy, boggy mess but will wait til next month to do that.

Then on to planting sunflowers with DDs and growing some more things from seed.

I can't wait!