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Peter Rabbit Garden
Mr. McGregor's Autumn Garden Tips
“It may seem like all the plants are starting to get ready for winter but there is still lots to do, planting late autumn crops and bulbs for spring. Don’t forget the birds will need help to get through winter too!”
Super Sweet Peas!
September is the perfect time to plant bulbs so they
flower at Christmas – they make fantastic presents!
1. Use bulbs like hyacinths or "Paper White" narcissi. Both will flower in December and will fill the room with a fantastic scent.
2. You can either plant in a pot with no drainage holes in the bottom – in which case you will need to use special bulb fibre from the garden centre - or use normal potting compost and make sure there are drainage holes in the bottom of the pot.
3. Plant the bulbs so there is just the very top of the bulb sticking out at the top of the compost
4.Water the pots until they are overflowing and then leave to drain.
5. Place the pots in a cool dark place – this can be outside.
6. After six weeks start checking the bulbs to see if green shoots are appearing at the top. Keep watering the pots if the compost is dry.
7. Once the green shoots are 2.5cm long bring the bulbs inside and into the light. Keep watering if needed and wait for the flowers to appear. If these start to flop you can use wooden stakes and string to keep them upright.
Buckets of Carrots
There are so many different types of lettuce
– curly or
flat, purple or green. If you grow
lettuce in smaller pots
and start new batches
every 2 or 3 weeks throughout
June, July and August, there will always be something
fresh
and new to put in your salad.
But don’t eat too
much – as the Flopsy Bunnies know,
lettuces
can put you to sleep!
1. Fill a pot with seed compost.A pot 20cm across the top is ideal. Leave the compost 2cm short of the top of the pot -this will make watering easier.
2. With a pencil make a 1.5cm deep circular trench in the compost.
3. Sprinkle lettuce seeds thinly round the trench and cover them with compost. Water until it seeps out of the bottom of the pot
4. When the seedlings are about 3cm tall remove most of the seedlings, leaving only four of the strongest. Make sure the remaining four seedlings are well spaced apart.
5. Put gravel in the top of the pots to keep slugs and snails away. Keeping the pots off the ground also helps keeps creepy crawlies away.
6. Water often to keep the soil moist.
7. Your lettuces should be ready to eat in 10 weeks from sowing.
Wildlife Alert
You can plant all sorts of narcissi, daffodil and tulip bulbs in pots and flowerbeds outside in September and October. These won’t flower until February, March & April but you don’t need to water them – just watch as they grow by themselves. To plant… Dig a hole about 15cm deep, place the bulb in the bottom (pointy end facing upwards) and cover with soil and press down hard on the soil. Water the area where the bulb was planted and wait for Spring!
Wildlife Alert
Autumn is the time to start putting out bird feeders in your garden.These will help birds like Robins, Blue Tits and Chaffinches to survive the winter. In September you can also put out nesting boxes for animals like hedgehogs and bats and even for insects like ladybirds and butterflies so they have somewhere safe and warm to hibernate over the winter.
