Gardening: Grow the perfect border from seed | Brian Kidd

This is a particularly good idea if money is tight, but a wonderful experience if children are involved because all children like to see things happen quickly.

The area needs to be dug over carefully, removing any weeds and in particular any couch grass, bindweed or ground elder.

If the area is infested with any of these weeds, spray all over the foliage with a new product called Resolva. This will kill off all weeds permanently, just follow the instructions.

Once the weeds are dead, they can be dug into the soil. Cut off any seed heads. If you don’t the seeds will only produce more weeds.

When the area has been dug, the surface needs to be raked to attain a good tilth to a depth of about four

inches. This job demands time and patience but it will pay off in that the seed sowing will be a lot easier to do and the germination will be much better.

A scattering of fish, blood and bonemeal is applied at a rate of two to three ounces per square yard. This is raked in again and now we are ready to sow the seeds.

We need to choose hardy annuals such as larkspur, love-in-a-mist or cornflowers. There are lots more but those are the best known.

The finest one of all however is cosmea. These are usually mixed colours and do you know, you can have a border full of just cosmea and the effect is just amazing. They start to come into flower 10 weeks after the seeds have been sown.

All hardy annuals are sown in little pinches using two or three seeds inserted into the soil using fingers and thumbs.

If the border is marked out into a patchwork by using a cane or a draw hoe, seeds of one type can be sown and a contrasting colour can be used in the next patch. Children love doing that!

After sowing, give the border a good water and in about three weeks the seeds will germinate. Any misses can be filled by transplanting seedlings.

I expect many of you will be thinking: ‘What about cats?’

OK, there’s always a good reason for not wanting to do something, but an annual border is only going to cost you a few pounds.

If cats are going to mess things up, get hold of some firelighting sticks and a jar of garlic paste. Push each stick into the paste so that there is about a two-inch covering. Now push the sticks into the border. Cats hate garlic!

If you would like to get the children to eat greens, sow an edging of a lettuce called Salad Bowl.

This lettuce has lovely bright green leaves with a ferny, serrated leaf and looks lovely and creates an attractive edge.

When it is large enough, in about seven weeks, the leaves are cut off here and there with a pair of scissors and placed into a colander to be washed.

The children will eat the lettuce because it looks pretty and because, most importantly, they grew it.

THIS WEEK’S TOP TIP

Slugs are now very active. Go into the garden early in the morning, pick them off and give them a quick size eight on smooth paving.