Hardy Auriculas: time for the spring tidy-up!

I have lots of hardy Auriculas, in my own garden, and I always have a lot of them for sale.  They always look particularly sad at this time of year – the new, fresh green leaves are smothered with the dead brown ones from last season. 

 

 So today I went out and tidied them up: removing the slimy dead leaves helps make them less attractive to slugs and other nasties, and gives me a chance to check each one individually (“How are you doing, my pet?”) for offshoots and general progress. 

The first thing is to gently tip each one out of the pot and check the roots: plants in small pots are often vulnerable to earwig invasion, worms etc, so it's good to check that all is well, and to remove any infiltrators if you find them. 

In  my case, these ones are in plastic pots ready for sale, but the traditional method of displaying Auricula is in small terracotta pots:

 ...like this - right - so the same comment applies: take each pot in turn, gently upend it into your hand, and check on the roots.

Next job is to carefully remove the dead leaves - I use an old pair of long pointed scissors for this job, as the old leaves rarely pull away cleanly, and I don't like to risk damaging the new leaves. So I just snip carefully around each one. 

 

Third job is to remove any weeds from the surface of the pot, now that I can see it: in my cold, east-facing front yard I get a lot of Marchantia (Liverwort), those annoying weeds that produce flat green plates of growth, which appear overnight, then don't seem to be actively growing, but if you leave them for a week or two, you suddenly find that they have completely covered the surface of a pot!

Finally, having cleared the weeds and topped up the soil level if necessary – those Liverworts can easily extend ¾” downwards – I can top dress the pots with clean compost “nuts” to reduce weed growth and to make the pots look nice and fresh for the spring.

Now all we need is some decent weather, to set them growing, and in no time they'll be ready for sale!

 

 

Did you enjoy this article? Did you find it useful? Would you like me to answer your own, personal, gardening question? Become a Patron - just click here - and support me! Or use the Donate button for a one-off donation. If just 10% of my visitors gave me a pound a month, I'd be able to spend a lot more time answering all the questions!!