Post Christmas and New Year maintenance

Post-Christmas check up

Keep your houseplants in tip-top condition and they’ll continue to give you a colourful display for ages. All plants will need watering as and when needed but make sure you don’t overdo it. Flowering houseplants should be dead-headed regularly and given a weekly to fortnightly feed with a flowering houseplant fertiliser.

Foliage plants need regular hand misting or standing on a saucer of damp pebbles or Hortag to maintain humidity around the leaves.

Save water

Save money on your water bill and have a handy source of water that’s perfect for many plants, especially rhododendrons, azaleas and other lime haters by installing a water butt or two. We sell easy to install kits that will link your water butts to each other and to the down pipes of your house or garage – perfect for saving all that rain water.

Pest watch

Although it’s too cold outside for most pests and diseases to be active, temperatures indoors are just right. Keep a close eye on plants in the house, greenhouse or conservatory for whitefly, red spider mite, aphids, scale insects and mealybug.

In the greenhouse and frames grey mould can be a problem so keep watering to a minimum, avoid splashing water about and ventilate whenever the weather conditions allow. Tidying up outdoors and removing any dead plant debris will take away the hiding places for various insect pests.