How to give your summer bedding plants the best aftercare for long-lasting blooms and the longest possible life
Once suitably established and hardened off (see previous article) you will be able to plant out your bedding plants in the garden or out in your containers. Be certain to make sure that the soil or compost where you want your plants to grow is not too firm to allow the roots to penetrate and grow with ease. Use a trowel to make hole in the soil or compost the same depth as the compost and roots on your young plants. Insert your plant into the hole and firm the soil or compost around it, but try not to exert too much pressure. You then need to water your plants by applying water generously, any excess water will drain away. You may need to re-firm the soil or compost around your plants as the watering process may wash away some of it, leaving the base of your plants exposed.
If rain is expected or experienced you plants will not need to be watered all the time. Otherwise your plants will need water each day and especially whilst still young. This is best done first thing in the morning or later in the evening as this gives your plants the chance to drink up the water before the hot sun dries it out. On really hot or sunny days your bedding plants may well need to be watered twice. Check the moisture of the soil or compost by touch, if it feels damp or moist you need not water but if it is dry then water is certainly required. The compost or soil in containers will often dry out much quicker than ground soil and for this reason container plants will often need to be watered more frequently, again try not to do this during the hottest part of the day.
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Most plants used as bedding are ‘annual’ which meant that they will grow, flower, produce seed and die off all within one growing season. As the plant grows it will at the right time produce flowers, the flowers will then wither and die and where the flower head once was is where seed will be produced. The seeds will mature and fall to the ground or get carried away by animals or the wind, and will lay dormant until the following season or sometimes within the same season until the conditions are right for them to germinate and produce new plants. As all living things whether plant or animal are concerned primarily with reproduction once a plant has produced seed it will die and allow the seed to re-establish.
Once your plant has produced flowers and the flowers have withered and died to create seeds the parent plant will then die naturally. Sometimes this can happen within a few weeks of planting out your young plants if the conditions are favourable. This is what we are trying to avoid as we require summer-long flowers so we need to put our influence in.
Also the plant will grow continually upwards until it can produce flowers and then wither, we don’t want tall and leggy bedding plants with only one or a few flowers, no, we want bushy plants with lots of flowers all summer, so again we need to intervene.
For this we need to do two things: ‘pinching out’ and ‘dead-heading’.
Pinching out; pinch out the growing tips at the top of each stem of your plants. This will cause your plant to produce new shoots with more growing tips that also might need pinching out. However flowers are often produced at the growing tips so try not to overdo it, only pinch out until the plant has grown bushy enough for your requirements and allow it to flower – after all flowers are what we want. More stems will give more flowers per plant.
Dead-heading; this process means removing any flowers that have started to wither and die. This will ultimately cause your plants to produce more flowers because it cannot produce seeds until it has produced flowers. By preventing your flower heads from withering and producing seeds you will be ultimately prolonging the life of your plants, and so helping the plants live and produce flowers for a longer period.
It is also advisable to remove any faded or withering foliage to prevent energy from being used to try and revive weaknesses, and channelling it into helping to produce more fresh growth.
Later on in the season such as autumn (or fall to our American friends) as temperatures begin to drop your annual bedding plants will die anyway because the temperatures will not be sufficient enough to sustain them.
To summarise water regularly and when required, pinch out frequently, remove any withered foliage, and dead-head very often, daily if necessary. By following these simple procedures you will have lots of beautiful blooms all summer long and right into autumn (fall).
Please email me to for more information or to reserve your copy of my new upcoming budget gardening ebook.
Pete Etheridge
Qualified horticulturist and budget hobby gardener.
Offering help & advice on garden matters.
Article from articlesbase.com
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yes rhubarb, that long celery type thing that you cant eat raw and has poisonous leaves, great stuff!
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