by Kris Collins | Jun 22, 2021 | Gardening Posts
There’s a real sense of satisfaction in growing your own show-stopping display of petunias from seed. And the good news is that sowing petunia seeds isn’t difficult at all. Follow the advice from T&M’s petunia expert, Kris Collins, and produce a bumper supply of strong and healthy seedlings. Here’s our quick and easy guide to germinating petunia seeds.
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Kris Collins works as Thompson & Morgan’s quality control manager, making sure customers new and old are kept up to date on the latest plant developments and company news via a wide range of media sources. He trained in London’s Royal Parks and has spent more than a decade writing for UK gardening publications before joining the team at Thompson & Morgan.
by Kris Collins | Jun 20, 2021 | Gardening Posts
Petunias are hugely popular bedding plants that you can order as plugs or garden-ready plants. Alternatively, you can sow your own petunia seeds as a cost-effective way to replenish hanging baskets and fill your garden with colour.
Here, T&M’s resident expert, Kris Collins, shares a few simple tips to increase the flower power and longevity of your petunias.
Why grow petunias?
Petunias are something I turn to every spring in order to get my garden ready for summer. I couldn’t be without them in my hanging baskets. Trailing types, covered in masses of fragrant trumpet blooms, such as Petunia ‘Easy Wave Ultimate Mixed’, are perfect for lending that luxurious feel to your summer garden.
Most commonly used in container displays, there are actually many varieties that work well in border plantings too. Prolific growth smothers weeds and traps moisture in the soil, whilst also providing a carpet of colour.
Petunias require very little specialist upkeep. As long as you’re prepared to water regularly and remove spent flowers as they go over, you’ll be in for a season of scent and colour right through to autumn.
Which petunia should I choose for my space?
Petunia ‘Back to Black’ produces gorgeous velvety black flowers
Image: Petunia ‘Back to Black’ from Thompson & Morgan
When it comes to choosing your petunias, firstly consider where you want to grow them. Grandiflora types, like Petunia grandiflora ‘Cascade Pink Orchid Mist’ F1 Hybrid, are best saved for basket and container displays – the large blooms are better shown off at height, and will be less prone to weather damage and mud splash.
For a show-stopping petunia bedding display, multiflora types including Petunia ‘Frenzy Mixed’ are the best option. They have smaller flowers and more of them, creating a carpet of colour that will shrug off a summer shower.
How often should I water my petunias?
Watering is very important for healthy petunias. In the height of summer you may need to water containers and baskets twice a day, but at least every other day in an average British summer.
For those that work long hours and have less time for watering, it’s a good idea to move petunia hanging baskets and small containers to a shady spot during heatwave conditions, keeping them out of the afternoon sun until you can get home to give them a drink.
Alternatively invest in an auto watering system to reduce your workload and keep your baskets evenly moist.
Do petunias need deadheading?
Remove spent flowers as often as possible. Don’t just clear away the spent petals, but make sure to remove the entire flower head otherwise seed pods will form, the plant will think it has achieved its objective, and flowering will start to reduce.
Should I feed my petunias?
Feed your petunias using a specialist petunia fertiliser for the best results. Add the fertiliser to the compost mix before planting containers and baskets and it will feed your plants for the whole season.
We’ve seen some excellent results with petunias in our technical trials for Incredibloom. Our one-off granular feed, applied at planting time to soils or composts, encourages up to 400% more blooms and provides everything your plants need for up to 7 months – covering the whole growing season.
Can I train my petunias?
Pinch out the growing tips of your plants during the early stages of growth, and do this two or three times before planting out to encourage side shooting. This will lead to much more compact plants with many more flowers.
By mid-August, some petunia varieties may start to look a little tired and straggly. To encourage a second strong flush of blooms to last well into autumn, cut the whole display back by a third and offer a general purpose liquid feed. Within a week or so the plants will start to bush out again and fresh new flowers will soon follow. Within 2 weeks, just in time for your August Bank Holiday garden parties, the display will again be in full bloom with no sign that it has been pruned.
If you’re growing your petunias from seed, aim to sow plants 10-12 weeks ahead of safe planting. So if you’re generally safe to start planting out bedding plants in your area from the 1st week of June, aim to sow your seeds in the first week of March. I’ll be looking at sowing petunias in more detail before then, so stay tuned!
We hope you’ve enjoyed this post and found our top tips helpful! If you think we’ve missed anything let us know! For even more info, visit our petunias hub page for lots more resources to help you grow and care for petunias. Get your garden ready for summer – check out our summer flowers hub page for advice, inspiration and top tips!
Kris Collins works as Thompson & Morgan’s quality control manager, making sure customers new and old are kept up to date on the latest plant developments and company news via a wide range of media sources. He trained in London’s Royal Parks and has spent more than a decade writing for UK gardening publications before joining the team at Thompson & Morgan.
by Caroline Broome | Aug 29, 2019 | Gardening Posts, Pests & Diseases, Wildlife
We all love creatures great and small, right. I would far rather employ the birds and bees than use chemical bug control and so we go to great lengths to entice them into our garden. But then there is the small matter of our six cats to consider. And so we constructed the Catio: By encasing the pergola surrounding our 27ft x 8ft patio with wire mesh, we created a safe outdoor environment for our cats to enjoy fresh air and exercise, whilst protecting the wildlife in the garden from their basic killer instincts!
© Caroline Broome – Cats in the Catio.
It also allows us to enjoy watching the birdies on our several feeding stations, the main one being no more than a metre from the enclosure. And most pertinent of all, I’ve got myself an amazing micro climate in which I can grow tender perennials such as Cannas, Abutilons and Eucomis and extend the annual summer displays well into November.
All creatures great and small seem quite relaxed in each other’s company, especially the starlings: their manners certainly are! I think pigeons get a bad name; we have two ferals and one wood pigeon as regular visitors and they never mess on their own doorstep, obligingly hoovering up all the scattered bird seed that the aptly named chatter of starlings fling all over the show.
Mealworms, that’s what’s caused all this riotous behaviour. In early Spring the bird feeder started getting regular visits from a pair of starlings, which I now recognise as a scouting party. Nature having taken its course, within a month or two the fledglings had joined their parents, squawking impatiently to be fed. Ahh, how cute they looked, isn’t nature wonderful. Then word got out to all their relatives and before you know it there were 17 of them (all under the watchful eyes of our cats, a mere paw’s snatch away, under the protective custody of the Catio!) I’m having to refill the feeders twice daily; it’s costing me more to feed the birds than it is to feed the cats, I swear. The chaffinches and tits love the white sunflower seeds, the robins favour the suet blocks as does the woodpecker. Black sunflower seeds, so popular last year, are last resort, so fickle! I’ve even managed to train the squirrels (yeah, right) onto their own bird feeder further up the garden. Yes readers, the caged feeders do deter the squirrels.
Regrettably however, the 25mm mesh surround does not keep out fledglings, frogs or mice. So far, our Siamese kitten Ethel (named after my beloved 106-year-old friend who died last year) has bagged two mice (deceased) and several frogs (survived – clearly more robust.)
©Caroline Broome – Fledglings, frogs and mice have all made their way through the mesh of the Catio.
The last frog escaped with its life by crawling into the cup of my bra (not, I am relieved to say, while I was wearing it) in the laundry room. But the highlight of our wildlife adventure has been the Female Emperor Dragonfly resting on a Miscanthus grass in the front garden. (Good job that never got in the house.)
© Caroline Broome – The Female Emperor Dragon Fly.
We’re very lucky to attract so many birds, due no doubt to numerous large mature trees surrounding us in neighbouring gardens and the church yard. But a mile away in the Hampstead Garden Suburb several Hort Soc friends’ gardens back onto Big Wood. One such garden regularly welcomes woodpeckers, parakeets and goldfinches on a daily basis. Unbelievable racket! Surely Alfred Hitchcock took his inspiration for The Birds from The Suburb! On our NGS Group Open Garden Day recently (we raised £9000 by the way, she mentions nonchalantly) another woodland garden attracted a very friendly bird. It seemed quite at home, hopping around on the drive, amongst the throngs. It even ate out of one visitor’s hand and another identified it as a White Eared Iraqi Bulbul: Many Iraqis owns Bulbuls as pets, and they are considered to be one of the smartest and most intelligent birds on earth. This one certainly wasn’t daft as it soon sussed out the best tea and cake in the group. Hope it was reunited with its owners though, no doubt it was mentioned in despatches on the Suburb Chatline.
© Caroline Broome – Me and my new friend the Iraqi Bulbul bird.
Talking of which, when the Hort Soc opened for the NGS in 2017 we held a children’s treasure hunt: a model bird or animal was placed in each of the Open Gardens for the children to find, (on loan – the ornaments not the children – from our very supportive local nursery.) Quite a few garden owners bought theirs afterwards, including our esteemed Chair Doc Page, whose eagle befit his status! Having perched it on the apex of his greenhouse he then posted a photo of it on the Suburb Chatline. Had several residents in quite a flap apparently………(pardon the pun)
Catch up with you all later……..Caroline
Caroline Broome has been gardening for more than 20 years. Having passed the RHS General Certificate, she has since developed her East Finchley garden into a “personal paradise” that she and her husband invite the public to visit each year via the National Garden Scheme. Learn more about our contributor using T&M’s ‘Meet the experts’ page.
by Mark Delaney | Jul 26, 2018 | Blogs we love, Gardening Posts, Gardening Tips
Cotoneaster berries feed birds through even the bleakest winters.
Image source: Artush
If you’d love to encourage wildlife to visit your garden but aren’t sure what plants to grow, this is the place for you. We asked some of our favourite wildlife gardening bloggers for their planting tips and here’s what they came up with – what to grow to encourage birds, bees, moths and butterflies to share your outside space.
Moths
Willowherb is loved by moths and butterflies.
Image source: Real Moment
Nocturnal insects love plants whose scent makes them easy to locate in the darkness. Wildlife blogger Dan Rouse says:
“Plants like lavender are great for attracting moths, which in turn will attract their predators: bats!
Nic who writes Dogwood Days was just a two-year-old in red wellies when her father introduced her to banks of rosebay willowherb alongside the vegetable beds. She says:
“Willowherb brings in moths and butterflies – especially the beautiful elephant hawk moth caterpillars with their extendable snouts.
Another favourite for attracting moths is honeysuckle. Bill at Frodsham Marsh Bird Blog says: “A large potted Honeysuckle is brilliant for attracting many types of moth species on those sultry warm summer evenings, and they in turn provide food for the local bats.”
Butterflies
Attracting butterflies to flutter about your garden is all about planting the right blooming plants whose nectar they’ll sup. Remember – the greater the variety of plants and fungi you grow in your garden, the great the range of butterflies, and other insects you’ll get to see.
Lisa at Edulis Wild Food says encouraging wildlife to thrive is all about “Mimicking nature in her timing and choice of habitat.” In her garden she grows:
“Alexanders, sweet cicely, japonica quince, wild raspberry, wild garlic, primroses, sweet violets, horse mushrooms, chicken of the woods, oyster mushrooms and scarlet elf cups.
Emma at Never Mind the Burdocks, meanwhile favours “ground elder, wild mints, and Galium species such as odorata which fill a borders edges perfectly and are easy to maintain.”
Providing myriad food sources is a great way to garden for wildlife, but if there’s a particular butterfly you’d like to see gracing your patch, often you’ll need to provide a specific food source. Dave at Why Watch Wildlife shares this example:
“A Brimstone is looking for Alder Buckthorn, so think about planting it. Not only will it benefit the butterfly, but in autumn birds will eat the berries too.
Birds and bees
Forget-me-nots are a vital early source of nectar for bees.
Image source: Ian Grainger
As well as enjoying the host of tasty insects living on your wildflowers, birds need winter foodstuffs to keep them going when the nights draw in and the temperature plummets. To help out our feathered friends, Bill says he planted Cotoneaster. He says it’s quite mature now:
“In the winter it retains enough berries to entice the local Blackbirds, wintering Blackcaps and once a small flock of Waxwing to feast on its berries.
Bill says the bees and hoverflies love the alliums he buried last year, and Julie of Garden Without Doors is a great advocate of early wildflowers like: “forget-me-nots, green alkanet and deadnettle”. She says the great advantage of spring flowers is that they’re: “beloved by bees and available to them before other flowers start blooming.”
Worried that by filling your borders with spring wildflowers, you’ll have less blooms to enjoy during the summer months? Don’t be. Julie says:
“Your spring wildflowers will die back in time for other flowers to take over.
Do you have any wildlife-friendly planting suggestions to share? If so we’d love to hear from you. Just pop over to our Facebook page and leave us a message.
In the meantime, we’ll leave the last word to Alan at the Scottish Wildlife Garden who, once the butterflies have enjoyed his thistles, finds they “have delicious, tender, juicy hearts that are quite easy to prepare once you have the knack.” As he says, that’s one way to “Have your garden and eat it”.
by Mark Delaney | Jul 17, 2018 | Blogs we love, Gardening Posts, Gardening Tips
A small garden pond gives this song thrush somewhere to bathe and drink.
Image source: Ondrej Prosicky
By making just a few small changes to the way you garden, you’ll really help native wildlife to thrive. To get you started, here’s some expert advice courtesy of some of the best gardeners and bloggers we’ve found – tips to make your garden more wildlife-friendly.
Planning
Begin by asking: “what does the wildlife need?” says Brian of Brian’s Birding Blog. To answer the question, think about basics like food, water, shelter, and safety. By planning your garden around the building blocks of survival, your garden will be nature-friendly by design.
That’s a sentiment with which Nic of Dogwood Days wholeheartedly agrees – an attitude she inherited from her father who always says:
“The garden is an extension of the wider landscape in terms of its links to nature – the birds, insects and animals.
But too often, we design our gardens with privacy in mind without thinking about how our wild visitors will get about. With a little thought, hedgehog-loving Adam of My Life Outside says that’s easily fixed:
“By creating hedgehog highways through our gardens we can join up vast swathes of land and give these fabulous creatures a fighting chance.
So get together with your neighbours and create animal corridors by “lifting a fence panel a few inches, cutting a hole through wire netting or drilling through boundary walls.”
And do remember to provide a water source – an oasis for living creatures. As Brian says, installing a pond “gives the birds another food source and somewhere to bathe and drink,” and as Dave of Why Watch Wildlife adds “A source of fresh, clean water is good for invertebrates [and] amphibians.”
Housing
This nest box is a safe haven for blue tits to raise their young.
Image source: Erni
Now your garden works for wildlife, where will it live? Wildlife expert Dan Rouse is a passionate advocate of “messy zones” which she says can be a simple as “a small piece of old carpet and some bricks behind the shed” – the perfect hidey hole for insects and shy creatures like slow worms. She also says:
“Nest spaces or nesting boxes and roosting boxes are fundamental for wildlife to survive.
But it’s not just birds who need high vantage points, it’s bugs and beasties too, as Bill at Frodsham Marsh Bird Blog points out. His garden features a tree whose “winding twisted trunk and small branches hold a selection of brightly painted bean cans which have been filled with a variety of fibre material”.
And don’t forget to make spaces for “lone fliers” to hang out – Bill says a couple of catering size cans fitted with a wooden plug and drilled with holes make ideal accommodation:
“Solitary bees can access the interior to live their lives away from predators.
The same goes for dry hogweed stems which, cut to length, can also be used to stuff a tin – but be careful handling the live stuff, Bill says, because the sap can burn your skin. And because more bugs mean more bats fluttering overhead during spring and summer evenings, you’ll need to remember to install a bat box too.
Planting
An apple tree surrounded by wildflowers provides pollen and ground cover.
Image source: DrimaFilm
Look at your garden through the eyes of prospective wildlife visitors. Do you have a tree? If not, maybe consider planting one, or if space is a problem, make existing structures work for birds and insects. Bill (at Frodsham Marsh Bird Blog) whose garden is on the small side says:
“The washing line post has Ivy growing up it and now provides thick cover where robin and wren have nested.
Wildlife expert Dan Rouse says using your planting to create layers ensures there’s food for all: “Shrub-like plants like lavender or fuchsia give off a lot of smell and still carry pollen for our pollinators.”
And remember to make sure there’s plenty of ground cover to provide shelter for bugs and food for predators. Dan says:
“Smaller plants like ground creeper are great for our insects and small birds to hide in too.
That goes for grass too. Lisa at Edulis Wild Food says to delay mowing until wildflowers growing in it have had chance to bloom: “The bees are grateful for the early food and you realise how diverse your lawn can be if not totally mono-cultured.”
Do you have any wildlife gardening tips you’d like to share? Just head over to our Facebook page and leave us a message – we’d love to hear from you. In the meantime, we’ll leave you with this gem of a tip from Miles at Forager who says it’s not just the wildlife that benefits from wild planting:
“Eat your weeds! Bittercress, sow thistle, chickweed, nettles, dandelion are all delicious and nutritious.
Find plenty more wildflower inspiration at our wildflower hub page.
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