Grow guides & aftercare

Simple, honest advice for getting your young plants off to a strong start. Pick your plant below.

• Rhubarb NEWPlants in 9cm pots, crowns and forcing – the full year-by-year guide.
• Forcing rhubarb NEWPot up a forcing crown in autumn and pick sweet, pink stalks from January.
• HorseradishGrowing, harvesting the roots and eating the leaves.
• LavenderPotting on, planting out and pruning.
• EucalyptusCare for young trees and keeping them in check.
• Bare-root hostasWhat to do with a dormant hosta in winter.
• Dwarf tomatoesGrowing 'All Year Round' tomatoes from plugs.
• Potting up plug plantsRead this first if you've bought small plugs of any kind.

The three most common mistakes

Almost every young plant we hear about that has struggled comes down to one of these:

1. Planting small plugs straight into the ground or a big pot. Pot them into a small pot first and move them up gradually.
2. Overwatering. More young plants are killed by too much water than too little. Let the compost start to dry before watering again.
3. Poor, lumpy compost with no drainage. Use good compost, sieve out the big lumps and mix in some perlite or sharp sand.