calling any expert gardeners!

[Mirinjawbro]

Hello all.

can anyone please confirm if "fertiliser / growth" products are worth it for hedges / wild flowers shrubs etc?

if so any recommendations?


also. best place to buy 5 foot ish laurels ?

thanks all

[PhilboSE]

It all depends on the quality of your soil. If you have a rich peaty loam then you don’t need much, if it’s chalky/dry then the plants would do better with some enrichment.

My top tip for getting plants established is watering. Plants in poor soil but good hydration will develop faster than those in good soil but under watered. If you really want a hedge to grow quickly, set up an irrigation system and give it a good watering every 2 days.

Laurel grows almost anywhere so you don’t need to worry too much.

If you buy a bunch of laurel online then you’ll probably be offered, or get thrown in, some mycorrhizal fungi. That’s supposedly worth having to aid root growth. Often you mix it up in a bucket like wallpaper paste and just dunk the rootball in it before planting.

Really all you need to do is dig a hole, chuck in some compost, add plant with the fungus, back fill and keep it hydrated.

Only do further soil enrichment if your soil is really poor.

Finally, laurel is a bit of a thug. I’d recommend the old favourite photinia red robin (more attractive) or elaeagnus x ebbengei.

You can buy online from lots of places like hedgesdirect or you can go to your local “trade only” plant wholesaler who should stock all of the above in bulk. Despite saying they’re trade only, they usually happily sell to punters who buy decent quantities. Just say it’s a cash account or use a generic trade name like “green fingers” if they ask for a trade name account.

If you want to save some money then buy a 2 foot example in a 5l pot. Will be a lot cheaper and if you keep them well watered they’ll catch up to a 5 foot example in the first year.

[dmsims]

Some very good advice above!

We bought some Portugese Laurels from https://www.grasslands.co.uk/

They have done really well

[Dr Mike Oxgreen]

You can’t go far wrong with Fish Blood & Bone, which is a good balanced general-purpose, slow-release fertiliser. I generally scatter generous handfuls of it everywhere, several times a year. Just scatter it, water it in, wash any excess off the leaves and forget it. With any powder fertiliser it’s important not to let it stay on the leaves because it’ll scorch, although FB&B is not too bad in this respect. It’s an organic fertiliser that has to be processed by the soil microbes before plants can use it, so don’t expect instant results.

I think it’s useful to have a basic understanding of plant nutrition so you know what fertiliser(s) to buy. The three main nutrients are Nitrogen (N), Phosphorus (P) and Potassium (K) - usually in the form of nitrate, phosphate and potash. All fertilisers will give the relative percentages of N-P-K, always quoted in that order, so if you see three numbers (usually separated by dashes), that’s what they mean.

Plants use Nitrogen for making leaves and stems. So if you want big, bushy plants, use a fertiliser with a high N number (the first number). Phosphorus is for root formation, but you generally don’t need a high P number (the second). Potassium is for flowers and fruit, so if you want lots of good flowers and/or fruit then use a fertiliser with a high K number (third number). This is, of course, a broad simplification!

The NPK numbers for FB&B vary somewhat because it’s derived from natural products, but it’s generally a balanced fertiliser that gives you a bit of everything.

[Dr Mike Oxgreen]

Another thing that’s very worth doing is mulching. This is where you spread a two or three inch layer of something nutritious around the base of plants and let the worms do the job of pulling it down into the ground. You can use compost, or even better well-rotted manure.

[billbring]

You mention wild flowers... Generally speaking they will thrive in the exact opposite conditions to most shrubs. ie low-fertile soil, so you will do more harm than good by fertilising them.

[Silvanus]

billbring said:

You mention wild flowers... Generally speaking they will thrive in the exact opposite conditions to most shrubs. ie low-fertile soil, so you will do more harm than good by fertilising them.

This, nutritional needs and care can vary wildly from plant species to species

[ATG]

Silvanus said:

billbring said:

You mention wild flowers... Generally speaking they will thrive in the exact opposite conditions to most shrubs. ie low-fertile soil, so you will do more harm than good by fertilising them.

This, nutritional needs and care can vary wildly from plant species to species

To add to the above, plants and animals typically adapt to exploit a particular environmental niche. By being better at living in a particular environment, they out-compete other species. Many wild flowers are adapted to growing well in thin, nutrient poor soils. In those conditions they'll out-compete grasses and other species. If you dump a load of nutrients on top of them, you'll give grasses, nettles, thistles, etc the resources they need to out-compete the wild flowers.

If you want a plant to do well in your garden, you need to mimic the specific conditions that it is adapted for in the wild. That could be anywhere between aquatic and desert, acid or alkali, nutrient rich to bare sand, full light to a cave entrance.

To illustrate this with an extreme example, there are some old mine workings in North Wales where some rare fern species thrive because they are adapted to survive heavy metal contamination. They can grow in soil that kills other plants. If you wanted to try growing them in your garden, the first step would be to poison the soil with heavy metals.