The Natural Gardener
It can be tricky to keep a constant beady eye on every house and garden plant to see how it’s getting on, but vigilance pays dividends. They say prevention's better than cure, and this is particularly true in the world of gardening. Ultimately, the more you tend and care for your plants while they’re young and growing, the less time you’ll need to spend on them later down the line, and the less money you’ll need to spend putting it right. Get the right balance of thriftiness and attentiveness and gardening needn’t be an expensive hobby, as many tend to think!
There are some plants that cope or even thrive on neglect and they’re a godsend to gardeners – hardy geraniums, erigeron, ox-eye daisies, stipa grasses, wallflowers, asters, sedums, pelargoniums, spider plants and Christmas cacti among them – but the vast majority need love and care to get the best out of them and to prevent them getting ill. As do we all, I suppose.
However, neglect a plant and you’ll have to replace it and its compost, or spend a fortune on sprays to put the problem right, when it could have all been avoided in the first place.
We’re all guilty of it – I’ve had to replace countless houseplants and quite a few garden plants, particularly in drought periods. It’s all part of the many lessons we learn as we strive to be good gardeners!
The best part of vigilant plant care is that you use fewer chemicals, such as sprays, on your plants to try and counteract pests and diseases. Feed, mulch, prune or water your plants as well as you can in the first place and you won't have to resort to environmentally-unfriendly methods. Even if they do take hold, catch a disease or a pest early on and they’re more easily eradicated. The same goes for weeding – keep on top of the culprits and you’ll not need much in the way of weedkillers.
A much-loved product that I and a lot of gardeners use is SB Plant Invigorator, which is an entirely natural spray that washes, feeds, protects from pest and disease and stimulates growth, and can be used on any plant, even edibles, without harming anything. I’m constantly clutching my bottle, roaming around and spraying my plants weekly! Part of my regular routine, too, is to take a sweep of the garden and look carefully at my houseplants more often, as well as to take cuttings as insurance against failures.