Pre-spring is a season unto itself and for gardeners it is a fantastic moment to take action. Millie gets stuck into some essential jobs you can do right now to get a jump on spring. Subscribe 🔔 [ Ссылка ]

Sow for Summer:
Summer food, like tomatoes and capsicums, can be sown at the end of the cold season. While soil outdoors is too cold to sow into, you can start seeds in punnets and have big healthy seedlings to plant in spring. Millie saved tomato seeds from a previous crop by squishing the seeds onto toilet paper to dry. To sow the seed, fill a punnet with seed-raising mix and firm it down. Sprinkle around 20 seeds on top, cover with a light layer of seed-raising mix, then label and water them in. Once the seeds have germinated in about 10 days to two weeks, they can be pricked out and planted into larger cells.

Millie’s DIY Seed-Raising Mix:
Sieve general potting mix and compost to remove larger particles - the larger bits can be retained for re-potting orchids or bromeliads and the smaller softer particles are for seed-raising. To add aeration to the mix, add horticultural sand or perlite.

Build a Hot Box:
Starting seeds in the cold season means you need to keep them warm. Many people use a sunny windowsill inside, but you can also build a climate-controlled seed raising box. Millie says, “for a modest outlay, about 100 bucks, this little system has given me a great start on all my summer produce.”

Construct a shallow wooden box, line the base with plastic sheeting and fill it with moist sand. To add warmth, Millie uses a silicone reptile heater which is designed to go into aquariums and enclosures. Snake it through the sand in a ‘S’ pattern to provide even heat throughout the box and keep the sand and germinating plants warm. Drill a hole into the side of the frame and thread the reptile heater through. This can be attached to a thermostat which can be set to switch itself off if things get too hot.

Divide and Propagate:
It's not only seeds that are worth propagating. You can also get a lot of multiplication from your divisions - that is, digging things up and splitting them into new plants. At this time of year those wounds heal really quickly. Millie digs up some tarragon, washes off the soil then prizes apart the individual plants. You can replant or pot up to give away.

Pot Check:
As we head into the biggest season of growth, now is a great time to do a pot check. Look for plants that are full and firm in their pot or anything that's pale and failing to thrive - it may be ready for an overhaul. Millie repots an olive into a larger pot, about 1/3 larger, with good quality potting mix.

Pruning:
Struggling plants can form some really unique regrowth! You can use this to your advantage to encourage all sorts of quirky shapes for a fantastic feature. Start by removing the dead and damaged growth, then select a few stems to stay and tip prune each one. Pruning pushes the energy that would be in the tip into the branches below, so doing this every few weeks as spring approaches will achieve a much bushier plant quickly.
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