Fertilizing
Most miniature plants don’t like or need a heavy diet. A light top-dressing of balanced fertilizer, in early spring, is usually enough to nourish them without forcing soft and straggly growth. Reluctant bloomers may need a small ration of superphosphate or a booster drink of liquid-manure “tea” as flowering time approaches.
Pruning and Grooming
To keep them compact and attractive, some varieties should have growing tips pinched out once or twice in spring and early summer; others may have a few long, straggly stems to be removed; some carpeting types should be sheared off after flowering. Always pick off faded flowers unless you have reason to want the seeds.
In fall, when foliage is frostbitten, cut back the old stems and take them away, along with any fallen leaves or other debris, to be burned. Many diseases and insects winter over in decaying vegetable matter.
Insects and Disease
Our trusty duster or sprayer, filled with an all-purpose insecticide-fungicide formula, gives all our garden plants a preventive treatment several times a season. So far, this has been enough to keep problems and pests away. For some special infestations or epidemics, we keep a few specific remedies on hand—sulfur for powdery mildew, and Aramite for mites, for example.
Winter Protection
In our area we never know whether winter will bless us with a constant covering of snow, or the ground will be bare and exposed to alternate freezing and thawing that “heaves” tender roots up out of their beds. After the ground is frozen two or three inches deep, we cover sleeping perennials with a light blanket of salt hay or, sometimes, evergreen boughs. Crowns that stay evergreen are surrounded by a collar of sharp sand. Questionably hardy varieties are lifted and moved to the cold frame.
In spring, as the weather begins to warm up, we remove the protective mulch a bit at a time. There’s a fine line between taking it off prematurely, thus exposing new growth to a late freeze, and leaving it so long that the soil underneath gets soggy and the roots rot. But, rot can be fatal, and frozen tips of new growth are not, so we remove the winter covering as fast as we dare.