Choose your plants wisely
PLANNING a trip to the garden centre for some summer bedding?
You won’t be alone as now is the perfect time to invest in petunias, tobacco plants, French marigolds and, well, just about everything.
But be selective. Buy bushy plants – not tall, spindly ones that are plastered in flowers.
Choose plants with a few open blooms so that you can see the colour of the flowers, but with masses of buds that will open and give their all in the garden rather than the nursery or the garden centre.
Avoid any pots and trays that have dried out – you can see as the compost will have shrunk away from the sides of the pot and the plants may look sad.
When you get the plants home give them a soak before planting – dry root balls are difficult to re-wet once under the soil.
Prepare the soil by dusting it with blood, bone and fishmeal, and then fork it over to remove any weeds and loosen up the surface.
Roots
When prising the trays of plants apart, make sure that each plant has a good clump of roots and compost attached to it.
Plant bedding with a trowel, setting plants at the same level they were growing in the tray. With planting distance, as a rule, set plants between 6in and 9in apart so that they have room to expand.
Use a watering can with a sprinkler head. In dry spells, your plants will need further watering until their roots have travelled far enough to locate their own supply. But summer’s nearly here. Happy gardening!
Plant dormant dahlia tubers in the garden – put them in 4-6in deep. Don’t worry about frost damage as the young shoots won’t emerge above the soil before the weather has warmed up.
If the weather is mild, start hardening off homegrown bedding plants. Stand them in a cold frame, opening the lid on fine days and closing it at night. Alternatively, stand plants outside on fine days and bring them back in at night. Earth up any potato shoots that are showing, scraping up surrounding soil to build up ridges along the rows of plants.