When to plant out???

Good evening everyone

I have just brought some azalea and was wondering what should it do with them?
They will be going into pots on my North east facing patio which is quite sheltered.
Do i pot them up now or leave till spring?

Thx Sean

 

Love the avatar, Mowgley! :D

You'll need to get ericaceous compost, as azaleas, like rhodies, need that. Not a prob - garden centres and B+Q, etc, do it.

You can plant them now - but to make sure your pot is safe, put it on bricks or pot feet to get it off the ground. That will stop it cracking (with a bit of luck!) and will help drainage. If you keep it in a reasonably sheltered spot the pot will be fine, but if you get a long spell of frost and ice, a fleece wrap will help. The azalea is pretty tough, but anything in a pot is vulnerable to prolonged frost.

 

oh, and to help drainage, make sure you put crocks of some sort in the base of the pot before you put in the compost. That can be large stones, progressing to smaller ones higher up the pot, broken bits of terracotta pot, or even old polystyrene broken off (much lighter!) And it means you use less compost! :D

 

thank you for the info dendrobium , i have filled the pots with some pea gravel. Now its of to b&q to get the ericaceous compost. Will i need to give them any feed at all?

 

not just now, they'll get plenty from the compost - best time to feed any plants is when they're ready to flower, and through the flowering period, which, for azaleas and rhodies is spring through to early summer. For most things, tomato feed is good, believe it or not, but for acid-loving plants like these, get a specialist ericaceous feed. Again the same sort of places will stock it. It's often in a pinky/lilacy coloured plastic bottle, if I remember rightly....