Potting on and planting up

It’s been almost a month without a post. Why? Because of pouring rain. Whilst garden’s may have thrived over the past few weeks due to a torrential April, getting outside to actually garden has been more than problematic. However, with the sun making a surprise visit to London today, I finally managed to step foot outside and start potting up with fury.

I’m often overjoyed and amazed at how some plants are incredibly easy to grow. In my mind, the more exotic or popular the plant, the harder it is to grow. However, it’s often quite the opposite, with strawberries being a perfect example. For being such an iconic British fruit and having a short season, they actually grow like weeds; something that surprised me greatly when I first got an allotment.

Last year I bought some tiny Heuchera Melting Fire seeds. At almost £4 for only 25 seeds, I thought that germination rate was going to be pretty poor. However, these gorgeous plants have shown their vitality and grown in great number. With warmer wealth and plenty of moisture, last year’s young plants have put on some dramatic growth spurts. Being out of bagged compost, I’m currently using home grown material for propagation and planting on means, and my stunning heuchera’s will now be far happier in their large pots for the commencing summer.

Melting Fire will benefit from be potted on

Meanwhile, it’s also time to be thinking about getting those dahlia tubers in. They tend to show you when they need planting and if, like me, you store tubers in newspaper over the winter, you’ll notice lots of buds beginning to form at the base of last year’s stems. I’m not lucky enough to have a mollusc free garden, so I always start my dahlias off in pots before transplanting later. In some cases, I simply keep the tubers to the pots and place them in borders where the base can be camouflaged with other foliage.

Buds on Bishop of Llandaff indicate planting time

If you get a sunny spot this weekend, it’s a good opportunity to ensure that last year’s young plants are root bound. Potting them on now will give them the best chance to thrive this summer, letting your home grown plants outshine any nursery bought specimens.