How To Plant Perrenials

Hi, I'm Mike; and I'm here at Camden Garder Centre. And I'm going to give you some gardening advice.
And I've got a lovely little perennial with me at the moment called Veronica Purpulicious.

It's got nice, tall ascending stems with a spike of purple flowers at the top. I'm going to plant five to grow as a group; and you can decide on the spacing between the different plants by looking at the height that the plant grows to. And that will tell you on the label.

And here, it says that this plant grows to 16 inches tall (40 centimeters tall). So, I'm going to space them that far apart because each one of these plants will spread over there sideways through the soil to make an even larger clump until all five plants become one. This particular plant is quite dry.

Make sure your plants are well watered before you plant them. So, what I'm going to do with this plant is immerse it in a bucket of water. And you see the bubbles emerging.

And that's all the dry air spaces inside the pot. Once those bubbles have stopped bubbling away, then the root ball is nice and wet again and ready for planting. Whilst we're waiting for that one, let's just dig the planting holes.

You need to dig a hole slightly deeper than the root ball that the plant has currently got, which is the depth of the plant pot it is in because you want to increase the roots to go deep into the soil. And I'm just going to test the depth of that now. Okay, you can see that's plenty deep enough.

Take it out again. And now, I'm going to add some farmyard manure to the soil to enrich it--and some on the backfill material. This will improve the structure of the soil.

It will help to keep moisture in the soil, and it will help to fertilize the plant to some extent. Still a little too deep. There, okay.

To take the plant out of the pot, tip the pot upside-down and give it short tap on the base. And now, all that remains to be done is to put some root grower at the base of the plant. This is a fungus that grows and attaches itself to the plant root system; and by doing that, the fungus actually helps to improve the movement of water and sow nutrients into the root system of the plant.

And it can effectively improve the root system by up to 700 times. So, it's a very good product to use. It must come into contact with the root of the plant.

You don't work it into the soil. So, as you can see, I've put the product at the base of the hole; and the plant's roots will sit directly on top of that. And within a month, that fungus will become activated; and it will start to extend outwards and send lots of lovely water and nutrients to the plants.

As you're backfilling, you need to firm the soil down around the plant. And the final job to do is to water it. And then the other four plants that I'm going to plant in this group, the next plant will be planted about here, about 16 inches away from the first plant.

And we'll just plant them as a group. And you need to apply lots and lots of water. Let it drain into the soil, and add some more.

Easy. That's how to plant a perennial.