Preparing chrysanths for the showing season and favourite plants for late-summer colour
With the show season here, it's all about watering, feeding and protecting your plants
John Peace (early chrysanths)
August and September are an exciting time of the year, with blooms well into the flowering stage and the shows just around the corner. Whether you're growing to show or just for cut flowers, it’s an exciting time seeing your flowers develop.
Once the petals are opening you'll need to protect them with covers. If you're growing in pots, lift into the greenhouse or polytunnel. Shading is important – you'll produce a better bloom if you've shaded plants with horticultural fleece or applied shade paint to your greenhouse.
Make sure that your stems are secured to the canes as they're growing up, to prevent them from flapping about and banging off each other or snapping off. Protective netting surrounding the frame will also stop wind damage.
Keep your plants well watered at this stage and don’t let them dry out. You should have removed any growth that has appeared on the bottom of the stem or between leaf growth. Carefully take any extra growth off by snapping or cutting them off.
Keep an eye out for pests and diseases, especially earwigs, at this time in the growing season. You usually see these at night under torchlight, just pick them off and get them well away from your frame.
Ivor Mace (late chrysanths)
By now your plants should be filling their pots with roots and nitrogen will become exhausted, so it’s time to switch to a fertiliser with a little more nitrogen. You could use a base fertiliser like Medwyn’s Complete Base High Nitrogen Fertiliser with trace elements at a teaspoon per week, or Solufeed 4:1:2 at half strength twice per week. I apply a top dressing of final potting compost about 2.5cm (1in) deep.
Continue with careful watering. Only water as the pots become dry. I’m watering every day but generally only about a third of the plants as they dry out.
Be careful not to let pests get a hold. Once the blooms begin to develop it's virtually impossible to get rid of them, so it’s very important during the next month to step up the pest control. Don’t forget, it’s not just aphids but also caterpillars, thrips and red spider mite that often cause us problems.
We secured our large exhibition buds at the beginning of the month. This involved removing all sideshoots and sidebuds and retaining the central crown bud. We do the decoratives and incurves around the 20th, and singles, anemones and fantasies should be secured right at the end of the month. If your buds are secured
around these dates then you should hit the November shows with them. Large and medium exhibitions that have two stems on each can be cut down to one stem as soon as you can choose a good bud. Likewise, in a few weeks’ time decoratives can be cut down to two stems and incurves to three stems.
l If you would like to see a great display of exhibition chrysanthemums, the National Chrysanthemum Society hosts its annual show at Bingley Hall, Staffordshire, on September 7-8. Ivor Mace and John Peace will be at this show, so stop by and say hello.