Friends who have, seem to have a different relationship with creativity, with trying things out, approaching work or ideas. There seems to be a kind of magic in those studios, I imagine a mentor guiding students through mediums, techniques and expression. I’ve looked into financing it several times. I wanted to know what was behind the veil.

But with all my talking and wishing about it, one friend gently explored what was behind that idea, and gave me a generous opinion that may well have saved me thousands. That I would probably love it for a few weeks, then find it didn’t give me what I thought it would. That growing and experimenting in a garden or a field was already both a medium and an expression. I may well be already doing what I want someone or something to assure me I am.

I’ve reflected on what it is I think I want from an institution. I’ve noticed it in a lot of people, particularly women, some kind of title, a qualification, a measure that says you’ve earned it and can call yourself that thing.

For a long time, being mostly self taught, I felt my own knowledge wasn’t quite as worthy. But after decades of doing something, you forget how much experience you’re carrying, unless you can somehow compare it to when you didn’t have it, or see the work of a beginner next to your own.

This summer my daughter and I have been drawing together. Never at art school, I haven’t really drawn since I was a child, and even then I wasn’t prolific, I liked gathering ideas in scrapbooks and responding to them. So my sketches are nowhere near how I’d like them to be. I want the pencil to be an extension of my hand, to draw and express effortlessly, not be frustrated by the gap between what I want on the paper and what I see.

Being a beginner in this way, where there’s no measure, no client, no target, I’m free to play and experiment. And I need to sit with the discomfort that comes with that when I draw or paint.

But how can I expect to be any ‘good’, when I’ve drawn for maybe two hours in total since I was thirteen?

Set that against growing, designing gardens, pulling together planting schemes of plants I know will thrive and complement each other, selecting flowers and material to arrange, knowing how and when to cut them for their longest vase life. I pulled out old hand drawn client plans the other day. I remember being proud of some of those, over twenty years ago, but looking at them now, I could see just how far I’ve come.

This is all to say that there’s often very little to measure progress against. I get messages from people saying ‘I’m not a gardener’ or ‘I don’t know what I’m doing’, as if that’s something to be embarrassed about. But I think it’s the most exciting time. All that experimenting and discovering of plants, and of your own likes, is still ahead of you. This is a call to be a beginner. To have a go, and crucially, keep having a go. Often. Enjoy that without any weight put on an outcome. I’ve never known the 'finish’ to be half as satisfying as the journey there.

I’m still trying new things every season. That experimenting, that trying of new plants, is the practice. It never becomes finished knowing.

We talk about gardening sometimes as if it’s cleaning. Something to get through, tidy up, tick off. Cleaning is a process with an end point, and I can enjoy it when it turns meditative, and I love the outcome but it stays a task. It’s a means to an end. Albeit very temporary! Gardening, to my mind, is more than the sum of its parts. It’s felt in the body before it’s understood in the head, and there’s no reading your way to that feeling. You only find it by going outside and putting your hands in the soil and touching the plants.

And it really is good for you, but not in the eat-your-porridge way, not a chore dressed up as virtue. I mean properly, deeply good, the whole of you, body and mind together, rejuvenated by it. Fingers in the soil. Wet earth, cut grass. The air on your skin. Insects going about their business, birds carrying on regardless of what kind of day you’re having.

It rained this week, properly, for the first time in months. This morning I walked down to the plot at seven and could hardly believe what one night of rain had done. The ground looks different. There’s the faintest green coming back into grass that’s been grey for weeks, tiny sprouts I keep doubting I’m actually seeing. Some plants have sailed through the drought completely unbothered. Others have dropped everything in what looked like exhaustion, and I don’t yet know which of those I’ve lost for good. But this morning there was birdsong properly, the kind I haven’t heard in weeks, and rabbits bouncing through the field edge, squirrels crossing the path ahead of me, that mottled sky of cloud and blue you get right after weather breaks. It felt almost staged.

Writing this, I’ve realised how hard it is to garden through extremes like this year has brought. But being out there through all of it, through the worst of the heat and now through whatever this recovery turns out to be, is its own kind of comfort. I don’t know what next summer holds any more than you do, but I know that starting to sow again for winter and for next year is deeply steadying, in a way that has nothing to do with knowing the outcome. That’s the practice, to hold steady.

What makes me sad is how many people think they aren’t creative. Skill isn’t something you’re born with. You might find something easier, sure, a predisposition. But whether you enjoy it is a different question entirely. And it’s the doing, the trying and failing and trying again, that builds the confidence to keep going, especially when there are so many external factors affecting what we’re doing.

Gardening, growing food, any real connection to the outdoors, this is a creative practice. If you’re still reading this, I think you find it deeply nourishing too, or perhaps you want it to be. And at this time of year, it’s a good time to find your way back to it again.

Now is the perfect time to review these plants. Think about your conditions and how much hand watering or cajoling you want to do in the future. This kind of maintenance no longer feels enjoyable, more stressful.

There are perennials that can be sown now and will flower next year. And the one after that, reliably, even if conditions are changeable. There are some others that might take another year to flower but well worth the investment in time now, filling out borders, feeding pollinators, and giving you cut flowers for years for the price of a seed packet.

And if seed sowing isn’t where your time is this right now, that’s fine too, buy the plants instead and get them in the ground this autumn while the soil’s still warm. You’ll likely be dividing them again within a couple of years anyway once they’re established.

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I’d rather take a cutting from a plant that’s already proved it can cope with my garden than buy one raised under glass somewhere else. That’s really what August cuttings are about, not a fiddly propagation skill, just helping yourself to more of what’s already working.

And handily, today (Saturday 15th August) is a root day on the biodynamic calendar1. I use the calendar to make sure I do jobs rather than let them slide for another week or two and missing the date.

Whatever has grown strongly for you this year, in your own soil, in your own weather, without cosseting, is the plant worth propagating. It’s already proven it can cope with this summer, in a way a garden centre-bought plant hasn’t had the chance to yet. Take your cuttings from the thing that’s actually thriving where you garden, and you’re building a plant bank suited to your conditions.

Taking cuttings saves you a lot of money, and there’s a real satisfaction in walking round a border in a couple of years’ time, made up entirely of plants you grew yourself, or swapped with a friend down the road who grew theirs the same way.

So before you take a single cutting, walk the garden and mark what’s earned its place this year.

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There are some surprises, plants that are thriving nevertheless and others I am hoping have gone to the ground and will emerge again in the autumn, or next spring.

Staking doesn’t seem to be much of an issue this year - those plants that are growing are holding on to the ground with a will not seen in a moist year when growth is fast, flimsy and fragile.

This is a good month to put this year down to experience and look towards the next, despite still being only in early August! A look forward does ground one in the present, asking ‘what can I do now to thank for later’? The garden is a sum of many parts, each in its own unique chapter of its growing season.

AUGUST FLOWER GROWING TASKS

1. Dead head and cut back tired growth.

   This year, expect plants to tire quickly. I have noticed that plants that were thriving are starting to look, well, worn. I have two choices. Cut these back and feed - they might flower again or at least stop trying to produce seed and concentrate on roots and leaf growth. Or let them go to seed and leave them to provide some food, shelter and winter structure.

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2. Sow Perennials & Hardy Annuals
   There are perennials that if sown now will be flowering plants next summer. Let them grow on for another year and you’ve got a whole bed of plants that will repeat flower and return each year with little attention. Some of my favourites to sow now are echinacea, campanula and scabious. Annuals to later this month are corncockle and orlaya (this being far more reliably sown the year before and will flower very early in the tunnel or outside)

   

3. Save Seeds
   Save the seeds of plants that are coping this summer - these parent plants will produce plants better prepared for drought. So far I’ve collected aquilegia, bupleurum, calendula, wallflowers, foxgloves. I’ll take my chances with sowing these too. I wrote how your own saved seed is superior to any bought here and how to do it.

4. Take cuttings

   Faster than growing from seed and probably easier to do too. This month, take cuttings of rosemary, lavender, salvia, penstemon, pinks and dianthus take well. Here is a guide to semi-ripe cuttings, pretty much follow this but a proper guide will be out next week. Hold tight.

   

5. Green Manures

   It’s a great month to sow green manures. Either for long term, growing and cover over winter, or a shorter, over few weeks before clearing for autumn planting. They germinate easily with a little watering can sprinkle and will really help. These are great fast growing plants that bring nutrients up, open up the soil, add organic matter and suppress unwanted weeds. They also activate the soil biology if the ground has been bare by making food. Use this handy download chart to stick on your wall to sow the ones for your soil and conditions. There is one for everyone.

6. Feeding and Staking

   Some plants, tomatoes, sweet peas and dahlias will enjoy a weekly feed, the rest of the garden will get a monthly spray of a very weak feed. I spray directly onto the leaves, in the cool of the evening. A little goes a long way. Here are my feed recipes. If you haven’t made your own feeds, I recommend this and this.

7. Cutting back

   Delphiniums, poppies, lupins, geraniums and other herbaceous plants that have finished flowering need cutting back to allow late summer perennials to rise despite the drought. I’m cutting these back after a feed (see above) and leaving the wet stems chopped up on the ground as a bit of a mulch and retain some of the dew or whatever drop of moisture there is.

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8. Have a good look

   Make some notes. Take pictures - of it all! Have you noticed that we tend to only capture either good bits or those we are proud of. It is one of the best points of the year to journal how the garden is looking. What do you remember of the spring (if you don’t, set an alarm every month to make some notes on the 1st or whenever suits you) what worked? what delighted and what combinations didn’t. Right now, which plants look great? Would have sowing little and often given you more chance to fill in gaps or was it going to be tricky with the drought anyhow? Could you do with more shrubs and really versatile (wet or dry plants) to create a backbone? This is exactly the time of year to make notes and start thinking about what planting you might want to lift, divide and move about in the autumn. Every single year I think I will remember but I never do. And plants in the winter seem to take no room up at all yet explode, elbowing everything around them come the summer months (looking at you echinops).

9. oh and order spring bulbs

   I know! It’s August! But trust me the best ones will be gone by September. I love Avon bulbs - I just got their catalogue today in the post (I know! actual good post!) and it’s full of goodies.

   Get 14 day free trial

   

   Harvesting

Shrubs - Physocarpus, berry foliage, branches of apples and plums. I also have long thornless arched Boysenberry branches which come into their own right now and through the autumn with turning leaves. Plant one!

Perennials - Persicaria, rudbeckia, aster, gaura, salvias, thalictrum, mints, helenium, verbena, agastache and grasses especially this year, panicum and pennisetum.

Annuals - Zinnia, sunflowers and rudbeckia sahara’s, nicotiana, achillea, cosmos, snap dragons, scabious, coreopsis, calendula, nasturtiums, cerenthe, nigella, feverfew, dianthus. Keep cutting and dead heading to prolong flowering. Atriplex has turned to seed (the perfect time to cut for arranging), panicum bursting with its fibre optic spurs and nicandra are about to flower before developing to black lanterns. And of course, Dahlias. Armfulls of Dahlias.

Helpful Summer Reading

Watering: How to reduce the time and resource to water effectively and efficiently.

Going away? Prepare your garden and plants to return to a thriving space.

Mid Year Review - why it’s helpful to reflect on your growing (not just in the garden?) as I look towards the other half of the year - this is from 2024 so weird to read back, but the idea of reviewing is useful nevertheless. And inspired me to do so this weekend.

Why your own saved seed is best (and it’s not just because it’s free. It really is better!)

Why your cut flowers don’t last - top tips on cutting flowers and how to prepare them for a long vase life with some special notes for plants such as zinnias, cosmos and dahlias.

Narcissus shopping list now is the perfect time to put in spring bulb orders. A list of all my favourites narcissus and why you should be growing them.

Get 14 day free trial

Please like this post and even better hit reply and tell me what you are doing this month in your garden. Please share this newsletter with anyone that might like it.

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Leave a comment

I write about, teach and design productive and sustainable gardens.

Much more help for your growing can be found by visiting the hundreds of articles in the library Floral Index here or why not call me to discuss a consultation - either online or I can come to you.

Have a great month in your garden!

With love,

Summering became a state of mind. This year has been different though.

We’ve had a long drought, two heatwaves, and August still to come. In the field, there is nowhere to hide from the heat. The trees create some shade and protection until about eleven in the morning, then it’s exposed until sunset.

Rest, this year, hasn’t arrived as something I’ve chosen. It’s arrived as the point where I simply can’t do any more after eleven in the morning. But now, in August, after what feels an already long summer, I feel a change in the air.

Over the garden wall:

• What’s changed about my daily rhythm

• The specific things I’ve let go of this year, and which ones I actually miss

• Why forced garden rest doesn’t feel like the same thing as chosen rest, and what I’m doing about that

• Techniques to mitigate the challenges

• What I’m starting to change about how I grow, and what else is becoming part of that

• A change in the air and what I am doing for next year

Read more

And don’t forget to print off your download for a quick guide to read before grabbing your snips and a bucket.

Recently the mother of a bride came to my plot to practise arranging flowers for her daughter's wedding in a few weeks time. She’d be making up bud vases for the reception.

She said she wanted to use flowers from her garden but they never lasted. That session was more than just the opportunity to experiment with colours, combinations and structure. I shared when and how to cut flowers from her garden to ensure the vase life she expected from supermarket flowers that lasted for days and days but with the added satisfaction that her’s danced and developed in the vase and smelt amazing.

Along with how to cut from established plants, how to cut flowers proves to be the main barrier preventing them from looking floppy and sorry for themselves hours later. There is no joy in cutting precious stems to find them like this, so I understand why you don’t trust yourself or want to waste them when they are looking so great in the garden. It’s also a big problem for growers. It’s so frustrating getting a bucket of flowers cut at the wrong time so the petals are dropping or stems drooping before you even need to use them.

Thankfully, it’s much easier than you think and with these golden rules, you’ll have vibrant vases full of flowers around the year.

If you jump over the garden wall as a paid subscriber:

• When to cut, and why timing matters more than anything else you’ll do

• How to cut and strip stems so they actually take up water

• What conditioning is, and how it’s the real secret to vase life, not flower food

• When and how to sear stems, and which ones need it

• A flower-by-flower guide to cutting at the right stage; dahlias, zinnias, cosmos, salvia and rudbeckia all behave differently, and getting it wrong is why they flop

• A downloadable reference card for the potting bench; when to cut, how to condition, and the flower-by-flower notes, all on one page

This card’s one of a growing library of downloadable guides I make for paid subscribers; handbooks, planting calendars, and reference charts like this one, all designed to actually get pinned up and used rather than read once and forgotten. It works out at less than a bag of compost a month, and it’s exactly the kind of thing I wish I’d had starting out.

Come and join us.

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Here are is the guide to cutting summer flowers:

When to cut.

• Cut either first thing in the morning, or late in the evening.

• Cutting early ensures stems are turgid with water from the cool of the night. For extra points, water well the night before.

• Cutting at night is less certain since plants will be tired from a day in the sun.

• Either way, cut and get into scrupulously clean buckets of deep water as quickly as possible.

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It’s really simple, sow green manures. And they are not just for fields and allotments, there are lots of ways to use them in the garden too.

What are Green Manures?

Well they are not green fresh poo as someone once guessed but plants that you grow, either in bare soil or as a companion crop beneath other plants, to enrich and improve soils.

I haven’t bought in any other material (mulches or composts) since late autumn 2021. For nearly four years, I have entirely made my own composts for seed sowing and potting on, and only used green manures to ‘mulch’. This has hugely reduced costs and labour, and I believe, better more resilient plants.

Green manures usually grow fast and are exceptional at driving roots down to find water and nutrients whilst either binding or loosening soil structures. Sounds great doesn’t it?

It’s worked for me.

There is a green manure for pretty much any soil type or problem.

• They prevent weeds by smothering them.

• Prevent soil erosion

• Feeding the soil.

• They also look pretty and some of them I cut for flowers.

• I’ve noticed more diversity in pollinators and beneficial insects.

Some can be left in place for several years.

How I use them

• To underplant longer living perennials & dahlias

• As a companion plant to annuals

• To grow in soil between crops.

Traditionally green manures are ploughed or dug back into the soil. This is particularly good for clay soil but instead here, on dry soil, I ‘chop and drop’ the stems onto the soil as a green mulch.

The benefits

There have been huge positives since using them. I have noticed significant reduction in weeds and the soil structure and water retention appears to be improved. The soil is darker and has more humus (we have a very dry sandy grey soil).

Having a plant grow in the soil over winter, rather than leaving it bare or mulched with compost, is hugely beneficial.

For the soil to be alive and active, it needs food. Microbes, fungi and all the other micro-organisms that make up the soil biome can’t make their own. This is where it gets really beautiful: a plant growing above ground makes that food through photosynthesis, and exchanges up to 50–70% of its carbohydrates back down into the soil in return for water, nutrients and minerals distributed by the fungi and bacterial networks. Without that exchange, those networks sit largely dormant. The soil is only fully active when there are plants growing.

So by having a green manure growing at all times, the soil bacteria, fungi et al is active, worms feeding on rotting vegetation and all sharing working together.

What I have noticed is that when I plant into ground with plants in already, be those weeds, green manures or an existing border, plants are quick to settle in and grow away. Far more than when beds were left ‘clean’ and mulched all winter. It takes time for the communities to build up again.

I use green manure as a crop to compost too - adding material for the compost heap to make microbial rich composts to propagate and grow plants on. When ready to plant out, each seedling has its own little pocket of fantastic soil that can populate the surrounding bed with microbes and fungi.

If you jump over the garden wall as a paid subscriber:

• How to sow green manures & where

• Which green manures you can cut

• Where I buy them

• A downloadable chart of all green manures - split into long & short term growing types, the conditions they like & the individual benefits of each one

This chart’s one of a growing library of downloadable guides I make for paid subscribers; handbooks, planting calendars, and reference charts like this one, all designed to actually get pinned up and used rather than read once and forgotten. It works out at less than a bag of compost a month, and it’s exactly the kind of thing I wish I’d had starting out.

Come and join us.

Subscribe now

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The work has been done now, with everything planted, we can drop a gear or two and enjoy the summer for the next two months. Most are ‘titivating’ jobs; yes water pots daily, cut sweet peas and dead head. But mostly, relax and appreciate the fruits of your labour so far this year.

1. Pick flowers and dead head

   After all, that’s what all this was for! To keep flowers coming, keep harvesting and pinch off the spent flowers to stop plants running to seed. If they do, collect the seeds (how to save and why your own saved seed is always better)

2. Stake plants

   If you take nothing else from this, stake your plants when you plant! Use canes and string, jute netting or pretty chestnut hurdles. Whatever, just give the plants some support as they grow, including dahlias, ammi & cosmos. #10 of my Flower Growing Manifesto is staking, How I do it.

   

3. Clear Biennials

   Now they’ve all finished flowering, these can be cleared and late summer half hardy annuals (cosmos, nicotiana, zinnias) planted in their place. If you don’t have anything to plant, see below! (I lost loads of seedlings in the heat way - if in doubt plant it out - they hate to be sitting in trays)

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4. Green Manures

   So, if you’ve cleared ground but don’t have anything to plant out, or have lots of space around immature plants, sow green manures directly onto the soil. These are great fast growing plants that bring nutrients up, open up the soil, add organic matter and suppress unwanted weeds. They also activate the soil biology if the ground has been bare by making food. I cover ground with them, interplant and even cut them for flowers! (more on this and where to buy them coming up next week or you can come to my session on Saturday)

   In July and August, sow winter hardy green manures to keep the soil active and photosynthesising right through to the spring.

5. Deadheading

   One of my favourite jobs, tidying up and promoting flowering. I’m pinching off perennial cornflowers, calendula, corncockle, roses, all sorts. I’m not tidy, I throw the spent flowers into the beds but that’s more food for the soil, covering as I go.

6. Cutting Back

   If whole perennial plants have finished flowering, I cut them back and give a good feed, they might have another go in September. Try this on nepeta, ladies mantle, geraniums and anything that has been flattened by the rain and turning. Feed plants afterwards. Recently heard it called the Hampton Hack! (but this year it’s not on, but RHS Badminton is…so Badminton Boost is apparently this year’s phrase!) think Chelsea chop, to give plants a refresh and a chance to reflower.

7. Feeding

   I rarely remember to feed. I probably don’t manage once a month but ideally I would. And maybe more often for dahlias, sweet peas and tomatoes. But do what you can. Using the sprayer is easy and quick, but I find my homemade comfrey or any feeds block it up too easily so I hand feed with watering cans. A little goes a long way. Here are my feed recipes.

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8. Lift and divide Iris

   I did this last year and it revives them no end.

9. Summer Nights

   I LIVE for the long summer evenings. Most of all enjoy it! I recommend a hammock &/or a kayak.

Harvesting

Shrubs, Trees & Climbers - Roses & clematis

Perennials - Mints and oregano are in flower now, eryngium, ecinops, cephalaria, penstemon, dianthus, canterbury bells, verbena bonariensis, salvias and first dahlias

Bulbs - Alliums and Lillies

Annuals - Loads, all of them! calendula, cornflowers, corncockle, nicotiana, snapdragons, larkspur, achillea, and many more.

Please like this post and even better hit reply and tell me what you are doing this month in your garden. Please share this newsletter with anyone that might like it.

Go on. Hit the like button. It’s just there…

Leave a comment

I write about, teach and design productive and sustainable gardens.

Much more help for your growing can be found by visiting the hundreds of articles in the library Floral Index here or why not call me to discuss a consultation - either online or I can come to you.

Have a great month outside!

With love,

The account was named Yungblud, which, for anyone who doesn’t know, is the English rock star Ozzy Osbourne announced will carry his mantle on. I like him. His attitude to gigs and pricing, and from what I can see, he’s unassumingly himself.

I have no idea whether it’s really him, and assume, as the beloved first born replied instantly: no, surely not.1

But it got me thinking about how unexpected this subscriber felt, and why wouldn’t a 28 year old touring never-see-daylight rockstar not be interested in Floral Notes!

My imagination has run wild. Yungblud has bought a romantic country pile with a tired old garden, maybe loads of hedges riddled with box caterpillar, a walled garden, acres of lawn, hydrangeas and camellias and soil worn thin from decades of the same treatment. He wants to revive it but has also knows that even with rockstar bank account, you can’t will a traditional garden through climate changing unpredictable weathers.

As our seasons shift, I think more and more young people, at any age, really, are craving a real connection to their outdoor space. So here’s what I’d tell them all.

Below: the gardens that shaped my own eye, the structural call I make before anything else goes in the ground, and the one piece of advice I give every single new client before we plant a thing.

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I used to grow everything like this …

Which is very pretty but takes a lot more effort.

Instead I grow a bit more like this…

You might spot the tomatoes beneath the multi headed sunflowers (they are great bed fellows)

And runner beans with borage and marigolds.

Everything grows better together. These artichokes below are great evergreen structure in the back of the long border, anchoring the rest of the plants. But they are also great for leaves in January through to March when there is little foliage, and of course delicious!

Growing a wide variety of different plants from seed is one of the keys to excellent soil health. We are beginning to understand how important this is but did you realise that actually growing food for yourself and flowers for the table actually improve the soil? And in turn improves our environment. The best part, it improves the taste (and no doubt your own gut health too!)

We’ve grown a lot of different fruit and vegetables here, mostly for meals for classes, workshops and farm days. Food comes a very close second to the flowers here. But I also used the decorative blue flowers of peas, herbs and tendrils of beans in arrangements.

Though, much more than feeding us and my creativity, these plants also contribute to a healthier soil and better plant health all over. A classic win win.

As all plants grow, they take in carbon dioxide, actively removing it from our atmosphere, converting it into carbohydrates for food for themselves and exchanging up to 75% of the carbon to the micro organisms to consume. In return, fungal networks respond to plants needs by giving water, minerals and nutrients. This mutual symbiotic relationship is essential to healthy soil and healthy plants.

One does not exist without the other.

And the more variety in the garden, allotment, and farm, the more variety of microbes and fungi feeding those plants and protecting them from pests and disease. It is utterly mind boggling and wonderful to know all this is going on beneath our feet. All we need to do is make sure we don’t do anything to kill the microbes in the soil. That includes not using any chemicals, keeping the soil covered with plants (even weeds will take in carbon and keep the soil alive) use your own feeds and occasionally add some homemade compost to stimulate microbial activity.

I heard during a talk, how flowers were used in historical kitchen gardens for ornamental purposes but they missed their real use. Of course flowers do look beautiful and they can be cut for the house but many flowers have well known beneficial properties for herbal medicines and can be used for teas or decoration (every plant you eat, even pansies or cornflowers as decoration are supporting your gut biome too) but crucially flowering plants are particularly good at attracting pollinators. Flowers would be dotted about to do just that and help plants like courgette for instance that can have a tough time enticing them.

I am experimenting with putting plants in and around existing perennials and shrubs, to feed the soil year round and increase the variety of plant life whilst feeding us.

Right now, this is playing out in real time.

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You don’t need a seed, simply a little piece of a plant and as if by magic, it grows roots and makes a new plant. Give it a couple of years, and you can make more plants!

My dad could seemingly take almost any plant, and in my memory, any time of year (which can’t be true…) and it would root and grow away without any chemicals or greenhouse. Just lots of pots lined up. Little naughty pinchings in the back of a hot pushchair, with no business of surviving, would merrily sprout for him.

The thing is, they want to grow! Trust that process and confidently go about being a real gardener, making your own cuttings! Plants always look better grown in larger groups anyway, or give them away and swop for new ones.

There are different types of cuttings to take depending on the time of year and the plant. Right now, we are at the last moment to take softwood cuttings. These are really easy to do, quick and the most reliable type of cutting to take.

Softwood Cuttings

When:

These can be taken from early spring (when the plant is emerging) through to midsummer (now!)

I could have taken lots of cuttings in the earlier spring but with unpredictable weather, they can easily damp or rot off. I find taking them from May onwards, when the temperatures are reliably higher means they are more likely to root well.

Suitable for:

Hardy & tender perennials - Anthemis, penstemon, pelargonium, verbena. Also deciduous shrubs such as buddleja, fuchsia, hydrangea, pervoskia. And any other plants that have this kind of vigorous soft growth in spring/ early summer. Worth a go!

Time taken:

10 mins per plant, it’s a quick job!

How:

1. Take cuttings from young vigorous stems (if you are renovating an older plant, give it a good hard prune, then take cuttings with the new growth)

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After our long planning course in the spring, and the last few weeks on composting, watering and feeds, it’s time to remember what it is all about.

One easy and very quick way to use what we grow to bring more beauty is on our food. You don’t need many flowers and if you collect them just as the water boils, or you lay the table, they don’t need any preparation. Just collect and sprinkle.

There are so many plants that are edible, you’re probably growing loads already. And don’t just go for full flowers, pulling apart, sprinkling petals creates a pretty confetti too.

Scroll down for the long list of edible flowers - there are a few surprises and some ideas as how to use them (canapés in tulip petals anyone?)

Flowers can be the star of the show, as here, when Liz at the Modern Table cooked for our Dine Among the Flowers Weekend of meals (a 7 course dinner on Friday night, lunch on the coals Saturday and a picnic on Sunday) these chilled pea starters looked really special with a single pansy flower a top.

or for the Saturday lunch, these fruit tarts just artfully sprinkled. The flowers really make these looks special don’t they?

I’ve done the same for course and workshop lunches. Elevating, what at first glance is simple (but tastes delicious! ha!) a final flourish makes the food look extra thoughtful. We rarely make the time for that nip around the garden. This is a very good reason not to have your cut flowers growing separately in productive beds hidden. I have no idea why people do this. I think these areas are so beautiful rather than staged perfect beds. And a very good reason to grow organically so you can always pick any flowers! I often don’t wash flowers unless they are close to the ground. If they are dusty then I wouldn’t pick them anyway.

Last week at an open day for Dig It Community Allotment we sprinkled viola flowers on the cakes and make herbal teas with lemon balm and mint. Cordials and simply sparkling water was made fancy with petals and herb leaves. Treat yourself! You deserve it!

Don’t just leave it there though, flowers can become an integral part of the meal rather than just a garnish.

These open sandwiches took ages to make but I knew what I wanted to do, so made it into an activity not to be rushed and enjoyed the creative time, nourishing more than just my belly. Each was different - you know flowers taste different with spicy achillea and soft dahlia petals. Anchusa and borage flowers are fresh and cucumber like.

Even just a few petals on top of a cake

And baked biscuits. Pretty!

Some flowers are better as a garnish as bitter but others are delicious. Experiment!

Here is the long list!

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Top tips for growing flowers this month; green manures make for easy weeding, planting out and feeding.

Anyone else wondering where we are in the year? The grass and heat in the last few weeks had me in August but this week feels like early May with the weather. Growers around me reporting that many of the failsafe June flowers are already over.

I reminisced over old photos where there has sometimes been ranunculus and growing, Irises (or peonies/ poppies/ and all the other perennials) with biennials of sweet rocket, wallflowers and honesty all going over to seed far earlier that one would expect.

There may be gaps this early summer. It might be worth having a final little go at sowing some late summer colour even now since the temperatures are lower. Another trick is to drop in pots of ready grown plants (make a note for next year too). I kept lots of plants in pots, in the shade whilst the temperatures soared and planted them out earlier this week just before the rains. You can’t plan for this kind of thing and I was lucky there. But then I also was unlucky in that so much of what I would expect to bloom in June, is over already. Hopefully July and further will be wonderful!

Ideally, you’d begin these plants from seed undercover a few months ago, otherwise buy small plug plants (from the market or check your local flower grower), pot on into a larger one and literally drop in to the border. You can leave these sitting on top of the soil or cut the bottom out and sink the bottoms in. Good plants for this are dahlias, nasturtiums and cosmos. All will rise up over the June bed and blur all the edges. A great trick this. When the days might be shortening already, there is still a good 12 weeks of summer garden to enjoy.

In the garden, the rising temperatures and longer days create rapid flourish, then as the year turns, annuals will race to flower and set seed in earnest so that their offspring will germinate before the winter. Literally making hay whilst the sun shines. Remember to cut the flowers, or at least remove spent blooms to welcome the next set of stems to follow on. This way flowers will continue for many weeks.

JUNE FLOWER GROWING TASKS

I am loving the long days. Friends who hate the winter think I am trite for saying so, but as a lapsed catholic, I adore the delayed gratification of the summer after the winter’s challenges. But you’ll know I love all the seasons and treasures each one exclusively brings to the party. But those still mornings, the 8pm golden hour, insects buzzing and warm sun, those are the best.

1. Plant out all annuals out into their final position.

   It bears repeating. Don’t leave plants in the their trays labouring away when they just want to stretch into the soil.If you are planting , water the plants well the evening before and plant, ideally on a cooler day, into watered holes. I’ll water again when I see fresh new growth, knowing that the roots have stretched and explored into their new home.

2. Plant dahlias out.

   These deserve their own listing. Plant them and don’t water until they are 5”. Pinch out to just a few shoots and concentrate on getting the supports in before they get too high. I’ll keep saying it until I don’t need to. You’ll have stronger, deeper rooting, more floriferous plants.

3. Stake Plants

   Either individually with a couple of canes, or a metal support. If growing in dedicated productive beds, with jute netting stretched between stakes about 18” high. It is hard to believe that tiny plugs will grow several feet over the next few months, but they do. And there are always summer storms to test. A dedicated article on different ways to do this.

4. Final sowings of half hardy and hardy annuals.

   If you have gaps, it is worth a last attempt for late summer flowers. The quickest are poppies that love to grow in newly turned warm soil. They’ll flower in about 8 weeks. Or cosmos, these beautiful sunflowers, this red grass for some architectural interest and great for arranging with dahlias.

5. Thin out annuals

   Those that self sowed (oh the joy of a mature plot) or you directly sowed in the spring, can be thinned out to allow plenty of room for growth, light and air circulation. You aren’t alone if you find it so hard to pull out perfectly good, strong plants but the ones left will be better for it. You could transplant these into another spot, pot them on for a friend or throw into the compost heap for next years plants. You have far too many other things to do and the soil needs that food.

6. Sow Biennials for flowers this time next year

   Still time to do this over the next few weeks. When there is so much to do for this years garden, it seems a job too many to attempt biennials but you will be thrilled this time next year if you do. Read up on my favourites here. Honesty, sweet rocket and wallflowers are such gap fillers but utterly lovely in their own right. They take a full year to grow and flower from seed, and often better the following year still.

   

7. Final ‘balanced’ feeds

   Did you make your own feed with nettles, compost and stinky fresh manure? Goodness you know it is ready when it stinks. The plants love it. After midsummer the plants need to concentrate on flowers and fruit so I’m using all this up now to feed plants trace nbuttirent and minerals to grow strong roots and leaves. I don’t water the soil, most of it will get lost. I add a couple of tea cups to my 10 litre sprayer and go over the whole plots one evenning, covering the leaves and stems (avoid any flowers). This is a great folier feed. You need less liquid, it’s fair quicker and effective being taken in more directly by the plants.

8. Lift and split spring bulbs

   If they didn’t flower well as over crowded, these will do far better to be replanted in the autumn with more space.

9. Deadhead & deadhead

   After all your efforts, don’t let plants run to seed before their time. Keep snipping off flower heads that bloomed before you got to them. Or if they have run to seed, save it - your own seed is the best!

Harvesting

Shrubs - Philadelphus, viburnum, roses, lonicera

Perennials - Perennial Poppies & cornflowers, aquilegia, ladies mantle, peonies, delphiniums, nepeta, iris

Biennials - Sweet rocket, foxgloves, sweet william, honesty

Annuals - Autumn sown plants will be big and flowering now including cornflowers, orlaya and sweet peas. Cut hard for fresh new growth and flowers.

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Much more help for your growing can be found by visiting the hundreds of articles in the library Floral Index here or why not call me to discuss a consultation - either online or I can come to you.

Have a great month outside!

With love,

For two reasons,

1. I don’t want to stand about watering

2. Also, mainly, because plants are a lot stronger if you don’t.

After weeks of drought, this is good timing to take a deep dive (ahem) into watering.

For a long time, there has been this obsession with watering, keeping everything green and lush. I have lots of problems with this especially in entirely ornamental spaces. It feels indulgent.

Wisdom behind not watering.

You see, time it right, plant out at just the right time, they’ll want to grow away, searching for water and extending their roots deeply to anchor.

Cultivated soil that is rich with microbial activity, fungi reaches deeply, for ground water to bringing it up to plants. Sometimes over metres. In parts of the rainforest, the networks are kilometres long!

It starts and ends with the soil. Care for that, first and it’ll care for the rest. When I first gardened in the walled garden, the soil was so dry and, well, dead. Since then, as I have worked with the soil, with feeds and composting, I have watered less and less, yet my plants seem to thrive more and more. This goes against much of what I learnt and I thought.

When planting out seedlings, I system is to water well the evening before, and ideally plant on a damp day, or with cloud cover. I then don’t water until I see fresh new growth on the plants. If it rains around that point, then I don’t bother at all! Those plants really anchor well and don’t flop on hot days.

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Growing naturally with little intervention from me allows plants be resilient to their environment, to make friends with the soil bacterias and fungi and get on with it.

See it the other way around, if you water a lot, I mean more than once a week in hot weather, your plants are, with respect, going to be weaklings.

These plants do not put their roots down deep, they rely and expect water to come easily. Without strong roots, the plants are also less strong, needing support. And I reckon, less resilient, more likely to attract pests and disease, and fungal problems with moist soil and air. Instead plants flower strongly and have more vibrancy.

Planting up gardens with plants appropriate to our soils and local weather, creating resilient spaces full of biodiversity and a light human touch, is regenerative gardening.

I do run a regime of benign neglect but the more I am ‘hands off’ the better the garden works together.

So what do I water?

1. Plants undercover

   Anything planted in the ground in the tunnel - like tomatoes, sweet peas etc watering at least every other day, often every day. I fill them up the day before if from a tap, (harmful to microbes, chlorine breaks down in sunlight) then water in the morning.1

2. Seedlings in trays or pots

   These will invariably be watered with watering cans, as above every morning, but only if dried out between waterings.

3. Any really precious plants that look like they need it before they flower, or as they flower. I grow less and less of these needy darlings.

4. Pots

   I empty florist buckets or trays of water, filled with rainwater straight into these.

5. Bags of late autumn chrysanthemums

   But I often forget, so they’ve been watered about 3 times so far.

6. The Compost heap

   When building it or turning. These seems to be me the best use of any spare water.

When do I water?

Morning is best

• It’s counterintuitive, but research has discovered that plants take up water better in the morning, and will continue to do so during the daytime.

• At night time, with moist soil for hours, there is more chance of slug and snail damage and furthermore, fungal diseases.

• During the morning, the plants are rested and the soil is cool, water can be absorbed much more easily.

So that’s it! This week I had a huge plant delivery for different clients and lots of seedlings waiting to be potted on. Despite very high temperatures here, I put everything in to either the shade of the greenhouse (still south west facing so hot!) or under trees and I haven’t even watered daily. With capillary matting in trays and reducing the stress, plants have sat happily and even put on growth! They’ll wait to be planted in the cool of later next week.

A lot of this flips conventional teaching on its head but do try it. You’ll have much more time in the sun lounger!

I can help you in your garden by visiting the hundreds of articles in the library Floral Index here or why not call me to discuss a consultation - either online or I can come to you.

With love,

Then a gardening friend mentioned bokashi composting, and I’ll be honest, I half-listened. Fermented kitchen scraps in a sealed bucket? It sounded fussy, time consuming and expensive.

I was completely wrong. Three years in, it’s as routine as morning coffee and the rats haven’t been back.

If you read last week’s piece on composting, think of this as the indoor counterpart. This is the third in a series in soil health and regenerative growing. Where the heap handles your garden waste, bokashi handles everything that comes out of your kitchen, including the things a compost heap really shouldn’t have: cooked food, citrus, meat, bones, dairy. It goes into a sealed bucket, ferments quietly by the back door, and comes out two weeks later smelling faintly sweet and ready to supercharge the heap you’ve already got.

For me, this closed loop is really important to my regenerative growing practice, kitchen scraps no longer being truly wasted, instead transforming into a microbe-rich addition to my composting process.

What is bokashi?

Bokashi means ‘fermented organic matter’ and unlike conventional composting, which relies on air and aerobic bacteria to break things down, bokashi is anaerobic. You exclude air entirely. The result is faster, more efficient, and almost no gas is released, which means all the nutrients are retained rather than lost to the atmosphere.

Your kitchen food bin, however faithfully emptied, will always smell at least a little grim. Bokashi doesn’t. The fermentation process produces something that smells faintly sweet, pleasantly sour, like a mild pickle, rather than the slow rot you’d expect. It’s a small thing, but it changes your relationship to the whole process. Chopping up vegetable peelings and the slops of a cereal bowl feels less like waste management and more like collecting ingredients to feed my soil.

How I make it

You don’t need specialist equipment.

Read more

It does take a little shift in thinking about your garden, especially if it is small. People ask whether composting is worth it, when you can buy bags of the stuff. I hope I can inspire you to fall in love with composting and find space for it.

We’ve got this idea that sterilised bags of ‘clean’ weed free compost is better. But that which we make from our own cuttings, weeds and emptying pots even of dead plants, is full of the exact same soil microbes, nutrients and minerals in our gardens. To give them away in a green bin is giving away the exact gold that your plants would love to retain. If you think about it, those weeds or seeds, petals and dying plants would go back to the soil if you did nothing anyway. By ‘tidying up’ and putting them away in the heap, you not only enjoy the process, whilst that organic matter decomposes away from sight for you to put back onto the beds as a compost that is teaming with life and goodness or grow your future plants in as seedlings.

I have found some lovely composters for any sized garden here, here and here. For really tiny courtyard or balconies this is brilliant!

For the beginner -

If you have never composted before, here are my top tips -

1. The most important thing about composting is to have at least a near equal mix of browns and greens.

   If you only put loads of grass in, you won’t get lovely crumbly rich compost.

• Greens - Grass, dead flowers from a vase, weeds, raked up leaves.

• Browns - chopped up branches of hedge clippings, prunings (chop it all up into pieces no bigger than a few inches) also shredded paper works, ripped up plain brown cardboard, egg boxes

  Try to layer up just a few inches of each type - brown at the bottom, then green and so on. If you have some old compost from pots, add this as a layer too.

2. If the material is dry, which it is likely to be, water the heap until it is quite soggy when you add new layers. This will get the material to mix and start decomposing, heating it up. Then let the microbes do the rest!

3. When the compost heap is full, leave it for 6 months or so. Check to see if it’s very dry - add water again - the composting actually happens if it’s damp.

4. Open it up and have a look. I bet you’ll have lovely material to use.

5. Then use! If you need to start a new heap, a second composter is ideal, otherwise bag up your compost and store it until you have a use for it.

   

For the super composter -

Advanced tips, for larger spaces and much faster composting.

What this is not - no need for those accelerator products, turning heaps or even compost bays. But a little bit of composting geekery, thermometers and whether or not to add weeds.

This is super fast composting - once build and ready in 6 months OR fast 8-10 week turnaround (yes really).

This is how I used to compost -

It was ugly, I turned the heaps in the next bay at least once a year. I’d be waiting to turn heaps and urging them to decompose faster. I’d then have to somehow get compost from the bottom of the heap. No wonder home composting can seem like too much like hard work. I made it seem like a penance.

Now, just like I describe above. I fill up heaps, no longer in pallet towers, and no longer turn. I can get compost from the top as it all develops at the same time. Much less work, much better compost.

Here are the two types of methods I use now

For the very keen home or professional

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This week, I have been using my own feeds on plants. They are free, easy to make and plants visibly perk up after using.

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I didn’t use to in my home garden, and it was only growing cut flowers, especially dahlias, that I kept reading about feeding my plants. I didn’t know why I needed to feed when I mulched with compost.

You see the whilst additional organic matter on beds can feed plants, it’s something that improves the soil over time. I will come to composting next week. But liquid feeds give immediate nutrients, minerals and trace elements and the difference is evident in the plants the very next day. Perkier, greener, fresher and stronger growth.

Feeds also help boost a plants immunity and strength, helpful when there are pests early in the season or challenging weather conditions. Using your weeds, compost and plants to make feed will always be better than bought since these are going to be the ingredients from your own soils that the plants are both from the same soils and micro climate which the plants are genetically predisposed to growing in.

Now I make five different feeds for the garden, that are used at different times of the year. They are very easy and like making potions. You really don’t need to make all of them, if you made just one, I’d say the comfrey which is great for fruiting and flowering. Or failing that, the weed one is really brilliant too. I used to feed weekly, and now found, as with homeopathy and aromatherapy, a little is better. So for several years, I spray just once a month. (you don’t need a big sprayer like I have - a small houseplant one will do a small to medium garden)

Here are the very easy recipes and how I use them -

Weed Feed

Ingredients

Any weeds, including any particular pernicious ones like dandelion, bindweed, nettles etc Collect equal parts.

Method

• Place in a bucket, drum or water butt.

• Add water to cover the ingredients.

• Leave for about a fortnight, ideally with a lid on.

How to use

A weed feed, like the compost feed will have all the ingradients already growing in your garden. The difference is with a weed feed, is that you are putting back into the soil, all the particular nutrients and minerals that those pesky weeds took advantage of and grew with. This feed can have an enormous effect on improving growth.

After a fortnight, the plants will have partially rotted so can go onto the compost heap without fear of re-sprouting or the seeds germinating (this is a good way to deal with really pernicious perennial weeds - don’t pull them, just chop off at soil level - they’ll eventually give up without leaves to feed the growth but meanwhile the roots are still holding the soil structure and feeding the microbes.)

Stain the liquid through a muslin so the fibres don’t block your sprayer nozzle and use a cup in a sprayer filled with water.

Top tip if using tap water, leave to stand for a few hours for the water to dechlorinate. Spray directly on leaves of plants avoiding the flowers, ideally on a cloudy evening when the sun is going down. Good to use any time.

Balanced Compost Feed

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Seed sowing, transplanting, planting out, making compost and staking

This is a busy month of hopeful and optimistic growing for a summer of joy! Pick and choose what to do and permission to enjoy it rather than feel overwhelmed by the long list!

1. Planting out hardy annuals and perennials

   The main job this month. Anything hardy to the frosts can be planted now. If they’ve been growing nice and cosy in a tunnel or greenhouse, harden them off by bringing the plants out in the day for a week or so, bring in or lower the cold frame lid at night. Then expose to the night cool for a few days before planting out. The plants are only truly hardy once harden to those conditions.

   

2. Sowing half hardy annuals

   These are not hardy to the cold or frost so I’m still growing undercover early this month in case of more frosts. Need to know how to grow without a greenhouse? Top tips here. Half hardy annuals that I love are nicotiana, cosmos and multi headed sunflowers. I’ll start planting those sown early last month, in sheltered positions in mid May. Those sown now can be planted as soon as they roots fill the module or pot.

   

3. Direct sowing seeds

   The easiest, most efficient and most sustainable way to sow is directly. No pots, no plastic, maybe a little watering if it doesn’t rain but right now, we are getting a good balance of warmth and rain. If weeds are growing, then your seeds will grow too! Prepare the soil by raking it to a fine tilth, move stones and draw lines for sowing. This way, you can hoe off weeds and know where your seeds are growing. Keep the ground moist until germination.

   

4. Potting on

   One of my favourite garden tasks; in the greenhouse with a podcast or audio book (spoken word for weeding, novels for planting but house music for flower arranging), repotting seedlings with a couple of leaves into trays of compost. I make my own, a mix of homemade compost and loam (the rotted down lawn edges of grass make great soil).

5. Plant out Dahlias and tender plants (at the end of the month)

   If you have bought new tubers or saved your own last autumn, get them potted up into 2/3L pots of compost to sprout. I water very occasionally to prevent rotting but keeping the pot damp. Check on these if in a hot tunnel or greenhouse. Plant these out into position in mid May or later. (Full 101 on Growing Dahlias and all the hard lessons I’ve learnt here or here on my new method planting straight out)

   

6. Green Manures

   If you’ve cleared ground but don’t have anything to plant out yet, sow some green manures. These are great fast growing plants that bring nutrients up, open up the soil and add organic matter. They also activate the soil biology if the ground has been bare by making food. I cover ground with them, interplant and even cut them for flowers! Want to know more about these?

7. Feeding with liquid feeds

   I feed plants at least once a month, with different feeds according to their development (planting / growing / flowering / dying back). All the recipes to make your own (which is so easy and free!) here.

8. Staking

   If you take nothing else from this, stake your plants when you plant! Do not wait until they need it. This year the orlaya in the tunnel has risen high and one plant flopped. I didn’t think to stake when I planted these in January! Now it’s too late and the best I can hope for is that it doesn’t flatten. Use canes and string, jute netting or pretty chestnut hurdles. Whatever, just give the plants some support as they grow, including peonies, dahlias, ammi & cosmos.

   

9. Chelsea Chop

   Leave this until Chelsea week (the last week in May before the Whitsun Bank Holiday) and chop perennials to extend their flowering season. I do this on nepeta, echinops, achillea, aster and echinacea but also so many other late flowering plants. Chop a 1/3rd of the plants stems by 2/3rds, another 1/3rd by 1/3rd and leave the other 1/3rd as it is. This will increase the flowering season with blooms following on as others go over. You can also do this with a larger crop by cutting a 1/3rd of the crop hard, etc to extend flowering.

   

10. Sow Biennials

    You could start sowing biennials but there is enough going on this month so full permission granted to push this to the top of next month’s list. Order your seeds if you haven’t got them ready!

11. Spring Bulbs

    Stop plants from setting seed by chopping the heads and feeds plants as they die back. Cut stems and leaves about 6 weeks after flowering or when they have yellowed.

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Harvesting

Shrubs, Trees & Climbers - Viburnum opulus, hawthorn, lonicera (honeysuckle), lilac (cut the leaves off)

Perennials - Euphorbia, solomons seal, aquilegia, perennial cornflowers, tiarella, mint & artichoke.

Biennials - Sweet rocket, sweet williams, honesty, wallflowers

Bulbs - Narcissus, tulips, camassia & alliums

Corms - Ranunculus & anemones, bearded iris

Annuals - Iceland poppies, calendula, autumn sown early crops of cornflowers, orlaya and corncockle. First sweet peas!

Please ❤️ this post and even better hit reply and tell me what you are doing this month in your garden. Please share this newsletter with anyone that might like it.

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I write about, teach and design productive and sustainable gardens. For subscriber only posts on all the above and inspirational ideas to go out and do the same in your own space, join me as a paid subscriber.

With love,

Have you spotted any of the following?

• Are your plants growing long and thin, leaning towards the light?

• Plants leaves a pale green ever yellow?

• Drying out quickly in the day?

• Trying to flower before in the ground?

Well I got you. If you have been sowing seeds since late February/ March, I reckon your plants are well ready to be planted into their final position. But many are worried about planting them out into the wild open soil for fear it is too soon.

Here is what I consider to decide whether my seedling is ready -

1. Has the plant made a nice root ball?

2. Do they need pinching out?

3. Is the plant hardy (or half hardy)?

4. Have you hardened off?

If it’s a yes and you follow through, you are ready to go.

If your answer is no, then hold back.

If it’s ‘I don’t know’. Then come with me -

Has the plant made a nice root ball?

A Goldilocks moment, a sweet spot when a plant is just ready to move up in the world. Get it too early, the plant concentrate resources on rooting, at the expense of stem or leaf growth. It might die off. Too late, a plant can be pot bound; waiting too long, the plant doesn’t achieve potential, never being able to get away since it waited too long to be moved on.

Initially, when you see the second set of leaves, or the ‘true leaves’, that is the first signal to prick out a seedling and move into richer, multipurpose compost. It is unlike the roots have developed much, but you might be surprised how deeply they run already in comparison to their top growth.

Move seedlings, or indeed any plant, into a module or pot that is only slightly bigger than which it’s came from.

When the seedling has filled the module, or plant pot (depending on the size of seedling), you will see little white roots peeping through the hole at the bottom. At that point it is worth a gentle tug of the plants (I turn the pot over, cradle the plant between my fingers and hold the soil) and gently pull the pot away from the root ball. If the roots have run to the sides, holding the soil all together, you are good to move on. If the soil is loose and there are only a few roots just exploring the edges of the pots, leave it alone for a little longer. Experience will make this easier and easier.

What is going on above the soil might not represent what is going on below. Some plants like sweet peas might not look like much growth has occurred but created wonderful multiple long roots. Leave those in the pot too long and they’ll yellow and die off.

You might notice, that plants grow to the sides of a pot, then break new roots, developing fast to create a strong root ball. If the pot is significantly bigger, say more than about a quarter the volume of the previous, the plant will take far longer to root, and therefore be ready to plant on. Rooting stabilises the plant, and you want that to be done quickly.

But the usual mistake is not potting on to too large pots, but that over protective propagators leave their plants under cover and pot bound for longer than necessary.

Plants have gotten used to their environment, worse, stressed, and that’s when you’ll see them trying to flower. Often, a quick pinch down and swift moving on will solve this.

If a plant is very root bound (the roots can be seen filling the pot, swirling round the bottom several times, or even little soil left to be seen), ripping a quarter to third of the root from the plant can be really helpful.

This seems to really shock people when they see me do it. But, alike pinching out or pruning encourages growth, ripping the roots does the same. Plants are stimulated to produce more root and search for nutrient, minerals and water.

Time it right, and the roots will grow away, anchoring the plant well and reaching deep for ground water, connecting with soil fungi.

Does it need pinching out?

Quick check here against the pinching out list. But broadly, if in doubt, pinch it out! You do not want tall thin stems, especially for flowers. Instead you want multiple stout stems. Stressed plants will send long stems up to flower quickly and run to seed to save future offspring. Pinch it out!

Is the plant hardy or half hardy?

In late April, there is still plenty of time in the south east for there to be a frost. I reckon we have passed that date in the south west. Anywhere north is likely to still have a decent frost. Therefore, knowing whether the plant is hardy to frost or not (half hardy) is essential. For a lot of plants, if they are a decent size in root, a frost won’t kill them but will burn off the leaves and knock it back. Instead, keep your seedlings inside, under cover or in a plastic box until your usual local last frost date is passed (check here).

The seed packet will tell you if it’s a hardy or half hardy annual.

If it is hardy, then it will be fine. But. have you hardened off?

Have you hardened off?

Sunday, in glorious sunshine, before a huge, somewhat surprising deep frost1, I saw loads of videos and images across different platforms of gardeners planting out tender plants, tomatoes, half hardy annuals and seedlings that frankly did not look prepared for low temperatures.

Plants need to be acclimatised to the open air, higher fluctuations of temperatures, heavy rain or wind. And last years baddy, the slug.

Yes, hardening off will prepare your precious plants for growing in the big wide world. It takes, ideally a fortnight and I am hearing less and less people talk about it, and more taking the risk. (And it can protect your plants from slug damage.)

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