In the arc of an Irish gardening year, May is the month of magical things. The first rose. The first swallow. The first properly hot day. The first beech tree in full leaf. The first sighting of wisteria in magnificent lilac bloom, draping itself languidly against a high, sunny wall. As nature flashes its brilliant feathers, it’s also our last real opportunity before summer finally arrives to make a substantial difference to our gardens or allotments, whether that’s filling them with fast-growing annuals to provide plenty of homegrown produce for the months ahead, planting up spectacular summer containers, or fine-tuning flower borders for maximum impact. With all of this in mind, here’s a handy little to-do list to help you stay on course.
Tried-and-trusted techniques to help plants to grow back more strongly than ever
05.05.2024 - 04:59 / irishtimes.com / Fionnuala Fallon
There are certain nuggets of good garden advice, so counterintuitive that they seem to make absolutely no sense at all. Why on earth, for example, should we pinch out the growing tip of a perfectly healthy seedling or plant stem as a way of encouraging it to fatten up? “Leggy”, after all, is usually a term of admiration rather than opprobrium. Likewise, why would pruning back perfectly healthy shrubs — essentially cutting away their lovely strong shoots and branches- possibly make them bushier and more floriferous when surely it should result in the exact opposite? In the same vein, why is it a good idea to shear back lavender plants that are only just beginning to fluff up again after a long, dark and dismal winter? And what, oh what, is the Chelsea chop, which sounds to the uninitiated like some form of plant abuse?
The simple answer to all of the above, strange as it may sound, is that pinching out, pruning, and cutting back are all tried-and-trusted gardening techniques, which rely on a plant’s innate urge to react to physical injury, by growing back more strongly than ever.
When you pinch out a cosmos seedling or the young stem of a dahlia, for example, you remove its soft-growing tip. This growing tip is very rich in growth hormones and is responsible for a process known as apical dominance, which directs growth upwards rather than outwards. The seedling or plant’s reaction to this physical injury is to quickly throw out multiple side-shoots positioned lower down its stem at intervals along its leaf axils, an ingenious survival mechanism that plants growing in the wild use as a means of surviving damage from grazing animals or harsh weather. So by deliberately inflicting this very targeted injury, you’re using this
Your gardening questions answered: Are there any slug-proof plants?
Q: We have a small back garden that includes an old wall covered in ivy. I love the ivy, but it has become home to an army of slugs that have eaten many of my plants over the years. I have tried many different things to combat the slugs (ground eggshells, coffee grinds, various different pellets), none of which have really made that much difference. I am also concerned about using products that may harm the birds that visit the garden and our dog. At this stage, I think I have to accept that the slugs are part of the garden and learn to live with them. So, I would like to look at planting some small shrubs and flowers that are not appealing to slugs. I would be grateful for some suggestions. JM
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As someone who shivers at the thought of a chilly breeze, I’m well and truly done with our long, wet, cold spring. So much so, that I find myself daydreaming of brilliant sunshine, blue skies and warm breezes.
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Singing the praises of wall shrubs for year-round structure and heft
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Your gardening questions answered: How should I plant up my new flower beds?
Q: We got raised flower beds built last year to surround our patio, but have yet to have much success with planting them. I’m wondering what could you advise what to plant to a) offer some height to the area; and b) to be relatively fast growing, to fill out the gaps in the beds, and maybe offer a nice smell? Part of the area gets full sun, and part is shaded. FR, Dublin
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