Plant as you would spring bulbs, burying them to three times their depth in crumbly, moisture-retentive but free-draining soil. If yours isn't perfect, dig in organic matter first (we have well-rotted farmyard manure in our Mullingar garden centre) and add a handful of slow-release fertiliser like bonemeal.
Plant our top ten summer bulbs from the range in our garden centre for a summer that's spectacular from end to end.
Please ask the staff in our Mullingar garden centre for more information and advice about choosing and growing summer bulbs.
]]>The range of veg you can enjoy in winter is extraordinary, and from late spring onwards you'll find a huge variety on sale as plug plants and seeds in your favourite garden centre. Look out for delicacies like long-cropping 'Dwarf Green Curled' kale, burgundy 'Rubine' sprouts, pretty red 'Rhubarb' chard or knobbly gourmet root vegetable Celeriac 'Prinz'.
Winter veg plants often take a long time to grow, so get winter brassicas, leeks, parsnips, swede and celeriac in the ground from late spring. Faster growing chard, winter spinach and salads can wait till August: sow to follow on from potatoes or onions to keep your veg garden productive year-round.
A time-honoured way of keeping slow-growing brassicas out of the way while you enjoy earlier crops is a nursery bed. This is a separate area – often a raised bed or cold frame – for sowing rows of brassicas direct. Thin seedlings as they grow, then in June dig them up and transplant into beds just vacated by early broad beans, peas or lettuces.
If you haven't room for a nursery bed, you can still grow early crops in between generously-spaced brassicas like Brussels sprouts plants, usually sown around 60cm apart. While they're still small, use the space between the seedlings for an extra crop of carrots, salads, spinach or beetroot. The faster crop will be out of the ground well before the brassicas are big enough to overshadow them, giving you twice the crop from the same amount of space.
Please ask the staff in our Mullingar garden centre for more information and advice about planning a winter vegetable garden
]]>Build your raised bed: a raised bed: 1.2m x 1.2m gives you 16 squares – and with one type of veg in each, that's quite a range of home-grown produce to pick. Ready-made raised beds, available from your favourite garden centre, click together in moments for instant results.
Find the right spot: choose your sunniest corner for your square-foot veg garden. Place it on bare soil, or turf: you can even put your raised bed on concrete, though drill drainage holes to let excess water run off.
Fill your bed with compost: a 50:50 mix of multipurpose compost and a soil-based mix like John Innes no. 3 is ideal for growing veg: you'll find both in your favourite garden centre. Fill the bed level with the top and then firm down gently.
Mark out the squares: you can do this with string attached to nails in the sides of your raised bed, or by tying together a grid of canes. Either way, your squares should measure 30cm x 30cm each.
Plant your veg: sow one type of veg into each square, at slightly closer spacings. One square foot holds four 'Cos' type lettuces; a tomato plant; 16 leeks; four dwarf French beans or 16 carrots. Taller plants grow better at the back; smaller ones get more light at the front.
Keep the harvest coming: as soon as you harvest from one of your squares, replace the crop with fresh plug plants bought ready-grown from your favourite garden centre, or raised from seed. You should be picking a dazzling array of veg from your square-foot garden from early summer through till spring.
Please ask the staff in our Mullingar garden centre for more information and advice about a square foot vegetable garden.
]]>Growing from seed is straightforward but there are a few things to remember as you crack open that first packet and get sowing. Here are our top tips for seed-sowing success:
Please ask the staff in our garden centre i Mullingar for more information and advice about tips for sowing vegetables.
]]>Luckily there are loads of fantastic quick-crop vegetables to grow and eat while the slowcoaches are getting going, so sow these and you'll have plenty to harvest in the meantime. This is fast food with flavour, freshly-harvested produce which arrives on your table within as little as a fortnight after sowing.
Please ask the staff in our Mullingar garden centre for more information and advice about speedy veg.
]]>Here's how to make sure you have pots and pots of flavour from one end of the year to the next:
Please ask the staff in our Mullingar garden centre for more information and advice about sowing and growing annual herbs.
]]>It takes good planning and a few canny tricks to make sure you always have just the right amount to pick, ready when you want it, every month of the year. Here are our top tips to help you keep the crops coming.
Please ask the staff in our Mullingar garden centre for more information and advice about keep the crops coming.
]]>The answer is to create yourself a cutting garden – an area of your garden dedicated to raising flowers to enjoy indoors. The whole purpose of such a garden is to be harvested regularly, rather like a vegetable garden, so you don't mind if it's sometimes got a few bare patches.
You'll find all you need to create your cutting garden in our garden centre in Mullingar. Here's how to go about it:
Get ready: before you start, dig over the area, removing weeds and large stones, and work in plenty of well-rotted farmyard manure. Then put in hedging and edging: you'll find plants for low hedging in our garden centre, and materials to lay a smart path.
Start sowing: Sow your flowers from March onwards just like vegetables, in straight lines to make picking them easier. Make shallow drills and sprinkle the seed sparingly along the bottom. Cover with a little soil, label and leave.
Please ask the staff in our Mullingar garden centre for more information and advice about planting an annual cutting garden.
]]>HARDWOOD CUTTINGS
Rooting:
SOFTWOOD CUTTINGS
Rooting:
SEMI-RIPE CUTTINGS
There's no need to stop enjoying your plot just because the weather has turned cold, though. Embrace winter as part of your veg-growing year and you'll find your patch can be as productive from November to February as it is for the rest of the year.
You'll need to begin planning in early spring, as these are plants which need a long time in the ground. Start by choosing some of the great winter veg we offer as seeds or plug plants in our Mullingar garden centre: here's our pick of the best.
Please ask the staff in our garden centre in Mullingar for more information and advice about growing winter vegetables
]]>Growing in containers has many advantages: perfect soil, easy planting and your crops are kept well out of reach of slugs. These days, there are lots of innovative new ideas around to help you get started: look out for wall-hung vertical planters, automatic watering systems and even special varieties of veg bred for growing in pots, all available from your favourite garden centre in Mullingar.
There's a huge range of veg you can try in containers, from herbs and salad leaves to tomatoes, chard, beetroot and even climbing French beans trained up against a wall. Just follow our five golden rules for a summer of plenty from your patio.
1.Use the largest containers you can
The more room veg roots have, the happier they'll be (you can pack more veg in to larger pots, too!) So always buy the biggest containers you have room for.
2.Water, water, water
Plants in pots are completely reliant on you for water supplies. Water container-grown veg every day – twice a day in hot spells.
3.Feed, feed, feed
After the first six to eight weeks compost runs out of nutrients, so add weekly liquid feeds to your watering routine.
4.Re-sow fast-growing crops every month
Keep picking continuously by sowing new containers of fast-growing salads, herbs, and quick crops like beetroot and turnips once a month.
5.Choose the right varieties
Look for the words 'container veg' or 'patio veg' on seed packets: special varieties like Courgette 'Patio Star' and Aubergine 'Ophelia' will crop brilliantly in pots.
Please ask the staff in our Mullingar garden centre for more information and advice about a container vegetable garden.
]]>Older 'heritage' veg varieties aren't often found in the shops, as they aren't uniformly shaped, sometimes don't store or travel well, and are difficult to harvest mechanically. That means the only way to enjoy their sumptuous flavours, colours and textures is if you grow your own.
Here are five of the best old-style veg to look out for in your favourite garden centre in Mullingar and try in your own garden: we promise you won't be disappointed.
Please ask the staff in our Mullingar garden centre for more information and advice about a taste of history.
]]>Visit our Mullingar garden centre in autumn and you'll find dozens of plants in full berry, and it's quite a sight. Here are our top picks for a spectacular autumn display.
Please ask the staff in our Mullingar garden centre for more information and advice about plants with good autumn berries.
]]>By encouraging bees and butterflies into your garden you're doing the planet a favour as well as your plants. Populations of both insects have been plummeting, a combination of disease, climate change and the lack of suitable pollen-rich flowers. It's important because their activities are responsible for around a third of the food we eat – so helping them out makes good sense all round.
You'll find all you need in our garden centre in Mullingar to make your plot a haven for bees and butterflies: here are some of the features you can include for them when you're planning your garden.
Attracting bees:
Attracting butterflies:
Please ask the staff in our Mullingar garden centre for more information and advice about attracting bees and butterflies to your garden.
]]>For more information visit our garden centre in Mullingar and speak to one of our staff
]]>Make the most of your container bulbs with our top display tips.
Masses of tulips: at their most striking planted en masse in a head-turning block of colour, tulips look wonderful as a single variety packed into a large container. Try scarlet 'Apeldoorn' or sumptuous 'Abu Hassan' for real wow factor.
Layer planting: planting bulbs in three layers so each flowers in succession gives a really long display. Plant late-flowering pale pink 'Baywatch' tulips on the bottom, with dwarf narcissus 'Tete a Tete' and then early-flowering Iris reticulata on top for flowers from late winter till May.
Trying things out: when you're considering growing a new type of bulb but aren't sure how it'll perform, get to know it first by popping it in a container for its first year. You can then watch it up close to see how it does: if you're smitten, plant into your borders after flowering.
Plunge planting: for temporary splashes of colour, keep showy bulbs like tulips, lilies or agapanthus in large containers. When they're on the point of flowering, plunge pot and all into the ground in the main garden for instant displays.
Specimen bulbs: very lovely, delicate bulbs like bulbocodium daffodils or tiny reticulata irises disappear in the rough and tumble of the open garden, so pot them up and display them on a table to appreciate them to the full.
Indoor forcing: hyacinths and fragrant paperwhite daffodils can be brought indoors for forcing, filling your house with colour and scent through the depths of winter. You can buy ready-forced bulbs from our garden centre from late autumn.
Please ask the staff in our Mullingar garden centre for more information and advice about growing bulbs in containers.
]]>We stock dozens of varieties in our garden centre in Mullingar, each with their own particular use. Use our guide to help you pick the right one for your plants.
Please ask the staff in our Mullingar garden centre for more information and advice about choosing composts.
]]>But there are some combinations that go beyond looking (or tasting) good. Companion planting uses features of one plant to protect or benefit another, so you get pest-free, happier and healthier plants.
Look out for companion plants to put with your flowers, fruit and vegetables in our Mullingar garden centre: you'll also find seed of annual companion plants to sow each year. They work together in several different ways - here are some of the many combinations to try.
Smelly combinations:
Insect pests often rely on a sense of smell to find their prey, so if you disguise that smell with another even stronger-smelling plant, you'll put off the insects, too.
Good partnerships:
Decoy planting:
Often pests will abandon one plant if something more delicious comes along. It's a little hard on the decoy plant, but it's very effective.
Good partnerships:
Complementary plants:
Some plants just help each other out. Tall, sturdy plants support climbers; broad-leaved plants act like a living mulch, holding in water and suppressing weeds.
Good partnerships:
Pollinating partnerships:
Plants that attract pollinating insects are beneficial for anything that's fruiting nearby, as while hoverflies, bees and lacewings are in your garden they'll also stop by to pollinate your beans and munch on a few aphids, too.
Good partnerships:
Please ask the staff in our Mullingar garden centre for more information and advice about using companion plants to keep pests at bay
]]>Their habit of absorbing moisture and nutrients from the air – in the wild they grow halfway up trees, with no soil at all – means you don't have to stick to containers on the windowsill to display them. In fact, it's far better for them if you create a backdrop that's as close to what they'd find in their native rainforests as you can. Here are a few suggestions:
Hanging baskets: traditional orchid baskets are made out of wooden slats, but you can use any type of basket from our garden centre. Fill the basket about three-quarter full with coarse bark, then place the orchid on top and hold it in place with more bark. Thread the roots gently through the holes in the sides, taking care not to break them, so they can start to grow around the basket by themselves.
Houseplants may look more exotic – among the choice in our Mullingar garden centre you'll find lush green ferns, stately weeping figs, orchids and sumptuous velvety-leaved begonias. But the principles are still the same, and a carefully-chosen group will always have far more impact than one plant standing on its own.
Follow our top tips for how to show off your houseplants at their very best.
Match houseplants to your interior décor: picking up your colour scheme in the foliage of your plants is a sure way to add serious wow factor to interior style. Plum-coloured curtains or upholstery echoed in a purple-flowered streptocarpus, for example, brings out the colour in both material and plant. The same trick works with texture, like shiny, reflective leaves in a modern chrome-and-glass kitchen.
Repeat the same plant: several identical plants repeated along a hallway or up stairs invite your eye to follow them – a great way to highlight something in your home, whether it's a sculpture or a signature piece of furniture. Clipped green plants like ivy or privet can be made into elegant topiary that's stylish and bold.
Choose contrasts: when you're picking plants to group together, go for opposites. Tall, upright plants like dracaena work well with lower-growing, like philodendron, and small-leaved ivy contrasts with the broader leaves of the peace lily. Colours, too, can provide fabulous effects: try clover-like purple oxalis paired with yellow-flowered kalanchoe.
Plant a big specimen pot: several different houseplants can go in the same pot, as long as it's big enough and all the plants like the same conditions - shade-loving ferns, for example, go well with peace lilies which don't like full sun either. Then just choose your group so there's one taller plant to give the display height, then mid-height plants and low-growing or cascading plants to cover the soil for a pleasing, well-balanced display.
Please ask the staff in our Mullingar garden centre for more information and advice about grouping your houseplants together.
]]>Edible hanging baskets are a great way to squeeze a little more produce out of your garden. Several types of fruit and veg do better raised off the ground: strawberries, for example, are kept well away from slugs, so you get to pick your crop unmunched and perfect.
Mix several different types of edible in the same basket to create a vibrant display of contrasting foliage and fruits: you can even create an 'instant dish' by planting complementary veg together, like tomato and basil for all the ingredients you need to make a flavoursome Mediterranean sauce.
You'll find everything you need to create an edible hanging basket in our garden centre in Mullingar, from the baskets themselves to liners, compost, water-retaining gel to cut down on the watering workload, and of course plants and seeds. Here are some great varieties to try growing up in the air this year:
Chillies are Mexican firecrackers which love a hot, dry spot and don't mind restricted roots. Try multicoloured 'Numex Twilight' or tumbling 'Basket of Fire'.
Strawberries: fill a hanging basket with two or three strawberry plants and they'll froth joyously over the edge. Prolific varieties include 'Cambridge Favourite' or intensely-flavoured alpine 'Mara des Bois'.
Please ask the staff in our Mullingar garden centre for more information and advice about creating edible hanging baskets.
]]>There's no need to give up on your outside space, though. Design your garden to look just as good in the evening as during the day and you'll look forward to the moment when dusk falls, so you can go out into the night-time wonderland you've created just outside the back door.
In our garden centre in Mullingar you'll find everything you need to bring your garden to life after dark. Here are a few suggestions to start you off:
Please ask the staff in our Mullingar garden centre for more information and advice about using your garden in the evening.
]]>But there are some veg you shouldn't be without: the tried-and- tested, easy-to-grow kitchen essentials. Plant these first, and you won't go far wrong.
Potatoes
Grow your own spuds, and you'll transform your opinion of this 'humble' vegetable forever. Try deliciously-flavoured heritage varieties, or savour melt-in-the-mouth new potatoes within minutes of harvest. Recommended varieties: 'Duke of York', 'Mayan Gold', 'Sarpo Mira'
Peas
If your idea of a pea comes from the freezer, fresh peas are a revelation. Sow on windowsills for microgreens, enjoy young pods as mangetout, and sprinkle curly shoot tips in salads. Or just enjoy the mature peas. It's up to you. Recommended varieties: 'Douce de Provence', Mangetout 'Shiraz', 'Ambassador'
French climbing beans
The connoisseur's alternative to runner beans, tailor your French climbing beans according to taste. Choose from slender pencil beans, flat-podded types, purple or yellow varieties, or shelling beans for white haricots. Recommended varieties: 'Cobra', 'Blauhilde', 'Blue Lake'
Garlic
Breaking a fat head of garlic into cloves to plant in chilly November starts your gardening year with a smile. As well as dried cloves, try green scapes (flower spikes) and mild-flavoured green garlic. Recommended varieties: 'Chesnok Red', 'Solent Wight', Elephant Garlic
Chard
Generous crops of leafy greens, with a side order of crisp midrib, chard is just like spinach but miles easier to grow. It comes in a rainbow of differently-coloured stems - sometimes on the same plant. Recommended varieties: Swiss chard, Ruby chard, Chard 'Bright Lights'
Please ask the staff in our Mullingar garden centre for more information and advice about five easy veg.
]]>Ask one of our members of staff in our Mullingar centre for more information.
]]>You can choose a dahlia to suit your garden whatever your style: spidery cactus varieties like 'Black Narcissus' for an exotic look, or pretty pompom 'David Howard' for a classic herbaceous border. Single-flowered dahlias suit natural planting styles: in our Mullingar garden centre you'll find delicate pure white 'Twynings After Eight' and what are popularly known as 'The Bishops' – 'Bishop of Llandaff' in scarlet, yellow 'Bishop of York' or lilac 'Bishop of Leicester'.
All, however, are frost-tender, so need special care over winter.
In a well-drained soil in a warmer area of the country, you may be able to leave your dahlias in the ground: insure against hard frosts by covering the ground around the plant with a mulch up to 15cm thick of dry autumn leaves or coarse bark chips. Hold it in place with a double layer of fleece, pegged down to stop it blowing away. In spring remove the mulch to allow the plant to shoot up again.
If you're reluctant to risk losing your tubers in a hard winter, though, lift and store them in autumn under cover. Here's how:
Please ask the staff in our Mullingar garden centre for more information and advice about storing dahlias over winter.
]]>Most of us can't manage pumpkins quite that big, but it's fun to see how big a monster you can manage. A pumpkin growing competition is also a great way to get the kids involved in gardening.
In our Mullingar garden centre you'll find all you need for your crack at conquering the giant pumpkin world: just follow our easy steps to success.
Please ask the staff in our Mullingar garden centre for more information and advice about growing giant vegetables in your garden.
]]>We stock grow bags in our garden centre all year round, as well as useful accessories like frames that clip over them to support your plants as they grow and covers to help them blend more easily into the garden. Here are some top tips to make sure you get the best from your grow bags throughout the year.
Stack several together: If you're growing big plants like tomatoes, consider stacking two or even three grow bags on top of each other to give your plants a better root run. Cut out a long rectangle from the first grow bag, then put another on the top, cutting squares from the underside to let the roots through.
Use a second time for salads: Once your peppers and cucumbers have finished, don't throw out your grow bag. Top up with compost if necessary (you may need to cut a longer rectangle from the top) and re-sow with baby-leaf salads to see you through autumn.
Please ask the staff in our Mullingar garden centre for more information and advice about growing in grow bags.
]]>There's an easy, economic way to protect your soil for long periods of time, while improving its structure and feeding it, too. Green manures are beneficial plants grown like crops on vacant land. All have some sort of good effect on soil, and they're so densely-sown they keep the worst of the weather at bay.
In our Mullingar garden centre you'll find several varieties of green manure as large packets of seed, to broadcast and rake in as soon as the land falls empty. They germinate in next to no time, covering the ground rapidly with greenery so weeds don't get a look-in.
When you want to use that patch again, shear off the top growth and add it to the compost heap. Then roughly dig the roots of the green manure into the ground. Allow them a few weeks to rot back into the soil and they'll release nitrogen for your plants to use later in the season.
Here are five green manures to try in your garden:
In our garden centre you'll find plants for pickable Christmas decorations, as well as pinecones, seasonal ornaments, silver and gold spray paint, tinsel and baubles – in short, everything you need to put the finishing touches on your fresh-from-the-garden Christmas. You're only limited by your imagination - so here are a few suggestions to get you started.
Christmas tree chains: a packet of red popcorn seed, available from our garden centre, grows just like sweetcorn: string the pretty pink kernels into long tinsel-like decorations.
Wreaths: for this you'll need berrying holly, ivy and a wreath frame, all available from our garden centre. Weave the greenery onto the frame along with pinecones, brilliant red chillies and perhaps some dried orange Chinese lanterns (Physalis alkekengi) and hang on your door to welcome Christmas visitors.
Golden bells: take three pinecones and spray them gold, then wire the stems together in threes to make a little bundle that looks just like bells to hang in corners or from the ceiling.
It takes courage to exhibit your produce, but it's a lot of fun. Once you take the plunge and enter your first show, you'll be warmly welcomed in, with lots of advice and if you're lucky, hints on how to grow bigger and better next year.
Your local gardening club is likely to hold annual competitions, and many allotment sites have much-anticipated shows for plot holders, too. Or try your hand at the amateur growers' competition at the RHS Malvern Autumn Show, now including the National Giant Vegetable Championships.
So here are a few tips to help kick off your glittering career as a champion veg-grower.
Choose the right variety: For competition veg, it's all in the genes. You'll find plenty of veg seeds with a big reputation in your favourite garden centre: try 'Ailsa Craig' onions, or 'St Valery' carrots.
Start early: Champion growers traditionally sow their onion seeds on Boxing Day – giving them the maximum possible time to swell into those ginormous bulbs.
Use crowbars: Not to sabotage the competition, but to make long, deep holes where you're going to grow your giant parsnips or carrots. Fill with compost and sow on top for super-straight roots.
Grow in containers: The legendary Medwyn Williams, winner of multiple Chelsea gold medals, grew all his parsnips in drainpipes. Use a sandy compost mix and just tip out at competition time.
Feed, feed, feed: Whether it's giant pumpkins, marrows or runner beans, all that growth requires a lot of fuel. Plenty of manure before you start, plus regular liquid feeds pump up the volume to the max.
Please ask the staff in our Mullingar garden centre for more information and advice about a container vegetable garden.
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