Survival guide for your plot

Published on Monday 30 July 2007 11:40

I know that we have been deluged with rain over the past few weeks, but if you get even a short dry spell while you're away on your summer holiday, you may come back to shrivelled container plants, dried-up hanging baskets and struggling vegetables.

However, there are ways to minimise damage to plants and produce in your absence. Just before you go away, put all your containers together in a shady spot and give them a really good soak.

It's also worth removing all the flowers, even those which are unopened, which will help conserve the plant's energy and encourage it to produce new blooms on your return.

If you don't have an automatic irrigation system which you can preset before you leave, other methods can help keep containers moist.

Try placing smaller pots on a big tray lined with dampened capillary matting.

The plants will draw up what they need when they need it and it will take a long time for the matting to dry out.

Alternatively, you can create a watering system for your pots by standing a bucket full of water on an old chair or a stack of bricks in a shady area of the patio, placing your pots around the base.

Then get an old towel or other water-absorbent fabric and cut it into long strips around 10cm (4in) wide and place one end deep into the bucket of water and the other into the soil in the plant pot.

Water will start to soak down the length of towel into the container and it's a good idea to add liquid feed to the bucket of water which will also seep through gradually.

Cover compost with some pebbles or mulch to reduce evaporation from the soil. Hanging baskets are often a casualty of two weeks without maintenance, so take them down and remove all the flowers you can see.

Submerse the base of the basket in an oversized bucket full of water, until it has soaked up enough water so that the compost on the top is visibly wet.

If you have space, dig a shallow hole in a shady border, big enough for your basket, and place it there for the duration of your holiday.

It may then be able to draw some moisture from the soil.

Most established plants in your borders should survive happily over a two-week period, as the roots go deep enough into the ground to soak up moisture, but if you have tomatoes in growing bags, you could cut the bottom off a two litre plastic bottle, pierce the cap and the surrounding neck of the bottle with pinprick holes and stick the neck a few inches into the compost next to the plant, so all the holes are under the soil.

Then fill up the bottle and the water should drip slowly to where it's needed, at the roots.

If some of your crops are ready for harvest, pick them before you go and if you have a glut, either blanch and freeze them or give them to neighbours, who may then offer to do a bit of watering or harvesting while you're away!

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Friday 10 February 2012

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Survival guide for your plot

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