All our plants are grown by our efficient and highly skilled team.

 We are committed to caring for the environment and will continue to reduce our carbon footprint in any way that we can. To protect the environment and our love of bees, we feel that we need to be as careful as possible. We, therefore, use an integrated approach to managing problems. Pest and disease control involves a tiered response. We always start with the mildest solution and build from there.

 At Peebles we use cultural control – putting the plants in the right spot in the nursery, controlling the water, feeding them what they need and growing them carefully, as this can significantly reduce the problems from the start. We try not to ‘mollycoddle’ our plants too much, as we know that when they leave us they are destined for the real world where they often have to care for themselves. We do, however, recognise our ‘duty of care’ to ensure that our plants are healthy and fit when they leave us.

We maintain our policy of buying Proudly South African products wherever possible.

Bees are very important because they pollinate a third of everything we eat! Without pollination, the food plants can’t make seeds. Around 400 different types of plants need insects to pollinate them. These are plants such as fruits and vegetables, many nuts, sunflowers, cocoa beans, coffee and tea.

Crops that feed livestock also rely on pollination to grow!

• To produce a pound of honey, foraging bees have to fly around a whopping 88,500 kilometres
• That’s a lot of honey bees, working very hard because each honey bee will only produce around one-twelfth of a teaspoon of honey in its life!
• That’s despite the fact that a foraging honey bee visits up to 100 flowers – per foraging trip

Honey is the only food made by an insect, and eaten by both the insect and humans.

Recent research tells us that natural homes for bees are becoming less in abundance. Which means that planting a bee-friendly garden should become a priority when planning one. Interestingly enough, bee-friendly gardens also contribute to increasing bee varieties. If you have a garden already and would like to start creating a bee-friendly haven, then doing so isn’t as complicated as you may think.

• Choose plants that attract bees: This is fairly self-explanatory but there are certain plants that are more attractive to bees than others. These plants include the likes of basil, sage, thyme, lavender, watermelons, cucumbers and pumpkin.
• Pick plants with long blooming cycles: This will keep the bees coming back to your garden.
• Let your plants flower: Leave the flowers on your plants, this will allow the honeybees to get the pollen and nectar they need.
• No pesticides or other chemicals: Most chemicals are toxic to bees, so when in doubt, rather leave it out.
• Weeds: Flowering weeds are very important food sources for bees.

• It is best to plant seedlings early in the morning or later in the afternoon when it isn’t too hot. This is because there is very little soil around the root ball to protect the roots.
• Slightly dampen the ground you are going to plant into as well as the tray of seedlings you are planting.
• Using a dibber or hand spade make a hole in the soil. Space the holes correctly for the amount of seedlings you are planting or the coverage that you would like (rule of thumb distance is: from your thumb to your baby finger, of a stretched out hand).
• Do not pull the seedlings from the tray - squeeze the side of the cavity first then gently push from below using a stick or pencil.
• Handle the seedlings using your index and middle fingers rather than thumb and index - these are too strong and can easily damage the tender plant.
• Place the seedling into the hole and ensure the soil around the seedling is at the same level as the soil in the garden bed.
• Gently cover the root ball with additional soil so that it fits snuggly in the hole and then carefully push the seedlings slightly deeper and then pull it out slightly. This ensures that only the roots of the seedling are covered with soil and not the stem which could rot.
• Water your seedlings with a softy spray.

• Water your seedlings and keep them in a cool place until you are ready to plant them.
• Plant them according to the requirements that they need for example in sun or shade and water requirements too, for example don’t plant a seedling that requires a lot of water next to a seedling that has low water requirements.
• Water your seedlings according to their needs.
• Do not water your seedlings after 15h00. Putting them to bed with wet feet enhances conditions that are ideal for diseases to infect your plants.
• Dead-heading (removing dead flowers) promotes more flowering.
• Feed you seedlings weekly using a foliar feed e.g. Nitrosol, Multifeed Flowergro or Multisol K.
• Enjoy beautiful, blooming bedding plants for the whole season.