Supplement Your Summer Garden

Summer is, and always will be, the best season to get the most of our garden. Most plants are in full leaf or bloom and they are enjoying the warmth and light from the longer days.
If you enjoy having more flowers in your garden, then why not add more! Run out of space on your patio? Hang them from the walls! More plants mean you can create your own little oasis in your back garden.

Here’s Our Best Advice for Summer Bedding

With a vast variety of options in the garden centres and ever-increasing stock online, it can be difficult to know what’s the best choice, or what size plants to get. Plug plants are now the most common form of bedding plants because they’re cost-effective and can easily slip through your letterbox if ordered online. Plug plants come in mainly two sizes, ‘Standard’ and ‘Jumbo’ or ‘Garden Ready.’

Standard plug plants are approximately 7cm in height, grown in cells and need potting in 9cm pots for six to eight weeks to establish before planting out into the garden. They are great for colour in the late season.

Jumbo or garden-ready plug plants are exactly as they say – garden ready. These are a little bigger and have a more established root system to enable them to immediately survive in the garden. Great if you’re wanting instant impact, they are young so their root systems form faster. which makes them establish quicker and stronger. Of course, traditional six-pack trays from garden centres are ideal for quick solutions or gap fillers, but you will need to make sure that they are watered so they take root.

Pay Extra Attention to Hanging Baskets

If planting plugs in hanging baskets, feed is crucial to a full display. As bedding plants are so quick to establish and are usually planted in small pots or hanging baskets, they will use up the nutrients in the compost very fast and so this will need to be replenished frequently. Feeding once every two weeks during the growing season will be sufficient. You should also be watering bedding pots and baskets in the morning or evening, during warm weather.

You will lose your plants very quickly if you fail to water them, so it is worth investing in a lance spray adapter for your hose, which is perfect for hard to reach areas like hanging baskets or for getting to the soil underneath plants.

Ready for the ultimate summer garden? Call our design team on 0116 210 0760 today.