TOBY BUCKLAND
Is your plant suffering from a man-cold!
IF I’m under the weather but can still find comfort in the cake tin, I have what my wife Lisa cruelly calls “man-flu”. However, if I can’t face even a crumb, then it’s off to bed to recuperate, hopefully before I develop the real thing.
The same applies when plants are ill. If merely off colour with yellowing foliage and slower than normal growth, then
“It gives the rose a healthy glow”
feeding with liquid fertiliser is a pickme-up equivalent to a slice of Victoria sponge. Just what the doctor ordered!
But when plants are really struggling, wilting when their soil is moist and dropping leaves, like some poor soul on a sickbed, a banquet is the last thing they want or need.
Then there are the plants like roses that succumb to fungal illnesses at the same time every summer. Powdery mildew shows up as a white leaf-distorting bloom on young foliage, attacking when the soil becomes dry but the air is warm and moist. Black spot is always bad in rainy years, especially in the wetter west of the British Isles, blemishing and causing the foliage to drop.
Although both are made worse by atmospheric conditions, which unless you’re a specialist in the Sioux Indian rain dance you can’t do much about, feeding thoughtfully will help to keep these diseases at bay.
Where powdery mildew is a problem, avoid high nitrogen feed such as chicken pellets and manure.
Instead, mulch with ordinary compost, flooding the soil with water before spreading over the roots.
General feeds are okay but don’t overdo it, and spray with a soap like SB Plant Invigorator that cleanses the leaves of the fungal spores before they have chance to
take hold and spread.
With black spot, tomato fertiliser is the one to use as it contains high levels of phosphate, a nutrient that encourages soft new foliage to harden-up, and potassium which helps to improve a plant’s disease resistance.
This is best applied to the roots, while for the foliage, I spray every few weeks with dilute liquid seaweed fertiliser. Like those TV ads for shampoo it gives the rose a healthy glow.
An effort yes, but they’re worth it!