Oh Dear... have we just wasted our money? **UPDATE**

EmptyPockets

This post will probably make most of you experienced gardeners LOL, but please remember that we're novices

Husband and I recently moved house, and for the first time in 11 years, we actually have a garden. We've been working really hard on it every weekend, created a large veggie patch, painted fences, etc etc - trying to inject a bit of life back into it really.

HOWEVER

Having never done this before, and being complete novices when it comes to gardening (and quite impulsive people anyway) on Saturday we dug over all the flower beds and borders, went round the local B&Q, and spent about £40 on bedding plants.

These bedding plants are now all in the ground, and the garden looks GREAT! We never gave it a second thought! I just figured 'if they're selling these now then it must be the right time to plant them'!!!

... It wasn't until that night I sat and thought... 'oh dear... We have been too hasty here'.

I feel so silly now, thinking about it, but I guess we have to make these mistakes to learn from them??? LOL.

I sat last night trawling web sites, all telling me that bedding plants should be hardened off and put out in garden late May early June

So what do we do now? Try to dig them all back up and bring back inside? Try to cover them every night where they are? With what? Leave them and pray?...

Help if you can, please

tanith

Well if you do nothing you might be lucky but one cold night and they will be gone... what plants did you buy? you could try buying some fleece and cover them over but it will need to be held down to stop it blowing away... and even then if its really cold they will suffer... but then we have all got carried away with enthusiasm at some point don't let it put you off...

EmptyPockets

Thank you for your reply.

Luckily, a lot of the plants we bought are in tubs and containers so I can at least bring those ones inside today. But there are about 26 which have been planted into the ground. They are:

French Marigold
Upright Geranium
Upright Lobelia
Busy Lizzie

Would you say that trying to cover them each night is better than transfering them to pots and bringing inside? I don't know if this would do more harm than good...

And should we cover them EVERY night or just below a certain temp.?

WestonDave

I would leave them on site and try to cover them - Poundland are doing cheap polytunnel cloches at the moment (or they were a couple of weeks ago) and Wilkinsons do pretty reasonable deals on polythene sheet and garden fleece. You might get lucky as the warm weather we've had (certainly down south) will go some way to helping prevent temperatures falling really low over the next month or so. You'll need to cover them every night ideally as its hard to know when temperatures will drop.

To be fair having bought the plants you may as well enjoy them - B&Q insist on selling these plants early knowing they shouldn't go out, but its also virtually impossible unless you have an industrial greenhouse to keep growing them on in suitable containers indoors. You may lose some or all of them at some point, but by the sounds of it its only a small proportion of the whole that are at risk anyway as you can bring the others in at night.

conradmum

In Derbyshire you aren't too far from me (Northants). It's been beautiful these last few days hasn't it?:D

I think you might get away with just covering them with a double layer of fleece. As they haven't been hardened off, you'll need to do this tonight and for the next few nights. After that, as long as the night temperature doesn't go below about 3/4C they'll be okay to be left uncovered. You will need to follow the weather forecast religiously though, and pay attention when it talks about rural as opposed to urban temperatures. If you're out in the countryside it'll definitely be colder.

How many plants are there? You could also cover them with cardboard boxes with a brick on top on very cold nights.

Don't stress, you could be lucky and get away with it, and your plants will be ahead of everyone else's!

It's really the garden centres' fault. They sell the plants too early, knowing full well some customers will make just the mistake you did and have to come back and buy more. Gardening is all about learning from your mistakes. That's half the fun of it.

EmptyPockets

Thanks, you've all been very helpful, and made me feel a little less silly

I am just making space now to bring all the containers inside. Then I will have to have a hunt around the house to see what I can use for covering the ones left outside. There are 26 out in the flower bed. I like the cardboard box idea as it means we don't have to spend extra on fleece/plastic, etc. I know these would be best but as you can see from my signature, we're on a DMP and can't really afford any more cost. Buying the plants was a little splash-out treat for ourselves using overtime money! Which maybe explains my panic to you haha!

Oh well all we can do now is our best, keep fingers crossed and hope that they'll be ok.

I still can't believe we didn't think to check before we planted them though :rotfl:

I just assumed that as they were on sale, now was the time for putting them in. I read all the labels well and even on them it did not say when to plant, only where to plant. Lesson learned eh? :cool:

Sunnyday

I`m a bit further north than you in south Yorks and have just planted my sweetcorn outside only yesterday.

The forecast says that we are in for some really cold spells towards the end of next week. I`ve cut the bottoms off some 2litre pop bottles and used them as cloches over the plants. I shall leave the cloches on permanently for a few weeks and screw the tops on at night.

Hope fully another idea that will help a bit. I`ve got my fingers crossed for you.

SD

Sunnyday

If it helps i like this weather site, seems to be the most accurate and your can look quite a fair way in advance and its updated quickly. Just tap your location into the box at the top.

HTH

http://www.metcheck.com/V40/UK/HOME/

Antispam

I have french marigolds I potted outside on Saturday and they are fine. Also have seeds germinating (radish, spring onions) in a raised bed

EmptyPockets

Sunnyday wrote: »

I`ve cut the bottoms off some 2litre pop bottles and used them as cloches over the plants. I shall leave the cloches on permanently for a few weeks and screw the tops on at night.


SD

Thank you! That's a brilliant tip for me, and something which I can do today aswell, thanks for that :T

EmptyPockets

Sunnyday wrote: »

If it helps i like this weather site, seems to be the most accurate and your can look quite a fair way in advance and its updated quickly. Just tap your location into the box at the top.

HTH

http://www.metcheck.com/V40/UK/HOME/

I have bookmarked that, thanks