FEEDING TIPS

Photo: Camellia

Plants are at full speed with growth this month. Feeding plants now will give rewards later in the growing season. Containers and hanging baskets are particularly susceptible to lack of nutrients so it pays to add a liquid feed every week even if the slow release fertilizer has been added to the compost. Remember to keep them well watered too and give them a healthy soaking even if it has been raining. You will have paid a lot of money and put a great deal of time into the containers so it would be a pity to loose them now. Be very careful who you leave in charge of them if you go away for your holidays too. I have seen many a fine display reduced to a shrivelled crisp in just a matter of days.

FEEDING TIPS

Here are a few other plants that will need a bit of a nutrient boost at this time of year.

Remember to give houseplants a liquid feed once a week.

Tomatoes and flowering plants will benefit from a high potash feed with tomato fertilizer or similar to encourage further flowers and fruit to develop.

Keep roses blooming all summer long by feeding with a rose fertilizer. Mulch them with well-rotted manure at the end of the growing season as well to give them a start next spring.

If you love to cut the grass then get feeding the lawn with a high nitrogen feed. It will green up the lawn and your muscles will grow when you have to push the mower around every week!

Generously sprinkle fertilizer around the base of hedges or around shrubs. Hoe lightly into the soil surface and water well. Use a general feed like Growmore or organic fertilizers like blood fish and bone.

Water all ericaceous shrubs (acid loving) including camellias and rhododendrons, with a full two-gallon can of sequestrene plant tonic.





Horticultural.