The Beginner’s Guide to Healthy Plant Growth
Generally speaking plants (providing they have been properly selected for you soil conditions and available light) don’t need a lot of intervention to thrive.
Traditionally horticulture has been dedicated to growing the biggest and best and much of the activity of gardening is geared to selling this ideal. In reality though plants grow without human help. What then can we do to help plants to grow healthily (as simply as possible)?
AMELIORATING THE SOIL - THE CASE FOR FERTILISERS
Since the end of World War II gardeners, and commercial operations, have fertilised the soil with man-made chemical treatments to maximise growth. NPK fertilisers (those providing a balance of Nitrogen, Phosphorous, and Pottassium) are frequently added to the soil but are they really necessary? The answer, honestly, is often they are not. It is true that adding fertiliser to the soil encourages your new plants to flush with growth but it is also true that plants that have to strive for nutrients - though investing their energy is dense root systems - take longer to reach their potential but generally survive for longer and are much less susceptible to drought (due to those complex root systems). Sometimes an organic fertiliser can be added for specific tasks - well-rotted manure around roses (which demand more in the way of nutrients than other ornamental plants) or perhaps Blood, Fish and Bone (for the phosphorous content) to encourage and promote healthy root growth in poor soils. Indeed unless you are cropping season after season in a productive garden then fertilisers are often not needed - beyond occasional mulching of the soil surface to provide some nutrients and perhaps trap water in the soil in the spring (using home-made compost, leaf mould, or other soil ameliorants that can be purchased).
There is a temptation when installing a new garden to use plenty of fertiliser so the plants look to thrive in the first season and you can then feel good about your investment but this is then something you’ll need to repeat year on year and I always feel if not done carefully it can be counter-productive - creating more growth to prune and trim and requiring new fertilisers to live up to previous expectations.
PEST CONTROL SOLUTIONS FOR THE GARDEN
The best form of pest control is to avoid planting plants with pests that affect their survivability!
This may seem obvious but its true - if you grow lilies you’ll get Lily Beetle at some point (which you can pick off at the adult or larval stage - although the larvae are fairly disgusting); similarly if you grow Heucheras then you’ll likely encourage Vine Weevils into the garden, if they don’t arrive in the roots of the plants (although these can’t be picked off as they hide below ground).
Essentially if you want to grow plants that have widespread pests then you’ll need to be prepared to invest time and energy in keeping them pest free - checking for eggs, larvae, or adults above or below ground. A special mention though is reserved for greenfly which are ubiquitous. These sap sucking aphids can cause problems but generally bother the gardener more than the plant and are usually easily rubbed off new shoots between two fingers.
However living in the UK what we grow really well (alongside turf grass where you don’t want it to grow) are slugs and snails…and these will eat mostly any vegetation if they aren’t carnivorous (some slugs are, usually those with striped patterning). I used to try to control these organically (with stale beer in jam jars sunk into the ground to catch and drown them) but anyone who does this will realise quickly that it’s a senseless task and against everything a biodiverse garden should stand for. The answer, as always, is to a mollusc infestation is to avoid plants that are especially palatable - such as hostas, echinacea, Liatris etc. Additionally the intrepid gardener can head out at dusk to collect and relocate the slugs and snails they find - although this is a harder task than you may think as snails have been shown to have a homing ability if moved less than 20m away.
Therefore I now live and let live and avoid nitrogen based fertilisers - as this promotes lush green growth in plants that is more palatable and therefore creates more problems with pests than simply allowing your perennials and shrubs to grow on slowly.
A biodiverse garden is one that actively encourages predators to control the pests for you - frogs for slugs, blue tits for caterpillars, ladybirds for aphids and so forth. Don’t worry too much is possibly the best advice here once you have the right collection of plants.
COMMON DISEASES
At the risk of repeating myself again, the best way to avoid diseases is to select plants that are less susceptible to diseases.
However I also do not want to apply any chemical poisons to the landscape and so choose plants that do not need such treatments (for example disease resistant roses would be planted and spaced to allow sufficient air to circulate around their foliage).
Happy, healthy plants are less susceptible to disease anyway so avoid fertilising where not necessary and allow plants to not be crushed in together (where lack of air circulation allows mildews and other fungal species to thrive in the close, damp spaces).
Most diseases of plants are either fungal or viral. The cultural treatment for them all tends to generally be the same. Remove (and burn) affected leaves, flowers, and branches, disinfect your secateurs or loppers between plants, and don’t forget to collect and burn leaves and other plant parts that have already fallen from the plant (and are sitting onthe soil waiting for rain to catapult fungal spores further afield).
There are many excellent web resources dealing with all manner of plant problems (just Google “the leaves on my plants are curling/black etc” swapping the words in italics for the details of your own problem. This will give you a list of possible solutions but remember that websites belonging to, or sponsored by, chemical companies will advise chemical control - and that this is not always the most effective answer.
IN CONCLUSION
The act of gardening should be relaxed and enjoyable - never a chore nor necessitating a complex recipe for success. Where you fall on the spectrum here will depend on your own passions and how much spare time you have, but if you get the plants right at the beginning then everything else should flow much more easily as your garden develops and matures.
Related Articles:
The Beginner’s Guide to Seeds and Plant Division - making your garden go further