planting your garden Part 2

With your border planted, you must give your plants a generous watering to settle the soil around the roots. Repeat regularly in warm weather, ideally in the evening or early morning before or after the sun is out. Avoid daytime watering as the direct sunlight scorches foliage and damages the plants.

give your plants a generous watering to settle the soil

This is even more important if your bed is located close to any large tree's or buildings.

A trees roots will spread some considerable distance, and can remove large amounts of moisture from the surrounding soil, leaving little for your new plants already under the stress of planting.

moisture level of the border

You will need to pay close attention to the moisture level of the border and water accordingly. Buildings create ‘rain shadows’ so soil can become much drier than surrounding areas.

As you have prepared your bed in an effort to help your plants grow, you have also given a big boost to any weeds that may still be lurking in your border.

some plants will not survive the stress of planting

These weeds will quickly show themselves over the next week or so. As weed seeds will be exposed on the surface, it is important to remove these once they appear, and to keep on top of any new weeds appearing subsequently.

If you do this when they are small, they are easily identified - if you leave them to grow, you may accidentally be pulling out your new plants mistaking them for weeds!

stress of planting

Finally, it is inevitable that from time to time, some plants do not survive the stress of planting. This is not unusual as plants are living things, some more healthy than others. Even the best trained gardener cannot spot those specimens unlikely to survive planting until the plant fails to establish.

Keep an eye on your plants and replace any that may not establish sooner rather than later, to keep the growth of the bed consistent. Now sit back, watch it mature and enjoy!

Open this How To guide as a PDF and print...

Click the Icon to open a condensed How To guide as a PDF document to print out...