Are you ready for the winter blooms? Here are a few tips to follow…

I am here with every gardening enthusiast, more so with the amateurs, to help them with their new-found pursuits. And let us follow the small tips to be an assured and successful gardener.

We are at the best possible time, that is now, when the planning and planting of winter annuals is done. No doubt the range of summer annuals is also improving with the introduction of new species and varieties, but winter is the time which the gardeners look forward to, as this season offers a wide range of flora.

Soil preparation

It’s a myth that manure and fertilisers in large quantity will make the plants happy. Your plants with more than the required quantity suffer the same way when there is a deficient supply. So, be judicious. Certain plants like azaleas, camellia, blueberries and even rhododendrons do not relish manures, especially poultry manure. Azalia and camellias are grown in the hills as well as the plains. And this is an information for them who complain about azalias and camellias not doing well in the plains or at high altitudes.

Add farmyard manure and fertilisers to the soil. Make sure the manure is well rotten. If it is not, you are in trouble with white ants. Add about 5 to 10 kg of manure and about 30 gm of NPK fertiliser (12:32:16) mixture (a fistful) per square metre of bed. Mix it well with the upper three to four inches of soil. Water it and leave it for about a week.

Level up

Now comes the most important operation, that is to make a good level. If your bed is not leveled, the manure and fertilisers added will run with water towards the slope and gather at the lower end. You will get uneven growth in the bed as part of it will be fed more. In that part, the plants may even die due to ‘overfeeding’. Make sure your bed is like a table top.

Plan your beds for various annuals as per their height and make a colour scheme for your garden on a paper. Tell the nursery man to make sure you get the plants of specific colour and height. With time and advancement of technology, you can get seedlings of almost any specific height or colour.

The second most important thing is avoid tray-raised nursery. I get so many gardeners complaining that most of the seedlings die due to sparse roots in a tray. It is better to get bed grown nursery. The seedlings have strong roots aplenty.

How to water

Planting seedlings is also tricky. Normally, we put small and sometimes tiny seedlings and then give water in the bed with a hose pipe. The water rushes into the bed and damages the seedlings. It is better to water the bed first and then plant seedlings gently in the wet beds. It is better to get about four or five seedlings extra to fill the gaps in case of any mortality at a later stage.

(The author is a Chandigarh-based horticulturist, who retired from

Punjab Agriculture University)