Autumn Blooms

Time to Think About Spring Bulbs!

Flowering bulbs like jonquils, hyacinths and freesias fill the air with fragrance during late winter and spring. Tulips, daffodils and anemones create swathes of gorgeous colour, or in a pot, brighten up an outdoor area.

Whatever your favourite spring flowering bulb is, it’s time to start planning! A little preparation now will deliver much healthier bulbs and a stunning show of blooms.

Tips to ensure a fantastic display:

• In a sunny planting location, enrich the soil with some Yates Thrive Natural Blood Bone with Seaweed. It’s a rich source of organic matter that helps improve the structure of the soil, encourages earthworms and beneficial microorganisms and provides the newly planted bulbs with gentle, slow release organic nutrients, to encourage early bulb growth.

• For potted bulbs, choose a pot with good drainage holes and fill it with a quality potting mix, like Yates Premium Potting Mix. In a pot, you can plant bulbs quite close together, which creates a lovely dense looking result.

• Follow the directions on the bulb pack for how deep to plant the bulbs, plus ensure that you plant them the right way up!

• Water the garden bed or pot after planting, to settle the soil or potting mix around the bulbs.

• As soon as the first leaves emerge, you can start feeding the bulbs each week with a high potassium plant food, like Yates Thrive Flower & Fruit Soluble Fertiliser, to encourage healthy growth and help boost the floral show.

• Potted bulbs need regular watering, to make sure they have enough moisture.

Cottage Charm

Foxgloves and hollyhocks are must-have plants for a cottage garden! They’re both tall and stylish, covered with pretty flowers and just ooze old-fashioned charm. Autumn is the best time to sow seed for foxgloves and hollyhocks.

Yates Foxglove ‘Foxy’ has ascending spires of exquisite bell-shaped blooms in cream, purple and rose colours and is a fabulous way to add life to partly shaded areas in the garden. These tall, elegant and stately flowers create a magnificent and long-lasting display, with plants reaching up to 1 m tall.

You can sow foxglove seed direct where it is to grow, at around 3 mm deep, or alternatively seedlings can be raised in punnets of Yates Black Magic Seed Raising Mix and transplanted when they’re large enough to handle.

Foxgloves do best in a moist, partly shaded spot, though they'll tolerate full sun if kept well-watered. Once established, foxgloves will often self seed for many years afterwards.

Yates Hollyhock ‘Double Elegance’ is another cottage giant, with towering stems of gorgeous brightly coloured, velvety double blooms reaching up to 2m tall. Hollyhocks make a dramatic backdrop against sunny walls and fences.

Hollyhock seed is best sown into punnets of Yates Black Magic Seed Raising Mix and the seedlings transplanted into a sunny garden bed when they’re large enough to handle. If planted in an exposed area, they'll benefit from being staked, due to their height.

Watch out for snails and slugs, which can damage tender young seedlings. A light sprinkling of Yates Blitzem Snail & Slug Pellets around the plants will help attract and kill snails and slugs.

Both foxgloves and hollyhocks benefit from a feed each week with Yates Thrive Roses & Flowers Liquid Plant Food, a complete fertiliser that’s boosted with additional potassium to encourage lots of beautiful flowers.