Gardens Alan Titchmarsh gives top tips on container displays
Beat the heat and make sure your container displays look lush all summer long, says Alan
Container gardening is more popular than ever, yet people are often disappointed when their tubs and hanging baskets fizzle out halfway through the summer.
Here are a few simple tips to help you to keep your containers going right through until autumn. Little and often
Where most people go wrong is by letting the three essentials – watering, feeding and deadheading – lapse as the summer progresses. Watering
Check containers daily and aim to keep the compost just moist, never bone dry. They will need watering more than usual during sunny weather. Containers also dry out faster once plants have grown larger and are flowering well, so be prepared to water twice daily from July onwards.
During hot weather, the best times to water are early morning and late evening, since plants have longer to absorb moisture before sunlight increases the evaporation rate.
Feeding
Give containers liquid tomato feed once a week, starting four weeks after planting. On each occasion apply as much of the diluted feed as you would give plain water if you were watering normally – enough to moisten the compost thoroughly.
For best results do this even if you’ve already added slowrelease feed to the compost. Increase the rate of liquid feeding
to twice weekly from July, to keep nutrient levels topped up now that plants are working harder and the original nutrients in the compost have been used up.
Deadheading
Snip off dead flower heads regularly – if allowed to set seed, plants stop producing new buds, so flowering comes to an early end. From high summer onwards, deadhead almost daily to keep containers looking their best and plants primed for repeat flowering. Keep at it. Mid-season pick-me-ups Once containers are crammed full of roots, the compost dries out very quickly, so plants soon suffer from water shortage. Even if you didn’t use waterretaining gel at planting time, you can add some now. Prepare a beaker of the product, following the maker’s instructions. Mix the crystals with water then stir until they dissolve and turn to a thick, wallpaper paste-like consistency – it takes a while – then use a pencil or similar implement to prod holes carefully in the compost between plants and pour the gel in.
Do the same with slow-release plant food granules – make holes and trickle some in – then cover the entire surface of the container with a thin layer of new compost. This covers exposed roots and helps keep them moist, but also gives hard-pressed roots a little more space to grow into. You can often heap it up slightly higher in the centre of the pot.
If one or two plants die or are past their best, it’s difficult to take them out and replant something else in the same spot, so snip them off at the base then try to remove a little of the compost from round the stump with a penknife and sharp spoon. Fill the gap with fresh seed compost and sprinkle night-scented stock seeds in the gap. They will flower in a few weeks time.
First aid
If a container dries out badly, it can be difficult to re-wet the compost. But you’ll want to try, so stand a pot in a bucket of water for two hours to rehydrate.
Lift a hanging basket down and soak it in a large washing-up bowl and with large tubs, drip water slowly into the centre of them with a houseplant watering can, repeating every 10 minutes or so.
Once a wilted plant recovers, wait several days then feed it little and often. Too much feed, or too rich a mixture, draws moisture out of the plants.