How we’re helping our summer plants

Lots of lovely plants in your garden ? Great! But how are you going to help them give you your best summer flowering ev…er?

We 3Growbags have a few ideas to share with you (be prepared for some dramatic differences according to location and attitude).

I reckon that looking after the plants in your garden before they hit their full stride can be summed up in one word – VIGILANCE. The old adage goes ‘The best fertilizer is the gardener’s shadow’.  Luckily, wandering outside each morning to see how everything’s doing is …. nice. Until you see the snails on the irises, the bindweed amongst the Philadelphus, the hidden-away pot you forgot to water (it can’t just be me) ………

Thus, the next hour or two after that first walk should be dedicated to POTTERING.  This is a very important part of a garden-lover’s life – it should be taught in schools (Caroline thought it was, although the rest of us knew it as physics).

Two jobs that will be included in my pottering:

Spreading organic barrier pellets round all my susceptible plants to deter molluscs from chewing through stems, munching buds and shredding leaves of summer flowers and crops before they’ve even properly got the bit between their teeth.  I gave up the poison pellets a long time ago, but that doesn’t stop me hating these slimy destroyers of hopes and dreams.  I’m also experimenting with mats of woven wool (slugs and snails don’t like wool) over the tops of some of my bigger pots, but the urban foxes are having fun pulling them off each night at the moment.  Needs a re-think.

I love my roses (have I mentioned that before?) but never spray them these days against pests or diseases.  So I go round looking at all the upcoming shoots and buds and stroking off any opportunistic aphids before they establish a base camp. A bit later on I’ll be picking off any leaves that are showing a touch of blackspot or rust to slow up the progress of these two problems.

Good Lord – stroking plants and tucking wool blankets around them – that all sounds very genteel compared to the daily rigours going on over here in West Sussex. That’s because Elaine prefers her garden to be overflowing with nice normal plants, whereas here the garden is more of an experimental research station, and there are projects to progressed.

The first is growing a couple of grapevines as standards in pots – Bob Flowerdew says it works well so I’m taking his word on this. They’ve reached the stage where they need more support than a single bamboo cane, so I’ve been working on an Amazon multipack of self assembly obelisks …

Then it’s been hauling out my tender plants from their winter hibernation and encouraging them out of their dormant winter state by giving them all a good drenching. Down in the arid south-east we’re all into achieving ‘water-neutrality’ (with a secondary incentive of trying to reduce our water bills), so the plants take turns in being lowered into a cattle trough for a few hours. It’s the horticultural equivalent of sharing baths.

And then there’s another experiment in which I am growing a mixed selection of unusual annual sweet pea species. Planted via the wool pot method into our own homemade compost means there are plenty of weeds popping up around their roots so it’s a top dressing of wood bark around each tub to keep the rabble at bay.

Pottering? I’ll admit physics was a baffle-fest for me but I was never a potterer. Most days here in the Highlands nare a life and death struggle against wind, rain, fog and midges, except this spring has shocked us all – it’s been lovely.

My plants – chosen specifically for their love of wet dreich weather, are desperate for a drink, and I know how unsatisfactory that feels. My answer is something that looks disconcertingly like a home enema kit, but is actually a root waterer.

You simply stick it at the base of your plant and tip a can of water down it to reach directly to the roots. I know what you’re thinking, ‘why doesn’t she just get a hosepipe’, it’s the sort of unimaginative question my sisters would ask, and alright I have just bought one but the home enema kit is actually more effective on my very sloping site, and maybe yours.

Secondly, never mind faffing about with wool mats, my resolution to home-school my seedlings in my greenhouse until they’re young adults has so far confounded Mr Slug. They have though become a bit spoilt and some of the sunflowers actually collapsed when finally asked to grow outdoors. Like millennials faced with a five day week, they simply buckled.

Well they’re going to have to demonstrate a bit more of the backbone that last year’s crop displayed which grew so well they toppled their bamboo pole supports. Sunflower growing is only fit for five year olds according to E & L, but I challenge any toddler to tackle the steel engineering works I visited last week, in search of 200mm steel poles to support this year’s brood.

Not only did I get the ends of these beauties bevelled to a point by ‘Gary’ but being a keen sunflower grower himself, he has promised to show me his if I show him mine this summer. Can’t help feeling he’s got the raw end of the deal here.

So there you have it – mollusc and greenfly control, communal bathing, top-dressing, root-watering and industrial supports – the3Growbag way to a fabulous summer garden. What will you be doing now to help your plants to party until October? We’d love to hear..

Louise has found us a lovely undemanding spring plant for sun or part-shade this week. With its spikes of pretty fringed flowers and scalloped leaves, it is just the thing for filling spaces in a woodland border without even making itself a nuisance. Do find out why it’s one of her Great Plants this Month:

We have a smashing bee hotel in our online shop at the moment, and Laura has put together a short video full of tips about how to look after it, site it, etc. so that it will attract the maximum number of those precious pollinating insects that we are in such danger of losing. Click on this link or the image below to watch:

Have you got a razor hoe yet? If not, why not?? It’s the tool par excellence for weeding and keeping the soil around your plants in perfect order. And you’ll keep finding more jobs for it too. Find the beautifully-crafted ones from Burgon & Ball in our shop (we even have left-handed ones) and give yourself the chance to actually enjoy the weeding from now on!

NB Louise has published a beautifully produced book of her plant profiles – A Plant for Each Week of the Year. It costs £9.99 and is for sale in our online shop here.

More NB If you’re not already a subscriber and you’d like a bit more gardening chitchat from the3growbags, please type your email address here and we’ll send you a new post every Saturday morning.