Plugging the Gaps — Katy in the garden

So, from writing about NOT buying plants in my last post, to writing about buying them this week. I didn’t last long! Except of course, every gardener knows that anything that arrives in something smaller than a 9cm pot doesn’t count. Surprisingly very few of my friends who have recently started gardening seem to know about buying plug plants. I suppose they get lost, somewhere halfway between the ‘Good Life’ excitement of growing from seed and the plush extravagance of the 3 litre pot. Most beginner gardeners opt for one camp or the other, and the half-way house of plug plants gets over looked.

Plug plants are brilliant and have saved me on many occasions. What you get tends to vary a bit, from seedlings a few weeks old to well established little plants (always check the ‘Product Description’ when you order to avoid disappointment!). In both cases it’s worth potting them up immediately into small pots and giving them a couple of weeks care before they go into the garden. If you’re lucky you get 3 or 4 seedlings per plug which can be carefully untangled to triple your plants. I wouldn’t use plugs for every situation, but here are 5 moments when they can be brilliant.

When you’ve been busy and missed the boat

A healthy tray of Sweet Williams that I should have sown in the Summer…

One problem with the gardening year is that certain months take all the responsibility for the rest of the years success. Have you ever dared to go on holiday in April or May only to find you’re too late to sow anything on your return?

I mark my success in a gardening year by whether I have remembered to sow any biennials in the Summer. When life is busy and the weather is changeable, you can easily go from making a mental note to sow foxgloves in June to watching the first autumn leaves falling in the blink of an eye. It happens to the best of us. Don’t buy foxgloves for £8 a pot next spring. That sort of profligate extravagance belongs in the screenplay of ‘Wolf of Wall Street’. Buy plug plants.

For those that care about the environment (and have too many old plant pots)

I look at the piles of plastic pots at the end of my garden and despair knowing they will end up being burned or as micro-plastics. In hundreds of years, when my descendants are wandering around with blue skin and 14 fingers those pots will still be there. Hopefully they will have worked out how to weave them into some stylish futuristic clothing but most likely they’ll be tiny micro-plastic particles, served up to those descendants in their Friday fish and slowly poisoning them. It’s thoroughly depressing. Every plant I buy is another plastic pot on my conscience.

Growing from seed is obviously the greenest option, and admittedly most retailers still ship their plug plants in plastic packaging, but increasingly, smaller retailers are experimenting with biodegradable alternatives. This autumn my Mizuna and Pak choi all came wrapped in brown paper from SeedyBoy, a London based company. Still, even if plugs do come in plastic, at least (logically) they come in LESS plastic. Plus, I find many of the plug trays are much more useful for starting my own seeds in spring than big plant pots I don’t know what to do with (after all, how many Dahlias can one girl overwinter?). Perhaps it’s not the main reason to buy plug plants, but I feel it’s a good one.

As an emergency life jacket

We are all fallible and every year there’s always one tray of casualties that I forget to water; that get left in a shady corner; that get slugged on their first evening outdoors; that were sown too late or too early; that inexplicably don’t germinate… Ok, maybe 2 trays. In fact, this year we have had a few more casualties than usual amid the mayhem of baby Laurie’s arrival. In September, I diligently sowed Mizuna and lettuce to see us through the winter. They were doing well until one week when I came out for the first time in a few days to find them smothered under a blanket of fallen oak leaves and slugged to pieces.

For these SOS moments, we have plug plants. Too late in the season to sow more, especially without a greenhouse, I ordered replacements which arrived days later, were potted up, and ready to plant out before this awful cold set in. The satisfaction might not be quite the same, but they are a miraculous fix and a life-saver in an emergency.

For those of us that don’t have a green house

When I close my eyes at night and imagine my dream garden, I have a large, sunny greenhouse brimming with seedlings, all a picture of health. In reality, our little kitchen ends up drowning in pots in spring, and in autumn it’s hard work getting things off to a quick enough start outdoors. I have decided it’s realistic for us to expect to grow about 60% of our annual/biennial/veg plants from seed. For easy, quick growers there’s no point buying plugs, so anything like cosmos, nasturtiums, sunflowers, honesty, marigolds, cerinthe, tomatoes, courgettes, beans … I guess the list is a long one. But growing these takes up most of the kitchen in spring, so I save some space by buying slower growing plants as plugs.

I also like to treat myself to a few plug plants of things that like a bit of heat and protection to get going in spring, like Cobaea scandens or Ipomoea lobata. They’d be brilliant for tender bedding (Fuchsias etc if you’re into that kind of thing). Without a greenhouse, raising them at the right speed at the right time can be a fiddle. Buying a few in gives a big head start on the year which, in our shady garden, is a massive bonus.

For filling a garden on a budget

For some bedding plants, mass effect is what you’re aiming at, and in these situations plugs are the only realistic way to get the result you need. With annual and biennial plants that grow quickly, you can buy small plugs very cheaply and don’t have to wait long for results. I bought a load of Sweet William plugs this year to fill up the garden for next spring, and they’re great for things like Snap Dragons (Antirrhinum) or winter bedding like Violas. With very small seedlings you can may get several in each plug which can be divided up to triple your plants. Obviously when you do this you have to keep the newly separated seedlings in pots or modules for a while until they toughen up, but it’s a handy trick.

For those with more patience, plugs can also be a good budget option for filling a garden with perennials. Although slower growing plants will need a bit of extra care and potting on, you have a head start on the season (relative to sowing seed) and you don’t run the risk of poor germination. Many perennials have slightly more complicated germination requirements (sticking seeds in the fridge, covered/uncovered, specific temperatures etc), and with plugs that work has been done for you. Lavender plugs are handy if you’re after a lavender ‘hedge’. This year I’m trying out plugs of Pulsatilla vulgaris (one of my favourite spring flowers). I also bought Geranium ‘Rozanne’ plugs in the spring and although they are still quite small plants, they were out in the beds by May and have been flowering merrily all Summer. When I first had a garden to call my own, I got a Thompson and Morgan bumper ‘Favourite Perennials’ multipack, potted them up, and a lot of those plants are still thriving in our garden today.