5 small, easy things you can do to improve your garden

When it comes to gardens, doing a few small things often can have a large impact.

Sometimes knowing the right information can have a greater effect on your garden than hours of hard toil. Keep these five pieces of advice in mind.

Tending to the needs of vigorous flowers is often a joy, but even the most lovingly planted flowers cannot simply grow themselves.

• Keep a close eye on your beds to spot problems with pests or diseases early, and pull out plants that simply fail to grow.
• Feed plants that appear small or pale with water-soluble fertilizer and provide extra water for thirsty specimens during long hot spells.
• Each time you visit your flower beds, pull any weeds and remove spent flowers.

Protect roots, suppress weeds and prevent soil from splashing up onto your flowers by covering the bed with five to eight centimetres (two to three inches) of attractive mulch, such as shredded bark, cocoa hulls or pine needles.

• If your soil is heavy, wet or sticky, lay down wooden planks to kneel onto when tending flowers; you'll avoid compressing soil around roots.
• In broad beds, install stone or concrete stepping stones.

If you keep plants from setting seed, they will produce more flowers.

• When buds are visible along the stem, cut or pinch off the spent blooms just above the buds.
• When there are no buds on the stem, cut back to the base.

To let a few non-hybrid flowers develop mature seeds, leave old blossoms on the plants until they begin to shatter.

• Store your collected seeds in a cool, dry place and plant them the following year.
• Some flowers, such as cleome, Johnny jump-up (a viola) and melampodium, reseed themselves with little help.