Ever wondered about the love that goes into producing your plants? Peter McDermott, managing director of YouGarden, shares an insight into what happens
“Our nursery is based in the heartland of the UK horticultural industry in Lincolnshire, just a few miles from Spalding. The area has historically been a crucial centre of professional growing, dating back many decades, with the rich Fenland soils providing the perfect fertile soil to produce abundant crops of vegetables, salads and cut flowers.
The nursery has been a market garden historically and in recent years had become the UK’s largest heather grower; these days, Long Lane Nursery is the home of YouGarden, the place from which we grow and ship plants to every corner of the UK.
April is the most crucial month in the gardening calendar for us; it’s when we see everything on the nursery spring into life. This is driven by the perfect combination of rising temperatures, ever
improving and lengthening light levels and warm spring rains that encourage the first flush of lush green shoots. The last few months have felt unusually dull – well, they have been, haven’t they, with light levels
lower than any year since 1947! But spring is now here and our gardening year really begins!
A Mammoth Task!
As the temperatures increase, fresh growth accelerates, so keeping containerised plants watered well is one of our major tasks; we have well over 750,000 plants in pots at any point this time of year! Anything growing in a container is dependent on being regularly watered if it is to grow and thrive, and the fact it
has rained won’t usually suffice.
In fact, the more leaf cover a plant has the better it looks, so it’s easy to be fooled into thinking it’s happy. But the more foliage, the more water is being deflected away from the plants, so real care must be taken
to ensure the rootball of every plant is given enough moisture. We always say that watering is the easiest job to do badly and one of the trickiest to do well!
Ensuring everything is fed and watered every day is mission critical. – Peter McDermott
In addition, we also add soluble feed into our watering system to make sure key nutrients and minerals are always available to our plants. We use Blooming Fast Soluble Plant Food across the nursery. This soluble plant food is high potency, commercial grade and has the perfect NPK blend (that’s nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium) plus essential trace elements, too.
Ensuring everything is fed and watered every day is mission critical. Although we have special ‘sub irrigated beds’ that water from below, much watering is done by hand, with the skill and judgement
of getting it just right being down to our highly skilled growers.
Tackling The Pests
This is also the time we keep a really careful watch for pests and diseases, with our expert growers walking the nursery daily so we can spot and deal with issues before they get out of hand. One of the major ones to
watch out for right now is aphids; their population will explode if left unchecked in these near perfect conditions for them.
We control them with a combination of treatments, using chemical-free ‘soft soap’ style remedies wherever we can and reserving chemical insecticides for any major outbreaks. Where we do use chemicals, they are only ever applied early in the morning or during the evening, when light levels are low and friendly beneficial insects are least active, ensuring the impact on good insects is minimised.
We pot and grow hundreds of thousands of fruit trees and roses each year; the fresh growth on these as they break dormancy provides the ideal place for sap-sucking insects like aphids to survive and multiply,
taking advantage of the delicious growth. We always advise our customers to keep a close eye on fresh shoots in their garden, ideally inspecting plants a couple of times each week, and to treat them accordingly so any pest population doesn’t get out of hand.
Keeping on top of weeds right now means you can prevent them reaching maturity and producing spreading seeds, or in the case of perennials, becoming well established. The old adage of ‘one year seeding’, means seven years weeding’ really is true in my experience, so don’t let them get away from you.
Strimming and using a hoe is my first preference as this solves the problem without the use of herbicide. Preventing weed seedlings from growing by running a hoe through your borders on a sunny day (so the seedlings quickly wither and die) is fast, effective and environmentally safe. At home I combine regular use of the hoe, with a good covering of composted bark mulch; I find the bark looks good, suppresses weeds and, most importantly as we head towards summer, keeps the moisture in the soil.
What’s Looking Good?
As I’ve wandered around the nursery and my garden in recent weeks, it’s been great to see various plants looking their best. I try and have one or two items ‘popping’ every month, so there’s always a reason to be in the garden!
Flowering cherry (prunus) ‘Amanogawa’ is looking lovely and gives a waft of fragrance, too. It’s a perfect, upright tree for a small garden or limited space.
Viburnum ‘Eve Price’ has been in full flower, providing petals and perfume. Plus the blooms are really great for the early season pollinators to feast on.
Camassia Caerulea Group, planted last autumn, has been looking delightful. The bright blue really drew my eye. Great for early season colour.
Lavender I trimmed back in September has looked tidy all winter but is emerging in a rash of fresh glaucus foliage. I have fringed tulips popping out of my ones at home, that will precede the explosion of allium next month!”
Meet Peter!
YouGarden’s managing director and ‘head gardener’ Peter McDermott has spent over 30 years in the
horticultural industry. What started as a hobby at the age of eight, growing just a few lettuce plants in a corner of the garden, progressed to studying horticulture at Bicton Horticultural College in Devon.
From there he never looked back. Growing up on the family nursery in South Devon, where he and his father grew over 300 varieties of fuchsias and geraniums as well as various cut-flower crops including perpetual carnations, Peter developed a real understanding of plants and how to grow them successfully.
These days his time is often spent travelling through Europe looking for new and innovative plants for gardeners to grow and he has developed a keen eye for the new and interesting. Having also worked for and run several large mail order gardening companies, he has an unrivalled expertise of the UK gardening sector.
Back at YouGarden, although a self pronounced kettle-dodger who rarely makes the tea, Peter does enjoy a nice strong cuppa (ideally with a piece of fruit cake) while sitting in his garden following a spot of mowing, pruning and planting!
