Planting Tips
Your new plant is hopefully going to give you several years, even decades of pleasure, so before planting spend a little time on some research. The small descriptive label rarely informs the customer of the plants specific requirements. A few minutes on the internet or checking in books will pay dividends. Ensure the plant has enough space and be prepared to 'thin’ plants out if need be to allow for future development. Check on soil requirement and preferred aspect.
The plant should be adequately moist, so water well an hour or so before planting.
Remove any perennial weeds from the planting area and dig a hole roughly two or three times the diameter of the pot and one and a half times as deep. I prefer to use a garden fork for digging out the hole as the rough edges of the hole provide a better key for the new root system. Fork over the base of the hole to a depth of 15-20 cm. This will help to avoid creating a sump where surplus water could collect leading to waterlogging.
Remove the top couple of centimetres of the compost in the pot and put at the bottom of the hole. This compost may be weedy and at this depth any annual weeds will not regenerate. Even if the top of the compost looks clean, there may well be weed seeds present, so always dump this top layer. If the rootball appears matted or potbound it will help to loosen the rootball and tease out some of those tangled roots.
Half backfill the hole with the loosened soil and position the plant so that the compost level of the plant is the same as your soil. Finish backfilling, firm gently with your feet ensuring that the plant remains upright. Finish off by raking level the whole area and watering well.
Always avoid over firming. New roots will penetrate open soil much easier than a compacted soil.
Unless you are planting into extremely impoverished soil such as where a tree or hedge has been removed, soil additives and fertilisers shouldn’t be necessary. Feed and mulch can always be put on as a top dressing at a later date if required. If your soil is really poor then the best additive is always good old farmyard manure, but make sure it is old and well rotted. A couple of buckets dug in per square metre should be adequate.
The majority of plant failures are due to poor aftercare, in particular insufficient watering in the weeks following planting.
The most important thing to remember is that until the plant has put out enough new roots to support itself it is totally reliant on the water available from the original volume of compost.
An average saleable plant is in a 2 or 3 litre pot. This volume of compost can only hold a maximum of a litre of water which will inevitably be used up by the plant within a few days.
Therefore the minimum amount of water a newly planted plant requires will be half a can (3-4litres) twice a week. It is the plant rootball that needs the water and not the surrounding soil, so make sure the water hits the target.
A 2 or 3 litre plant will probably need watering on a regular basis for the first 10-12 weeks if planted in the spring or summer. Twice a week for the first month, then weekly for the next two months. Depending on the weather, planting carried out during the autumn or winter may well need a similar watering routine from mid April to July. The majority of plants will have made sufficient new root growth by this time to be self sufficient for water but regular checks should be made, especially in a very dry season.
Plants in larger containers will take longer to establish, a 10-15 litre pot may need watering for two seasons following planting, maybe a couple of can-fulls weekly for the first couple of months, then fortnightly for two months, then monthly until the end of the growing season.
If it is difficult to get water to the plants then fill up a few 3 litre drink bottles and push the open topped bottle, top downwards into the soil, close to the stem of the plant. This will create a near vacuum and the 3 litres of water will be released slowly over the next day or so directly to the root system.
Apart from watering, the best aftercare will be achieved by simply waking round your recent plantings on a weekly basis and looking objectively at the plants. It should be apparent whether or not they are ‘happy’.