Plugging the gap

PLANT plugs have become something of a rage in recent years – they remove the uncertainty of sowing seed and trying to germinate it; you pay your money and you walk home with perfectly-formed, miniature plants which just need to be kept alive until it’s safe to plant them outside.

It can also mean economic sense – you buy only the number of plants you want; there’s no need to purchase a packet of hundreds of seeds or spend pounds on a few seeds of the likes of pelargoniums which may or may not germinate.

I mention pelargoniums specifically because they have become one of the most popular of plants to buy as plugs.

Garden centres and DIY stores sell them in their millions and they work out pretty cheap because a packet of a few F1 hybrid seeds can set you back several pounds – and then you have to hope they germinate.

But how anything so fragile and so seemingly helpless can survive and turn into something so beautiful and so vibrant is a bit of a mystery. There is hidden steel in that bit of greenery.

The fact is that the greatest danger facing a tray of tiny pelargoniums (OK, call them geraniums if you must) is the trip from garden centre to greenhouse or conservatory. Those few miles of cold air separating the two could be fatal. So cover them up well; treat them like you’d treat something or someone you love.

Pelargoniums are one of the favourite flowers of summer. They are used for containers and hanging baskets, for the front of beds and borders, and they will bloom for months until the frosts of autumn turn their stems to mush.

Don‘t confuse them with the true geraniums – the cranesbills –many of which are hardy enough to live outdoors all year round. The ones you buy as plant plugs are more at home in the heat of the Mediterranean where they can tolerate the sun and dry air.

Bought in spring, tiny geraniums can be allowed to grow on somewhere light and frost-free, potted on as they get larger, and finally planted outdoors, in beds, baskets or other containers, when the threat of frost has passed. For some areas, that will be May; for the majority in the North, that will be June.

From then until October they are quite capable of flowering constantly. Kept watered (although they can still thrive for quite a while without moisture) and few occasionally, they will put on a show that outclasses the majority of garden flowers.

Some people can’t bear to part with them, and, in October, will dig them up, clean them up and take them indoors, cutting off old and damaged leaves and stems, then potting the smaller, tidier plants individually and allowing them to grow on throughout winter and into next spring.

Some will survive; some will not and they not be worth their space in the garden. Thankfully, the garden centres will be packed with new plant-plugged pelargoniums next year, so whatever the outcome, replacements will be available.