EP335- When The Rain Ruins The Roses. How To Save Your Summer Flowers.

This weeks sponsor: 

Crann From  Probio Carbon 

https://www.probiocarbon.ie

Rain that never seems to end, sunshine that vanishes in minutes, and wind that flattens the best-looking borders can make this June feel like a constant battle. We’re not trying to “beat” the weather, but we are determined to stop it stealing the best part of the gardening year, especially when roses, peonies and early summer perennials should be putting on a show.

We talk through the real damage caused by this mix of warmth and moisture: flowers that hold water and rot, stems that snap after repeated rocking, and the rapid rise of fungal problems like mildew and botrytis. Then we get practical. We share a ruthless deadheading approach that protects the next flush of blooms, simple support methods for tall plants, and the key housekeeping that boosts airflow and reduces disease pressure. We also cover container gardening tactics that make a huge difference, from bringing hanging baskets into shelter for a “breather” to moving pots into a less exposed spot so they can recover and thrive.

You’ll also hear how to spot the plants that are genuinely unbothered by rough weather, and how to use that information for smarter planting choices later. Finally, we explain the Chelsea Chop, when it still makes sense to do it in a late season, and which perennials respond best with bushier growth and a longer flowering season.

If you want more flowers and fewer disappointments this summer, hit subscribe, share the episode with a gardening friend, and leave us a review so more people can find the show. What’s taking the biggest beating in your garden right now?

Transcript

Why The Weather Matters Now

SPEAKER_00 0:12

How's it going everybody? And welcome to episode 335 of Master My Garden Podcast. Now, this week's episode is going to be a very apt episode, a very relatable episode, I know to many of you guys listening. And it's looking at how we can, I suppose, protect our garden, uh, ensure that we have flowers going into the summer, because the weather here, for any of you listening outside of Ireland, maybe it's not the case for you, but here in Ireland it has been horrendous. It's the only word for it. Uh, we've had, and I know I kind of talk and have been talking a lot about the weather this year, but it is so it is so relevant to what we're doing, and it affects what we're doing in such a real way. It's you know, we're a small island on the edge of the Atlantic, and we are definitely, you know, taking the brunt of things in terms of of rainfall. Um speaking to somebody in the UK this morning, and they've had you know a relatively nice spring, an early summer, some rain, but nothing to the extent that we've had. And yeah, it's uh it's definitely been a challenging year to date in the garden, and and that's what we're gonna look at, I suppose. Well the the the idea is so many of our you know summer favourite flowers are out now, roses, peonies, etc. And there's a danger that as the weeks pass by with still more rain and wind, we're getting a lot of wind as well, that we don't get to see the full benefit of some of these flowers. So we're gonna look at some techniques and things that we can do to ensure that we get to enjoy these when fingers crossed the weather eventually settles. Again, I feel like I've said that so many times. Uh and I hope I'm not sounding like a broken record, but it is so tied to everything we do in the garden and so relevant. Um yeah, so that's the subject for this week's

Sponsor Pick For Disease Control

SPEAKER_00 2:25

episode. Before we get into that, a message from this week's sponsor, and this week's sponsor is Crayon by Probiocarbon. And Crayon is a product which is actually going to be relevant as we go through today's conversation. It's a brilliant product, it's a natural fungicide, essentially, that will you know be effective against botrytis, against pithium, fuserium, which are all fungal infections. And what it does, it really increases the plants' um resilience, makes them less susceptible to disease. It actually promotes growth and new growth on plants, really effective against box blight, um, other leaf diseases in things like Portuguese laurel, and and a really effective, a really effective uh product to use across your whole garden. So whether that's your butt your boxes, your roses, your apple trees, your vegetables, you know, it promotes growth, um helps the helps the uh nutrients be available for the plants, creates resilient plants, more disease resil resistant plants, and that's exactly what we're going to need uh, you know, over the coming months, especially with this weather that we're having now. Uh, you'll find all of the products on www.probiocarbon.ie, and I'll put the link to that in the show notes. It's a product that I have used, so you know, very, very comfortable uh recommending it and yeah, very very effective. I haven't used it as I said before on boxes blight, but it's something that people are getting an awful lot of success with. Um estate gardens have brought back large areas of boxes hedging as a result of using this on you know on a couple of times across the seas, and basically following a plan and yeah, uh a really super product. As I say, it'll be quite relevant as we go through this episode.

What Wind And Rain Do

SPEAKER_00 4:19

Um, yeah, so we're talking about basically trying to maximize maximise our gardens given the weather that we're having. And to put a bit of context, as I said, some some of you guys listening in the in the US or the UK, you may not be having having the the weather that we're having. And you know, to put it into context, this week we've had temperatures that have hit at times 18 or 20 degrees Celsius, but have also dropped down as far as 4 degrees, 5 degrees, 6 degrees. On top of that, we've had a pretty constant wind. We've had periods of really bright sunshine, really beautiful, you know, nice weather that we'd be kind of hoping to get at this time of the year. And then 20 minutes later, you could be wrapped up in your in your best rain gear with howling wind blowing and an absolute downpour. And of course, what's happening is we've we're getting a lot of rain falling. Uh we're getting that coupled with wind because it's going from sunny and calm to gusting and raining, it's very, very hard on certain plants. And you know, a lot of the the more tender perennials are getting battered and bruised, you know, window boxes, hanging baskets particularly that have you know that that can blow around, they're getting battered and bruised. And so we're going to look at some simple techniques and tips to maybe help those, to maybe improve them and to ensure that you know we get real benefit out of these over the coming months. Because while on the one hand the year is moving on and we are up to the middle of June, there's still the potential, you know, with your with your window boxes, with your roses, with your hanging baskets, with with a lot of your flowers, to have flower from now right through to the end of September. So we have the potential to have a long period of enjoyment from these, if we can sort of keep them in reasonable shape over the next period of time until this weather changes and we get something consistent and sunny and warm and nice. Um, again, I feel like I've said this before, so I hope it don't sound like a broken record while I'm saying it, but it is definitely relevant. You know, if you go around the country, you'll see a lot of lovely flowers, and they're just feeling sorry for themselves. And it is, you know, it is it it is as a result of this really bizarre type weather we're having. So what can we do or what should we do? So I suppose the the things that we're seeing now as a result of this rain. Uh if you take, for example, you know, the main flowers, the sort of statement flowers, the ones that we associate with this time of the year, that really do are looking their best or should be looking their best at this stage. We're talking about things like peonies, and we're talking about things like roses and some of the some of the perennials, you know, the likes of lupins and so on. And the reality is that they're not, they're not getting a chance to. Every so often we get these little batches of sunshine and they can look spectacular, but in between, just this harsh wind, heavy rain, and it results in flowers holding water, which leads to rotting, plants falling over. Again, when they're falling over, they will not look their best, they're very hard to revive. So we're going to look at things that we can do to kind of combat all that. Uh, the other thing that happens when you have this warmth, or some warmth, and you have this moisture, you get obviously our friends' slugs and snails, which we mentioned a few weeks ago on the podcast, but also uh disease, buildup of mildews, and that type of disease at this stage. So, yeah, there's there's a lot of challenges. Um I know when we say this, you know, these the this is I suppose they're in the grand scheme of things, they're not huge issues, not huge problems, but there's still things that we you know that will stop us from getting full enjoyment from our plants. So we're gonna look at ways to sort of counteract. We can't obviously pull a cover over the country, put a roof over the country. We can't stop the weather, it will be whatever it's going to be, but we can do things that will make our plants better, more resilient, and make ourselves be a little bit more dynamic, let's say, so we can maybe take planters in and out as you know, as the the weather dictates and get maximum benefit from it that way. So kind of gotta go through a list of maybe six or seven things that we can do. First

Deadheading To Prevent Rot

SPEAKER_00 9:20

thing is deadheading, and I know you're gonna be screaming, that's so obvious, so um you know everybody does this, but it's super important when you have rain that we've had now. So you take, for example, a peony, large cup flower, rain falling, you know, be that heavy rain or even light rain, rain falling, the cup is holding all that moisture. Sometimes they won't actually get to open out at all, you know, they'll they won't be able to burst the bud at all, they'll just be half open, filled with water, and they'll rot. If you leave that there, it'll hang to one side, it'll touch off the next flower, it'll start to rot that. If you you know, if you if you don't take action, you'll basically end up with no quality flour coming from your plant. Same thing goes for roses, very, very similar. So what we're gonna do is we're gonna deadhead and we're gonna deadhead. We're gonna be quite rootless on it at this stage. It's really important because if you don't, that's what's gonna happen. You're gonna end up with a lot of rotting. Very same thing applies to your window boxes, to your planters, which are summer bedding. You know, get in there now and deadhead and take out anything that's you know that's causing rotting. These could be even flowers that are just opened, they could be good flowers, but as soon as they're you know, as soon as they're starting to hold water and discoloring in any way, that's it. They're on the they're basically on the move towards a rotting flower. And yeah, one flower will need to another and so on. So get in and deadhead and as I say, be rootless with that. So if there's any discoloring of them at all, then take them out, cut off that particular dead flower, don't take out the whole stem, take off that particular dead flower, and then that will allow the space for the new ones to push into uh over the next couple of weeks. So really important things that we that you should and could be deadheading, roses, as I mentioned, deadhead them, get the flowers, take them out of the area, watch out for any leaves that might be gone fully discoloured, like yellow leaves, um, any damaged branches, take all those away now. Don't let them fall on the ground, don't let them, don't just you know, chop them and leave them there, take them away, uh, get them to your compost heat and get them away from that plant. What we want to do is we want to obviously take away dead flowers from the purpose of you know stopping them from rotting and rotting the next one, but also we want to open up that plant a little bit and allow some air to come through it so that they can dry out, so that they can you know breed a little bit, I guess. Uh so deadhead and be rootless, things like roses, peonies, bedding plants, uh sweet pea, you know, those type plants. Even things like your perennials take off some of the the like for example, a lupin. The there's a flower stock that has gone over, take that one out. Um, wait for the new ones to come underneath it. And yeah, it's a it's a good it's a good way of and a really important like deadheading is vital when we have weather like we have at the moment. It's quite important in the summertime, even in a good summer, but it's vital at this stage when you have it, because otherwise what'll end up happening is one flower will rot the other, and if you go a month down the line, you haven't bothered to deadhead, what'll end up happening is you'll end up all the flower heads will have rotted off, and you'll end up with you know, on something like a window box, you'll end up with a load of green leaves and very, very little flower. So really important to do it at the moment.

Supporting Tall Perennials

SPEAKER_00 13:04

Um second thing to do, and this is relevant for kind of taller plants, they have got a real battering, things like delphiniums, you know, foxgloves, lupins, plants that are tall and you know are not that strong in the stem, particularly as I said, pencilmans, delphiniums, those type plants. If you haven't already, and you should have, but if you haven't already, get something around them, support them. Uh canes, uh loops, uh you know, the metal loops, the metal circles, anything that will stop them from taking the full brunt of that wind and blowing over them back and over and back, because they will just get damaged, they'll get broken, and I've seen already in some of the Facebook groups and so on people putting up pictures of various types of perennials just flattened. So you should you should have from this from the time that they're growing up early in the springtime, you should have some support there. But if you haven't and you've gotten away with it so far, or mostly got away with so far, get in and and get them supported somehow. You can use things as simple as four canes and a little bit of string just to hold them into into one place that they're not, you know, they're not being battered and blown over and back and so on. So support the plants, and as particularly, particularly the bigger ones. So number one is dead heading, number two is support the plants. Number three is one that is important as well, and it comes and goes in terms of whether it's an issue or not.

Spotting Disease And Improving Airflow

SPEAKER_00 14:38

At the moment it is 100%, and that's watch out for diseases. So on we're looking on you know, across our garden, things like roses, we're looking at apples, maybe our strawberry plants outside, could be botrytis, uh, spots on the leaves, and they're all you know early indicators of disease. Roses particularly are going to struggle with warm temperatures and huge amounts of moisture. So again, a few things. Clear any clear any any rotting material away, any diseased branches, any damaged leaves, anything that's looking a little bit off, take it out of there. We want as much airflow as possible. This is husbandry now. This is these are the things we do to improve and make things less likely to happen. So we're we're taking out anything that might stop airflow through. So allow them to get as much air through them as possible, and that will help. Airflow through the plants will help. Um again, take away any debris that goes to your compost heap, it doesn't go back onto the ground around it, take away that altogether, and keep an eye out, and then use things like um the crayon that I mentioned at the start of the show, or something else that you might need to you know, might need to treat in order to keep those plants healthy over the next couple of months. Because as I say, it's still only you know early June, as such, heading for mid-June, and we still have so much time in front of us to you know enjoy all these plants, but if they if they get a little bit battered at this stage uh or they pick up a disease at this stage and it gets in on them, then you're not going to see the full benefit of them at all this year. So that's that's another thing that we need to do. So watch out for disease and you know tr treat if needed, uh make the conditions such that there's less, you know, less build-up of diseases, and yeah, kind of little husbandry things, but really, really important.

Saving Hanging Baskets And Pots

SPEAKER_00 16:44

Number four is containers, and again, it's deadheading and tidying containers. And what I mentioned here earlier that we might need to be a little bit, you know, dynamic and change things a little bit. So on our containers, we do our deadheading, as I mentioned in point one, but also what we could be doing at this stage is getting them in. Maybe, maybe, for example, if you have a hanging basket at the front door, it's it's hanging there, it's getting blown around, just take it in for a few days, give it a give it a chance, deadhead it, feed it if necessary, um, and just give it a chance to, I suppose, to reinvigorate itself over the over the next week or so. Because again, it's still so early. If you have a hanging basket, like it's a hanging basket is a great example here. Um it might be just getting blown around and blown around, blown around. And at this stage, if it's if it gets battered too much, you're just never going to see the benefit of it or the or the it reach its full potential. Or if you do, it might be in four weeks, five weeks' time. Whereas if you take it in now, just give it a little breather. It doesn't need to be blown around, flying from side to side across the front door. Uh, take it in or take it down, give it a little bit of shelter, feed it a little bit, and and deadhead it and have it ready to go when the weather eventually settles, fingers crossed. Um, same thing could be said with with containers, you know, containers on the ground. Maybe there's a certain spot that's just getting really hit hard with rain and wind. Why not just move them around to the other side where they're getting a little bit of shelter? They can still stay outside, but it's just they're not getting battered in that way. And then whenever the conditions are suitable again, move them back to where it is that you wanted them in the first place. You know, you can be a little bit, as I said, dynamic. You can move things uh to suit whatever's happening at that time.

Noting Plants That Cope Best

SPEAKER_00 18:39

Next thing on the list is to have a look around now and see what plants are totally unbothered by what is happening. Uh, good example here. I have uh a bed with some lupins that were sowed from seed last uh last year. They flowered brilliantly, they're absolutely battered now. Um they'll probably come on again, but they have got battered. There was they just got blown around, they're holding water, uh, they're slightly lying over to the side, they look a bit shabby, and you know that's a good example of plants that need you know supporting, need minding, whatever. But right beside right beside them, there is hardy geraniums. Don't know the variety, they're pink hardy geranium. There's three of them together, they're absolutely unbothered by the weather. They're blowing up and down, but the flower looks perfect. It isn't in any way affected, there's no rotting flowers on it, the plant itself looks healthy. So it's not all plants. So if you were able to spot some of the ones that are performing really well, they can sit in your in your most exposed spots without any bother. Um so it's a good it's a good time to have a look and see which ones which ones work and which ones are a little bit more tender, and then that gives you future knowledge for maybe what comes down the

The Chelsea Chop For Stronger Growth

SPEAKER_00 20:07

line. Next one on the list is sort of similar to deadheading, but it's a very relevant one for perennials, and that's the Chelsea Chop. And the Chelsea Chop essentially what it is, it's it's a hard pruning of perennials to encourage bushy growth and encourage, in some cases, a second flush of flowers. And the name Chelsea Chop comes from it's typically done the last week of May or thereabouts when the Chelsea flower show is on, and it would have been it would have been synonymous with Chelsea because that's the timing of it. Normally you would you wouldn't do the Chelsea drop past kind of you know early June, but this year, because of our cold and wet spring, things are a little bit behind. So now actually is the perfect time to do the Chelsea chop. Now it isn't suitable for all perennials, but you can do it on things like you know cat mint, uh flocks, the likes of Asters, Rubbecia's, sedums, that type of you know, that type of uh perennial. You can do the Chelsea chop, which essentially means you take it down by a third or up to a half, and it'll look very harsh, the plant will look a little bit shabby, but give it a week or two, a couple of weeks, you'll see a new flush of growth coming and potentially new flowers coming on top of that. And it's just a way of strengthening the plant, and I suppose giving you a second a second flush of flowers later later in the year. Uh, Chelsea chop is well used by a lot of gardeners. It's you know, it's a very, very good way of I suppose reinvigorating a plant that looks a little bit shabby at this stage of the year. You can also lupins, for example. Lupins is one that people will say don't you can't do the Chelsea chop, and technically you can't. The Chelsea chop is, as I said, taking off a third or up to a half of the plant all in one go. And that can be a little bit harsh, and it definitely doesn't work for something like lupens. But what you can do with lupins is where you get, you know, this a flowering lupine will flower over whatever period, like six or seven weeks or thereabouts, whatever it is, eight weeks. And you'll have some flowers that'll come early and some that'll come late. Um, for example, those ones that I said that are kind of blown over and battered, they have flower stems that are basically past their best now. They're quite tall, but down underneath them there is new flower stems coming. So rather than in a scenario like this doing the Chelsea chop where we take it halfway down, we'll just go in and remove, not dead heading, we'll remove the complete stem where those first flowers are, remove the complete stem. And then what'll happen is below that, then these other flower heads are already on the way up and they will take over. But it'll take that kind of, I suppose, untidy look or that um that kind of blustery blustered look off it and make it look fresh and vibrant again. It'll also mean that, like I said at the start about the dead deadheading does flowers that are gone over won't be holding the water, won't be lining on top of the new ones coming through, and it'll just mean a more fresh, um vibrant growth. Peenies, for example, you can't do the Chelsea chop on that, delphinium's foxgloves, things like that. Um but there is, you know, particularly on lupins, you can do that. You can take out individual stem and let the other ones come through. Uh speaking of foxgloves, it's an unbelievable year for foxgloves just generally. Um I don't know why whatever conditions seem to be perfect for them this year, because I've never seen as many foxgloves as I've seen out just generally in nature this year. There seems to be a lot of them. So obviously conditions are suiting foxgloves and they're a beautiful flower, obviously, in in this time of the year. So a couple of sp spots here locally. There's a kind of a stone wall with a bit of a bank on top of it, not on you know, not uh in our uh land here, but in that area, and they're yeah, they're looking fabulous at the moment, just loads of them. Um in other in other things, just they're they're big things. So I'll just shoot over that list again.

Quick Recap And Garden Fest Notes

SPEAKER_00 24:37

Number one, deadhead and and be rootless with that. Um, support the plants if you don't have them already. Watch out for disease over the next couple of weeks. Uh, containers, give them a tidy, a deadhead, a feed if you need them, move those pots back inside or into a short sheltered location if possible. Have a look around the garden, see which plants haven't been affected at all by this crazy weather. And uh they're good ones to go forward with. Hardy geraniums is a standout here. Uh, and then number seven is the Chelsea chop, which is being done or can be done slightly later this year because of the late spring. But they're all good ways of, I suppose, ensuring that we get some flower, get a lot of flower, hopefully, between now and the end of sort of September time. So hopefully they help, hopefully they're relevant for your garden at the moment. Um other than that, last weekend, um Leash Garden Fest and Buds and Blossoms was on last Sunday. Brilliant, brilliant day. Weather wasn't good for it. It was it came and went, um, some rain came and went, but generally speaking, it it was it was a very good day. There was a big crowd there. Didn't get to see the speakers. I was um minding my seven-year-old, and she was not on for listening to speakers. Uh, so I got to shoot around some of the some of the nurseries, got to meet a few people, bumped into a few listeners who I'd never met before, who said hello, and that was lovely as well. And uh yeah, it was it was a really, really nice, right, nice day, big crowd again. So yeah, seemed seemed to go down really, really well.

Final Thoughts And Goodbye

SPEAKER_00 26:16

Um yeah, hopefully your garden is not getting too battered. Hopefully, you can implement some of those little tips and tricks that will help over the over the coming weeks. Hopefully, and this is probably the 1000th time I've said this since the start of the year. Hopefully, the weather takes up soon and we get something like a little bit of settled sunshine, warmth, and yeah, we don't need too much more rain for sure. Um, but that's been this week's episode. Thanks for listening, and until the next time, happy girls, and then we're gonna be able to