10 last-minute gardening jobs before you go on holiday
An expert offers tips on how to minimise damage to your precious plants while you’re away
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Your support makes all the difference.Are you ready for your holiday? But what about the garden? You may have packed your suitcase, but have you thought about the maintenance and watering which needs to be done in your absence?
And what about the last-minute jobs you should be doing if you don’t want to return to bedraggled plants and tired containers? Where do you start?
1. Watering
Hopefully, you will have arranged for a family member, friend or neighbour to come in and water the plants while you’re away.
Make sure all watering cans and hoses (if you are using them), as well as water butts, are easily accessible and that your designated ‘waterer’ knows what to do and which plants take priority.
If you haven’t arranged for someone to water your garden, you could buy an automatic irrigation system, or if you already have one installed, make sure it’s working properly.
And if you have got a kindly soul to help out, make sure you bring them a gift back from your travels.
2. Pots
“Move your pots closer together in one place. Together, they create a more humid atmosphere between them and you can put the more vulnerable ones in the middle,” suggests Caroline Mazzey, RHS horticultural adviser.
“Also, if you have got someone coming in, it’s such a reduced watering task to water pots which are close together – and keep them close to your water source like a water butt, if you can.” If you can move them into partial shade, that would also reduce evaporation, she adds.
3. Sacrifice buds
Before you leave, give your plants a trim – but go further than deadheading. Cut off buds and flowers which are currently blooming to give yourself a better chance that they will have produced new flowers on your return. Give your neighbour (or whoever is watering your garden) the cut flowers that you snip off before you leave, so they can enjoy them, Mazzey suggests.
4. Avoid planting new things just before you leave
“If you’re thinking of sowing seeds or planting a new plant, that’s a pretty chancy thing to do just before you go away. You should try to get your plants well established before you go or plant when you get back,” Mazzey says.
5. Look after hanging baskets
Take hanging baskets down and either place them by the rest of your plants in the shade at ground level, or put them in a washing-up bowl half-filled with water, so just the bottom of the liner is resting on the water.
“It’s a huge help if your pots are on a saucer, just so that you get a shallow reservoir, which buys a little time, but they must be shallow, not a bucket,” Mazzey explains.
6. If they’ve had it, ditch them
“There’s a case for not wasting your time or water on a no-hoper,” Mazzey asserts. So if your bedding plants look like hay and seem to have run their course, put them in the compost bin and start again.
7. Harvest what you can
“It’s not dissimilar from the flower removal. With runner beans, for example, you could sacrifice flowers so that by the time you come back you’ve a fresh load of flowers for beans, as you’ve refreshed that growth cycle,” says Mazzey.
8. Think of planting cycles
“If you’re going on holiday in August, don’t sow your lettuces to be ready to harvest in August, because they will have bolted by the time you return.”
9. Don’t feed before you go
Mazzey explains: “The more you feed, the faster they will grow and the thirstier they will be.” Leave feeding until you come back.
10. Do mulch before you go
Make sure you give your plants a really good water before mulching over damp ground, Mazzey advises. The mulch can stop water penetrating, so the idea is to conserve the water which is already in the soil.