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Next Year's Fruit And Flowers

© Michael Campbell

This is the most important time of the year in the garden as far as next year's fruit and flowers are concerned. Camellias set their buds for next year's display at this time, and it is very important that they do not dry out even for a short spell or the buds will drop, or maybe not set any buds at all. Make a careful check on all Camellias now and make sure that the soil is evenly moist. Apply good mulch of leaf-mould or moss peat and water well; you will be rewarded with a display of flowers that will put roses to shame, and early in the spring when there is not much else in bloom.

If you have not yet given your plants a dose of sequesterene iron, it will still be safe to do so now. The new fertilizer for ericeous plants contains all the necessary ingredients to keep your plants healthy and free from chlorosis, and is safe to water over the leaves. But read the label carefully and make sure that you have the correct one.

Hydrangeas are another group of plants that produce their flower buds about now for next year's display and are also very thirsty plants. They won't have any problems here this year as we have had twice our normal rainfall for the month of July. But if you live in a dry area make sure that your Hydrangeas do not suffer from thirst over the next few weeks. Do not on any account prune the dead heads on your Hydrangeas, as they serve as a form of frost production for next year's flowering buds, which are not frost hardy, especially when they start to open in the springtime.

If you are lucky enough to have a Wisteria, now is a crucial time for pruning those long shoots that have made so much growth in the last three months. It is this pruning that makes the plant set flower buds. The theory is that when you prune the plant hard, back to two or three buds from the base of the shoot, it immediately thinks that it is under threat and might die. Then it makes one big rush to produce flowers and set seed in an effort to reproduce the species. Well. that's the story I was told, but for whatever the reason it seems to work every time. As Wisterias are almost always planted against a wall they can dry out very quickly on a warm day, and this is the main reason that they do not produce flowers. It would be a good idea to put a drip feed hose round the roots of Wisterias at this time of year after pruning and see if it makes any difference to the flowering habit of the plant. The old idea of planting them against a wall is dying out to some extent, and nice specimens can now be seen planted as standards in a south facing sheltered spot, or even on a dividing trellis in some of the larger gardens.