Action plan: Nigel Colborn’s essential jobs for your garden this week
- Nigel Colborn shared advice for nurturing roses after premature flowering
- British gardening expert recommends removing spent blooms from bush roses
- He also answered a reader’s question about cutting back rosemary and sage
TREAT YOUR ROSES TO A SUMMER PICK-ME-UP
An usually hot April pushed roses into premature flowering this year. But last year’s excessive rainfall, followed by a mild winter, built them up for a bumper show.
The first part of that is now over. But with repeat-flowering varieties, there’s a lot more colour to come. Nevertheless, heavy flowering over recent weeks may have tired some plants. Mildew has also affected susceptible varieties — and that could reduce blooms after July.
So check any roses carefully. With non-repeating climbers and big shrub roses, cut away spent flowers. Rather than just deadheading, go further down the stems and cut above an outward facing bud. Remove any weak, diseased or damaged growths.
British gardening expert Nigel Colborn, shared advice for nurturing roses after premature flowering
With bush roses such as hybrid teas and floribunda types, remove spent blooms. You can also give a light prune but don’t remove too much stem. Find a good bud on each, and cut just above that.
Non-repeating ramblers can be left until late autumn. However, if you prefer a tidy plant, remove dead flower sprays. With singleflowered varieties, decorative hips may follow. So leave those until after the autumn display.
Roses that flowered heavily will benefit from a mid-summer foliar feed. Diluted seaweed manure or a liquid feed product at halfstrength would be good for that. Chose a dull morning or calm evening and spray your rose foliage with the dilute solution.
PERKY PINKS
This is the time for taking cuttings of pinks and carnations. In early morning, or a cool evening, remove a few healthy shoots, cutting across a node. Remove the lowest pair of leaves. Fill a pot with compost and insert the cuttings. Water and place the pot into a cold frame.
READER’S QUESTION
A small herb bed, planted four years ago, supplies flavour for the kitchen. But the rosemary and sage plants have grown too big. Can I cut them back?
Mrs R. Hudson.
Nigel chose pelargoniums Ashby (pictured) as this week’s plant, which was first introduced by Edna Popperwell, in 1999,
You can cut both back, but each needs a slightly different treatment.
Sage is semi-herbaceous and can be cut almost to ground level. Doing so encourages fresh, tender shoots to grow from the base. March is the time for that. But you could cut part of yours back now. Select up to half the top-growth and cut that almost to ground level. When new shoots appear from the base, cut the rest.
Rosemary can be trimmed now, but don’t cut it too hard. As with the sage, you can shorten part of the plant now and the rest later. Or, you can reduce the whole plant to half its height and enjoy new shoots.
PLANT OF THE WEEK: PELARGONIUM ‘ASHBY’
One of the prettiest pelargoniums is Ashby. The leaves are roughsurfaced and deep green, making a beautiful foil for the flowers. Those are rose-purple with darker centres.
Pelargonium Ashby was introduced by Edna Popperwell, in 1999, who crossed a dark purple variety with fragrant-leaf P. quercifolia.