Our essential guide to garden centre shopping and transforming your outdoors during lockdown
Boris Johnson is allowing the nation’s garden centres to reopen from WednesdayHere, our Gardening Editors PETER SEABROOK and VAL BRADLEY give their top tips on how to weed out the best buys, while Chelsea Flower Show winner Patrick Collins reveals how to design your perfect haven.Gardening Editor Peter Seabrook is thrilled that gardening centres will be reopening
Be patient. Let garden centres get their staff back. Follow the one-way systems, social spacing and safe methods of trading. Don’t panic-buy as people did in supermarkets at the start of the crisis. Time your visit for quieter periods — first thing or towards the end of the day. I am hopeful centres will open for longer hours, perhaps 8am to 8pm, to let shoppers space their visits more widely.
Shrubs that have flowered and are getting too big for the space available can be pruned now because most flower on the previous summer’s growth. Two rows of tall prunings are in place to support two double rows of garden pea Alderman in a square, while just one courgette will be enough for another. Lettuce and radish work well as intercrops to fill space until winter greens, tomatoes and peppers fill their squares.
But these veg are easy to cultivate, make good soup and there are kinds with flowers, including the more compact-growing Dwarf Sunray.Val Bradley says you should make a list of what you want before visiting the garden centre A general fertiliser such as Growmore will be most useful outside and a house plant feed will tide over all your indoor plants until things get back to normal.To grow orchids - tip the plant out of its pot and either use a new pot or wash the original one. Re-pot using a very free-draining orchid compost
Check if you can see roots at the bottom of the pot. If you can, move the plant into a new pot that is about an inch bigger all round. If there are no roots visible, the plant may just need a good feed with a general house plant fertiliser.Nothing is as tasty as fresh herbs and the easiest way to grow your own is in a container right outside the kitchen door.
A sheltered window box outside is a good spot for herbs and, as the weather warms up, cherry tomatoes, peas, basil and edible flowers like nasturtiums – use the peppery-tasting petals to brighten your salads.
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