There’s no need to give up on growing a colourful garden, even as the weather begins to cool. A gardening expert has shared a handy way to keep your flowers blooming year-round
Enjoy a flower-filled garden year-round(Image: Getty)
Autumn has arrived but that doesn’t mean it’s an end to colourful blooms in your garden.
When September rolls around and the leaves start to fall, many gardeners think their work is done for the rest of the year. However, this doesn’t have to be the case. A gardening expert has shared a handy trick to encourage flowers to bloom year-round.
According to TikTok creator and plant expert Gardening With Ish, one of the best ways to keep your garden vibrant, even during cooler months, is to make sure you’re feeding them regularly. He said: “By using something like tomato feed, just once a week, [applying it] right directly to the base, will increase the potassium and potash in the soil, creating this amazing yield of flowers.”
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Plant feed can encourage your flowers to bloom for longer (Image: (Image: Getty))
He added: “Doing this for another month or so will keep these nice and happy and colourful.” Both potassium and potash are vital for healthy plant growth as they aid in crucial processes such as root development, photosynthesis and activating enzymes. In particular, plants fed fertiliser containing high amounts of potash tend to produce higher yields of flowers.
The second key tip Ish shares is to deadhead the plants in your garden. He explained: “By taking away those spent flowers right at the base of the stem, you’ll encourage more life to flourish.”
He continued: “By doing this regularly, I’ll continue with an even bigger flush of flowers that will carry on for another couple of months.”
Deadheading flowers can improve their longevity(Image: JJ Gouin via Getty Images)
While ‘deadhead’ may sound quite extreme, it simply refers to the process of removing already-dead flower heads from the main plant.
This is done as wilted flowers will still divert food and water from your bulb, leading to new flowerheads becoming deprived of necessary nutrients.
Therefore, deadheading can promote more flowers and a longer bloom season, creating a fuller and brighter garden even as the weather begins to dull.
If you want to create a revival of flowers the following year, Ish suggests planting spring bulbs between September and November. Examples of spring bulbs include daffodils, tulips, crocuses and hyacinths.
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Equally, if you want your garden to continue to flourish over the winter, Ish recommends changing up your flowers to ones which can withstand the cold, such as winter pansies and violas.
He said: “By planting them up as you start to take away the annuals for summer, you’ll continue that flash of colour all the way through to winter next year.”
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