If you’ve come back from holiday to straggly plants, wilted flowers and struggling vegetables, it’s time to tidy up, think about autumn planting and choose some spring-flowering bulbs. You may want to try to keep your annual container plants going a bit longer, but unless we have an Indian summer they are unlikely to reach their pre-holiday glory. So, what can you do? 1.
Ditch dead annuals in pots You know it’s time to throw in the towel when your trailing lobelia have gone brown, your petunias are leggy and lifeless, and other bedding plants such as busy Lizzies, verbena and begonia have withered. You may be able to salvage pelargoniums if they haven’t been waterlogged by rain. They will withstand drought conditions though, so deadhead them thoroughly, and water and feed them to keep them going a bit longer.
2. Tidy up perennials in containers If your perennials in pots have survived and you eventually want to move them to a border, give them a thorough soaking and a good trim, and think about where you might want to relocate them later on in the autumn. 3.
Add colour There’s autumn colour to be had if you plant late-summer flowering chrysanthemums and dahlias in pots using fresh compost. Evergreens in pots can be dunked in a bucket of water to make sure their roots are wet, without being waterlogged. They will provide height and structure to any container as you replace the spent summer plants around them with autumn-flowering ones.
In borders, cut back untidy gro.