Come the end of May, any winter protection on your tree ferns can be removed.
Although you should still keep an eye on the weather forecasts, the danger of any damaging frosts at this time of year is minimal.
So we can now move on to caring for our tree ferns during the summer.
As with all plants, we should look to their natural environment to give us clues as to how we should look after them.
In the case of D.Antarctica, they come from areas with a high water content such as forests, some of which are at high altitude (cloud forests) alongside stream beds and gullies.
I should point out, that although they like plenty of water, they will not tolerate waterlogged roots so drainage must be first class.
Once established, they’ll also stand some dryness but this should not be for prolonged periods.
For best growth and appearance, frequent watering is a must.
If you have the time try to water twice a day or more, especially in hot weather and thoroughly soak the plant.
If you only have the time to water it once then do it in the evening, evaporation is considerably slower at this time due to the temperature cooling down thus giving the fern more time to take up water.
Use a good quality general fertilizer and apply it at one half or one third full strength at every other watering.
This is called the “little and often” principle and means that your fern gets small amounts of fertilizer at regular intervals rather than in one big dose.
Once a month, drench the fern with plain water, this will leach out any unused fertilizer salts.
If these salts build up, they can cause root damage.
If you follow the instructions in my Blog Palms!Planting out your treasures you won’t go far wrong.
In case you’re wondering, I use the same method for putting in all my plants I just scale it down for small pots.
Clearly, you don’t need to dig out a large area for a plant in a 4 inch pot.
If you buy your plant as a plain log, that is without any roots, don’t plant too much of it in ground, you only need enough to keep it stable.
Use stakes, three if necessary to stop it from rocking about and remove them when the fern has rooted.
Keep the log well watered at all times during the summer.
Where to site your fern can pose a problem or two.
With two points of interest, namely the fronds and the trunk you want to show them both at their best.
The text books tell us that filtered sunlight is ideal but unfortunately, not many of us have this kind of situation in our garden.
I’ve found that a position in open shade avoiding at least part of the hot afternoon sun is fine.
Late afternoon or early evening sun when the heat has gone out of it is also o.k. Don’t try to shoehorn your fern into a tight space, give it some room to develop.
I’ve included D.Squarrosa because it’s one of those plants which seem to be on sale everywhere.
D.Squarrosa is a New Zealand tree fern which unfortunately isn’t reliably hardy in the U.K.
That isn’t to say it can’t be grown outdoors here, in fact they have some planted out at Birmingham Botanical Gardens but they need full winter protection to succeed.
What usually happens is that people buy one of the small plants that are available nowadays and leave it outside for the winter, where the top growth promptly dies off.
This effectively kills off the growing point of the fern preventing any further growth from the top.
If this happens to you, don’t throw the fern away because you’ll probably find some new growth coming up at the base of your fern.
Strange as it may seem, this new growth seems to be far hardier than the parent plant and you should be able to leave the fern out all year round. (I do!)
D.Squarrosa should always be kept moist and on no account should it be allowed to dry out. Posted by Mike