The searing heat of summer, and the ever-present threat posed by hurricanes, combine to make this a time of maintenance and damage control for outdoor plantings.
Our controlled indoor environments, though, mean that houseplants can continue to thrive.
Julie Greaves, general manager at Aberfeldy Nurseries, said the popularity of houseplants surged during Covid, largely because they filter indoor air pollutants and release oxygen.
“Houseplants have always been a staple in the home, however, during Covid they reached new heights mainly due to the health benefits they bring to a home.
“Everybody had a houseplant on Zoom on their back shoulder, and they started naming their houseplants. They really, really took off because people were spending a lot more time indoors.”
However, she cautioned: “You need at least one plant per 300 square feet to start to clean the air.”
Ms Greaves said specimen plants with large leaves such as the ficus lyrata are trending.
“Peace lily, which produces a white spath shaped flower, and spider plants are also popular. Anything with a decorative or colourful leaf is in demand.”
She provided some tips for the care of houseplants.
“Treat your plant like a human being, which needs nutrients to thrive. Each plant has specific watering requirements, however, a general rule of thumb is, allow your plant to dry out slightly between each watering. To ensure a healthy root system, never allow the potted plant to stand in water.”
Aberfeldy operates a retail garden centre on a sprawling three-acre site on Pomander Road in Paget – and a production facility on the island having greenhouse and growing space of approximately 25,000-square-feet that grows hundreds of thousands of plants a year. All products sold at the Paget site are grown in Bermuda.
Watering and maintaining
Outdoors, as June draws to a close, annual bedding plants for the summer season that runs until September have now been in soil for a month or more. Summer bedding includes portulaca, vinca, marigolds, gazanias and cosmos.
Ms Greaves said: “In June, July and August it’s all about watering. Most people have planted the flowering plants for the summer by then, and it’s just about maintaining them. There’s not a lot of planting done in the summer because there is a lot of heat stress.”
At Aberfeldy’s retail garden centre, the company “makes water” with the help of a well, rainwater collection, and a reverse osmosis machine, to maintain the thousands of varieties that it has on sale.
Ms Greaves said: “It’s best to try and water first thing in the morning. Sometimes, the guys are watering for eight hours a day.”
Assistant manager Trent Smith, who has spent more than 40 years at Aberfeldy “teaching and growing”, said summer is the time to spread mulch, a material that covers the surface of the soil and provides a host of benefits.
He said: “Mulching is very important at this time of year. You probably want to use natural mulch, your red mulch, which is painted red. And then nuggets, which help to seal your moisture down, so that when it’s hot, at least your water evaporation is good. Mulch holds your weeds down, too.”
Reap what you sow
Mr Smith said people who grow their own food will have planted a variety of crops in May, including tomatoes, cantaloupe, watermelon, cucumbers, squash, zucchini, eggplant and peppers.
“It takes a process – there are timelines. Tomato from a seed, you’ve got three months, four months. I like watermelons and cantaloupes. They’re almost 90-day crops. You plant them in May, and you’re looking to eat them anywhere in August.”
Home gardeners will soon be thinking ahead to the fall-to-spring planting season that runs from October.
Ms Greaves said: “People will start to look toward the fall around the end of August. We still have high nighttime temperatures through August and the beginning of September, but people want to make this quick jump.
“They have been on vacation, the kids are back at school, and they want to get back to their routines and want to start looking at doing their fall gardening. In September, you can start to get your garden ready, and prepare your soil, for your plants and vegetables.”
In the autumn, vegetables suitable for planting include carrots, beets, kale, broccoli, cauliflower, onions, potatoes, spinach and lettuce.
Mr Smith said: “People eat lettuce in the summer, but lettuce isn’t grown in the summer. Lettuce thrives in the winter.”
Ms Greaves said: “Just be aware that whether you plant your Bermuda onions at the end of October, November or January, they’ll mature at the same time.”
Mr Smith added: “Plants have their own biological clock. No matter if you try to manipulate how much you can, they let you know sometimes ‘I’m not ready yet’.”
Herbs are popular on the Aberfeldy campus, as home gardeners seek to add flavour to their home cooking. Popular easy-to-grow herbs include rosemary, thyme, basil, cilantro, curly parsley, marjoram and chives.
Ms Greaves said: “We do a lot of fresh herbs. If they’re already established now, they’ll take you through the summer, but trying to actually plant them in the heat of the summer is quite difficult. It does get too hot for your fresh herbs, but we sell them in pots and they are very, very popular.”
While the summer heat presents challenges, hurricanes create a different set of problems, both for home gardeners and the professionals at Aberfeldy.
Mr Smith said: “The wind and the salt can cause damage, especially if the hurricanes are coming out of the south. They pick up a lot of salt spray, and you’ve got to get the plants out and wash them off.”
When a hurricane is nearing the island, Ms Greaves says, “it takes us a week to pack everything away. And basically, a week or ten days to put everything back.”
Whether you’re a certified green thumb or a gardening beginner, Mr Smith said cultivating plants and vegetables is a stress reliever after a hard day or week at work.
However, he advised: “Patience is the main thing; patience is a virtue.”
