Posted: 15 June 2024
Author: Smith's Garden Centre
Flowering summer bedding plants such as Osteospermum, Geraniums and Petunias will all benefit from continual deadheading throughout the summer season. Remove any dead flowers with secateurs or your fingers to allow fresh growth and for new flower buds to form.
Some perennials such as Coreopsis, Geums and Scabiosa will all benefit from being deadheaded too.
Without deadheading, plants will take longer to drop their spent flowers, and new buds will take longer to bloom.
Some varieties of taller perennials with heavy flowers will require support to prevent their stems from breaking. Using plant supports or garden canes can prevent damage to these plants and maintain their shapes in your garden pots and borders.
Climbing plants will require tying to their supports as they begin to put on new growth throughout the summer. Simply use garden twine, or a soft plant tie that won’t damage the stems.
Summer bedding in pots and hanging baskets will benefit from a liquid feed every couple of weeks during the summer season. We recommend using a form of liquid seaweed, or Vitax Tub & Hanging Basket Liquid.
House plants will benefit from a specialist liquid houseplant feed every couple of weeks during their summer growing season.
Vegetable plants such as tomatoes and courgettes will now require regular feeding with Tomato Feed.
See our blog about growing tomatoes.
After a wet Winter… and then a wet Spring, most of us are seeing slug damage throughout our borders and vegetable patches. There are preventative measures you can put in place to deter slugs, such as wool pellets, crushed egg shells, crushed sea shells, and slug defence barrier granules. However, as most natural methods aren’t 100% effective, this year we may need to accept some slug damage in our gardens.