Innholdsfortegnelse for 19-Aug-2017 i Amateur Gardening

ONE of the most common summertime questions sent our way is ‘why has my patio container died?’ There can be many answers, of course, but often the pot has failed due to poor watering, or drainage problems. Container plants are among the most vulnerable in the garden. In winter, they risk freezing and waterlogging and in summer they dry out and need regular watering. However, unless your pot has adequate drainage, this daily watering can leave plants sitting in cold, wet compost, causing their roots to rot. As the symptoms of waterlogging are similar to those of drought – including yellowing, wilting leaves – there’s the danger of exacerbating the problem by continuing to water. I planted up a container this week, knowing that the plants will be at their…

TopTip Try not to get too carried away! Remember that however little you pay, a plant is only a bargain if it is suitable for your soil and planting site, otherwise it is still a waste of money. GROWING up in the 1970s, one of my favourite TV programmes was The Six Million Dollar Man, about a crashed astronaut who was ‘rebuilt’ with added powers. Now I’m a 21st century gardener I sometimes feel like the scientists who did the re-building, because few things are more satisfying than buying a drooping bargain bin plant and giving it a new lease of life. Late summer is the perfect time to indulge your powers of restoration because garden centres sell off their summer stock to make room for autumn sellers. Old stock…

TopTip Mow your lawn, but if the grass and soil are very dry keep the blade high to avoid tearing up the sward and leaving bare patches. If the grass is brown it will soon green up again when it rains RETUNING from a holiday is depressing enough without seeing how your absence has affected the garden Even if you have organised watering through neighbours or automatic irrigation, there will be weeds to combat, dead heads to snip and spent plants to deal with. All you can do is bite the bullet, because once you have started to restore order you will feel a lot better! Remove spent flower heads and chop back mat-forming perennials such as hardy geraniums and Astrantia that have straggled outside their position. Pull up faded…

TopTip A mat of cut green manure can stop new plants from growing. Leave at least two weeks between digging them in and planting or sowing new crops. DUE to space restrictions and relatively poor soil, we grow most of our vegetables in raised beds. So far we have been pretty successful, but at the end of each season the beds need recovery time after the crops have depleted their nutrients. As well as piling in more compost and manure, I also sow green manures once the crops have been harvested and the spent plants removed. Green manures are fastgrowing legumes (members of the pea and bean family) such as alfalfa, clover, tares and field bean that are sown and left to grow for up to a year. They improve…

1 Turf holds the richest top inch or two of soil, so ideally strip it off, invert it and dig it into the base of the trench to improve the land. 2 If turf cannot be dug-in, stack it upside down for a year to rot down and produce beautiful, fibrous soil for adding to potting compost. 3 Heavy soils will contain clay and they’re better not walked over and trodden down when wet. Dug when dry in the winter and exposed to frost they’re much easier to work as the surface dries in spring.…

IF you’ve never grown plums of your own you may imagine they’re all a bit bland – not as good as, say, apricots or peaches. Yet these stone fruits can be just as tasty and are amongst the easiest of crops. Now is a good time to look for different varieties to try. The ubiquitous Victoria is dependable, self fertile, good for cooking and dessert but is often the only variety you find readily available. So delve a little deeper: visit pickyour- own farms or collections such as Brogdale where you can taste some of the countless other plums available. My favourite is ‘Coe’s Golden Drop’, with a yellow skin full of honey, and just as gorgeous is ‘Severn Cross’ which is an offspring from it (and usefully self fertile).…

CURRIES, chutneys, casseroles – you name it. There aren’t many recipes that these flavoursome bulbs aren’t essential for. If you’re staring at a bed of onions and shallots, now is the ideal time to think about lifting them for winter storage. Making them into ropes is great fun and an enjoyable task for late autumn, but for now you just need to start the bulbs’ drying off process. They will have reached full size by now and the outer scales will have started drying out. You can encourage this process further by gently slipping the prongs of a garden fork under each bulb and easing it out of the soil. Then just leave them on the surface for a month or so until you’re ready to rope them up.…

If you’re lucky enough to own a sunny wall then you can’t go far wrong training one of these trees against it. I planted this peach (left) two-and-a-half years ago and it’s loved the warmth, rewarding me this year with over 40 perfect peaches! You can smell when they’re ripe (the most difficult part is waiting) and as soon as they are, pick them from the tree. If you don’t, you’ll find that wasps will quickly seek out the delicious scent in order to feast upon the sugary flesh. You can pick the fruits while they’re slightly under-ripe if you don’t fancy the wasp aspect. Just lay them in a bowl in a sunny spot and they’ll soon emit their perfume.…

MENTION ferns and most people will automatically think of evergreen or deciduous, shade loving plants that form a clump of green fronds. However, there’s a number of ferns that break the mould. I’ve got five different types squeezed into my small plot. Always on the look out for something different I recently came across a smashing variety called Blechnum brasiliense ‘Volcano’, an evergreen type that will add a splash of colour to the most dense shade. It produces fronds up to 2ft (60cm) or more, with new growth emerging from the centre in a striking reddish brown colour before fading to green. It’s sometimes described as dwarf Brazilian tree fern because it produces a short, 12in (30cm) tall trunk as it matures. There was a big empty space down the…

I’VE come to love the architectural south African beauty Watsonia meriana var. bulbillifera. Already in my front garden when we moved in, it has tall, sword shaped leaves and 6ft (1.8m) stems of orange flowers. This clump former spreads mainly via underground corms, but also forms pointed bulbils on stems beneath the old flowers as the plant starts to die back. over a few weeks they swell before dropping to the ground. They rarely seem to take root where they fall so its worth propagating some by hand. Carefully remove from stems and plant like seeds in a large pot, spaced about 1in (2.5cm) apart. water and place in a cold frame or on a light windowsill. shoots should appear within a couple of weeks. Next spring, move them into…

CALIFORNIA poppies, known as Eschscholzia californica after the 19th century botanist Johann Friedrich von Eschscholtz, are cheerful annual additions to any garden. This week’s free seeds from Mr Fothergill’s are Californian poppies ‘Carmine King’, a dwarf variety that will produce a wonderful display of rich red blooms above feathery bluegrey foliage. The flowers open and close with the passing of the sun. As well as providing pretty patches of colour for the garden, they look fabulous in indoor arrangements. Cut them early in the morning and the flowers should remain for several days. Now we are approaching the cooler days of autumn, any seeds sown will stay in the ground and germinate next spring once the frosts have finished. They should flower earlier than seeds sown next spring, so for…

Iris ‘Rajah’ This vibrant yellow iris with deep burgundy falls makes an eye-catching addition to a border and has a strong spicy scent. Height: 3ft (90cm). Iris ‘Jane Phillips Jane Phillips’ has an RHS Award of Garden Merit (AGM). This variety is one of the tallest at 4ft (1.2m), with a light scent and ruffled light blue petals. Iris ‘Sable’ No-one could pass by ‘Sable’ without a second look: its rich purple flowers will add impact to any planting scheme and it has a sweet fragrance. Height: 3ft (90cm). Iris ‘Kent Pride’ This is a reliable performer bred in the 1950s with copper flowers and a yellow patch on the lower petals. Plants will reach around 2.8ft (85cm) in height. Iris ‘Butterscotch Kiss’ Large vivid-yellow flowers make this iris a…

Bergenia Dark-leaved bergenias make a splendid background for colchicums, especially as their colour is reddest in autumn. Colchicum leaves will be hidden as growth develops in spring. Brunnera The colchicum flowers will open among the bold, heart-shaped leaves of silvery brunneras such as ‘Jack Frost’, whose dense evergreen cover will mask the colchicum leaves. Heuchera Creates an interesting colour contrast and the varieties with larger, darker foliage look especially good with all colchicums. Tuck leaves out of sight under the heuchera foliage. Lamium Silvery types such as ‘White Nancy’ make an ideal background for colchicums in any colour and, as they stretch and deteriorate, colchicum leaves will be covered by new growth.…

WIN Worth £570 WATERING the garden won’t be a chore with these great quality Flopro products covering everything from watering pots and containers to the lawns, border and hanging baskets. We have three sets of prizes to give away, with each set worth £190.95 and comprising: Flopro+ Hose & Cart System 30m worth £79.99 Flopro Telescopic Watering Lance worth £27.99 Flopro Hydro Adjustable Sprinkler worth £19.99 Flopro Plug & Go Pots and Containers Kit worth £24.99 Flopro+ Digital Timer worth £37.99 1. Flopro+ Hose & Cart System 30m – worth £79.99 This rust resistant hose cart has an extendable handle for easy towing and rides on sturdy wheels. It comes complete with a 30m Flopro+ ultra flexible hose, a dual fit outside tap connector, a hose connector, a water stop…

QI HAVE a number of sweet pea plants that have stopped flowering and are covered with lots of full pods. What should I do now? Should I pick them and dry them? Bob Bassett (via email) AAt present your sweet pea plants are putting all their energy into producing and ripening the seeds contained within the seedpods – the next generation of sweet pea plants. Removing the seed pods should divert the energy into producing more flowers unless the plants have started to go brown – it is quite late in the season for sweet peas to be flowering and growing. As a result, removing the seed pods may not have the desired affect. If you are considering saving seed from your plants, then continue to keep them growing as…

LiviNG close to a top UK garden could add thousands of pounds to the value of your house, a study has suggested. The report, by halifax, claimed that house buyers can expect to fork out a premium of more than £58,000 if they want to live close to a horticultural visitor attraction. The average prices of homes surrounding 50 of the UK’s leading gardens is £321,953, compared to an average house price of £263,399. Properties close to Chelsea Physic Garden in London cost on average £1,884,255, compared to the average house price in the capital of £696,056. That’s a premium of £1,188,199 or 171 per cent. Next came homes close to Brockhole Garden in Cumbria (a premium of £188,830 or 106 per cent) followed by Chatsworth house Gardens in Derbyshire…

BRITS are more cack-handed than green-fingered, claims a survey. A quarter of us admit to having killed a plant in a week; seven per cent even had a cactus die while three per cent have wiped-out a plant in a day. Three-quarters (over 70 per cent) had “plant-related disasters”, mostly by killing plants due to over-watering, or not giving them enough. Fourteen per cent of us dream of keeping a plant alive for up to a year, but a quarter don’t have a single plant in the home. The survey was carried out on behalf of organic herbal tea brand Honest. It teamed up with environmental charity Groundwork and former BBC Countryfile presenter Julia Bradbury to champion increased green spaces and community gardening in busy urban areas. After interviewing 2,000…

1 Stand the plants in water first, to saturate their roots and make them easier to slide from their pots. 2 Place a layer of crocks at the base of the pot for drainage. Broken pots or polystyrene plant packaging works well. 3 Place your central plant; I’m using an olive tree. Loosen congested roots and plant it at the same depth as its rootball. 4 Add the surrounding plants, making sure you carefully straighten out any tangled and circling roots. 5 Infill with more compost if necessary, water well and raise the pot off the ground. Place it somewhere sheltered.…

1 Plunge severely wilted plants into water for speedy rehydration. Water others in early evenings or mornings when it is cooler. 2 Remove dead annuals and spent vegetable plants. This makes beds look tidier and frees up space for autumn planting. 3 Get weeding, but don’t put any ripe weed seeds on the compost as they will germinate and grow in the warm, damp environment. 4 If container plants and crops haven’t been fed in your absence, give them some liquid tomato fertiliser to perk them up.…

If you don’t have the room or time to grow green manures, use your pea or bean plants to improve your soil. After harvesting, simply cut the plants down to ground level leaving the roots in the soil. These will have fixed nitrogen from the surrounding air and will return it to the soil when you dig them in. Save money by collecting dried peas from your home-grown pods. Make sure they are completely dried, so they don’t rot, and store them somewhere cool and dry.…

TopTip You can also cut back English lavender in June to delay its flowering. This works well if you are growing plants around roses, as they will flower after the roses, creating a long-lasting, scented display THE lavenders in our garden have put on a spectacular show this year, providing weeks of wonderful scent in assorted shades of purple and mauve Lavender is easy to grow, doing best in light, alkaline soils that get full sun. You can grow it on clay, but plants tend to become woody after a few years and be relatively short-lived. If you have heavy clay soils, add plenty of grit or grow your lavender in large pots of loam-based compost such as John Innes No 3, again with added grit. Traditional English lavenders, with…

1 Sort potatoes as you dig: store the best, save next year’s sets from healthy plants and eat damaged and odd ones first. 2 Bury some newly dug potatoes in tins of sand, in shady spots – they’ll taste like new when recovered in winter. 3 Save ripening seed heads from almost every plant for feeding birds in winter but especially oily ones such as sunflowers. 4 Admit that you’ve left too many bunches on your grapevine and remove about half now to give the others a chance.…

1 Choose a sunny, dry day with a slight breeze to lift your spuds. Gently slide a potato fork vertically alongside your row, then bend it upwards to ease the tubers out of the soil. This minimises any prong damage because stabbed potatoes won’t store. 2 Once the tubers are out of the earth, leave them on the top of the soil for a couple of hours. This lets them dry out so that they don’t then get placed wet into storage bags (which would encourage rotting). Don’t leave them longer than a day as they’ll start turning green. 3 Once the tubers’ skins are dry, gently rub off any excess soil and place them into hessian or paper potato sacks. Don’t store any damaged tubers as they may rot…

GARLIC from shops is stored garlic, which bears very dry outer husks to give it a long shelf life. But homegrowers have access to something different at this time of year – fresh ‘wet’ bulbs. true wet garlic is harvested before the cloves have had time to fully swell – usually in late-May and June. the plants then look much like spring onions and have a mild garlic flavour. Now, when the bulbs are fully formed, is my favourite time to eat garlic. the individual cloves are incredibly juicy and have a strong yet not overpowering flavour. It’s difficult to describe – you’ll just have to try it! Garlic needs to be lifted now. If you leave it in the earth any longer it can affect its storage potential and…

1 Scrape away shingle from the planting site, making sure you remove it from a wider area than the eventual size of the hole. Slice through landscape material with a sharp knife to expose the soil. 2 Dig a hole that’s the same depth as the rootball of the fern and about twice as wide. Place the excavated soil in a bucket or pot so it doesn’t get mixed in with the surrounding shingle. 3Place the fern in the hole, backfill with the excavated soil and firm in position. Give it a good water and then draw the weed control fabric and shingle back around the base. Keep a gap free of the stone to allow for watering.…

I KNEW full well that the pomegranate tree, bought on a whim following a Greek holiday, was unlikely to form full size fruit in my garden, but was delighted when the first blooms did turn into tiny fruitlets. Alas, they fell off prematurely and my enthusiasm for growing pomegranates diminished. As a result my tree was neglected for far too long – the once bushy specimen had turned tall and lanky and, having been in the same pot for years, it was in dire need of a good feed. The first step to recovery was to repot it into a black terrazzo container filled with a mixture of multipurpose compost and John Innes No.2. To ensure the plant’s nourishment over the next few months I mixed in some controlled release…

Grow seedlings on for late colour 1 Carefully lift plants from their seed compost using a plant label or old spoon. Steady the seedlings by holding their leaves, never their stems, and pop them into holes made in ready-watered pots of John Innes No 2 or multi-purpose compost. 2 Move the seedlings into a cold frame to harden them off for a week or two, then plant them out. They should grow and flower through autumn, right up to the first frosts.…

In grass Colchicum corms can be planted in grass, which helpfully prevents mud splashing the flowers. Clusters of flowers light up the lawn but, when it’s time to start mowing again, wait until the foliage is deteriorating. On a garden table You can’t stop unplanted colchicum bulbs bursting into bloom: if unplanted they’ll simply flower in their packets. Stand each corm in a little damp gravel on a terracotta saucer, or use a tray if you have several, and place in a prominent spot or on a windowsill for a lovely show. Underplanting Colchicums will thrive under trees if the shade is not too deep. Japanese maples cast little shade, so colchicums planted underneath will enjoy good light and the fallen autumn foliage makes a pretty picture with the colchicum…

Try it! ‘Barnsley’ Palest pink, almost white, flowers have red throats and blush more deeply as they age. Sometimes produces plain pink flowers (cut these out). Tends to spread outwards as it matures. 'Barnsley' first sparked interest in these plants. Height 6ft 5in (2m). ‘Barnsley Baby’ Small and neat, so the best choice to grow in containers, ‘Barnsley Baby’ has red-eyed white flowers and makes an ideal specimen in a large terracotta pot, perhaps with lavender planted around the edge. Height 30in (75cm). ‘Bredon Springs’ Very prolific flowering, the darkly veined, deep pink overlapping petals make a bolder flower than those of many varieties and, set against the slightly greyish leaves, create more impact. Bushy habit. Height up to 6ft 5in (2m). Burgundy Wine’ The rich pink, red-veined flowers, with…

QAnts are making nests in my lawn, greenhouse, paths and and patio plants. How can I get rid of them? Margaret Wheeler, Chelmsford A The old-fashioned way was to regard ants as pests, pour a kettle of boiling water on their nests, treat with ant killer or set bait for them. These days, I like to think we are more enlightened and view ants as part of the garden wildlife food chain, and think before we act. Black garden ants live in nests, usually ruled by a single queen, capable of over wintering from one year to the next and living for up to 30 years. Those we see running about are workers or sterile females but on ‘flying ant day,’ swarms of flying males and virgin queens take to…

Helping hand for wildlife Gardeners should make sure that wild birds have a clean supply of fresh drinking water all summerlong, especially during hot spells, and not just during the winter months, the RSPB has said. Gardeners go shopping online Internet retail giant Amazon.co.uk claimed to have sold over 12,000 seeds and plants during Amazon Prime day last month. The web retailer has been making inroads into the UK gardening market. An iconic octagonal glasshouse will form the centrepiece of new edible gardens at RHS Hyde Hall in Chelmsford, Essex. The glasshouse, by Hartley Botanic, has been designed as a landmark that will be visible beyond the gardens. Hyde Hall curator Robert Brett said: “We wanted something to form the core of our new edible garden. “The octagonal shape of…

19-20: Carnivorous Plant Show, RHS Wisley, Wisley Lane, Woking, Surrey GU23 6QB. &0845 6121 253, ??rhs.org.uk/gardens/wisley 20: Classic Car Day, RHS Garden Hyde Hall, Creephedge Lane, Rettendon, Chelmsford, Essex CM3 8ET. &0845 265 8071 or ??rhs.org.uk/ gardens/hydehall 21: Fruit and Vegetable Garden Walk, RHS Garden Rosemoor, Great Torrington, Rosemoor, Torrington, Devon EX38 8PH. &0203 176 5830; ??rhs.org.uk/gardens/rosemoor 24: Harvesting and Preparation of Seed, RHS Wisley, Wisley Lane, Woking, Surrey GU23 6QB. &0845 6121 253; ??rhs.org.uk/gardens/wisley 24: Evening walk with Surrey Bat Group, RHS Wisley, Wisley Lane, Woking, Surrey GU23 6QB. &0845 6121 253; ??rhs.org.uk/gardens/wisley 24: Photosynthesis: RHS Wisley, Wisley Lane, Woking, Surrey GU23 6QB. 0845 6121 253 or ??rhs.org.uk/ gardens/wisely n Please check that the event is still going ahead before leaving home. If you have an event that you…

Fill your garden with colour for years to come with 150 bulbs: they’ll burst into life in the spring, filling your borders, containers and patio pots with gorgeous variety of colour in shades of yellows, blues, mauves, purples and whites. Your collection will include the following varieties. 50 x Allium moly 40 x Brodiaea 36 x Chionodoxa 6 x Fritillaria 15 x Puschkinia 3 x Narcissus ‘Tete a Tete’ Other special offers Tulip ‘Red Impression’ Long lasting blooms Spectacularly large and long-lasting blooms on tall, sturdy stems make this tulip a border sensation! Easy to grow, with superb weather resistance, they will return reliably year after year. Height: 22in (56cm). Spread: 8in (20cm). Bulb size: 10/ n Buy 16 for 9.99 n Buy 32 for £14.99 – Save £4.99 n…

Holding on to water: It is still worth using moisture-retaining gel when planting containers, as autumn can be as dry as a good summer Regular care gets the best results 1 Keep pinching off dead flowers to encourage the plant to produce more, and for a longer time. 2 Because they have a finite food supply, feed container plants with a liquid tomato fertiliser once a fortnight for better flowering. 3 Slugs and snails congregate around the rim of pots, so get rid of them using slug pellets, or deter them with copper tape. 4 As damper weather approaches, always stand pots on feet so that water can easily drain away and not keep the compost saturated.…

1 Remove dead or damaged foliage, as well as spent flowers, to prevent rot and mould spreading to the rest of the plant. 2 Water and feed them. Liquid tomato fertiliser will give plants an immediate lift and encourage them to flower again strongly. 3 If you buy bargain herbaceous perennials, take cuttings for more plants once you have restored them to good health. 4 Add a granular fertiliser to the planting hole and don’t let plants dry out once they are in the ground.…

The season of vivid garden colours is drawing to a close, but that doesn’t mean you can’t keep growing plants to brighten up indoors. This week I have been sowing some coleus. The plants’ bright foliage is popular for containers and borders, but they are too tender to survive our winters and are usually removed at summer’s end. However, coleus can be used indoors. Sow the seeds thinly on fresh, dampened seed compost. Cover and keep somewhere light and warm until germination. Uncover, let the seedlings grow, then thin them out and pot them on until they are large enough to use on their own or with African violets and streptocarpus.…

Listen to Peter's free podcast every Thursday. Search for 'This Week In The Garden with Peter Seabrook' on iTunes A WEEK rarely goes by without another front garden in our locality disappearing under hard landscaping. Hardly surprising: when watching TV garden make-over programmes I find it frustrating beyond belief to see the first action involves stripping off the topsoil and/or turf to dump in a skip. So it’s refreshing to see that two home owners of my acquaintance have recently done the opposite – tearing up hard landscaping to replace with soil. The first had the wide tarmac drive to their semi-detached home dug out from the road for the full length of their front and back garden to the garage in the far corner. Sub-soil under all the hard…

Make more plants for next year As well as cutting back lavender now, you can take semi-ripe cuttings to grow on through winter and plant out next year. Take cuttings from this year’s healthy, pest-free growth using clean, sharp secateurs or scissors. Remove the lower leaves from the stalk and dip the cut ends in hormone rooting gel or powder. Inset them into pots of dampened seed compost mixed with perlite or grit. Cover with a plastic bag and place somewhere light and warm but out of direct sunlight. You have been successful when cuttings start to put on new growth.…

WE enjoy a jacket potato almost every weekday for lunch in winter. What with regular Sunday roasts and weeknight sausages and mash, it’s fair to say that we are a household of potato lovers! I bet many of you are the same, and consequently you’ve grown row upon row of maincrop spuds on your allotment. Unlike new potatoes, maincrops are allowed to swell to a good size. They stay in the ground until now when their skins have set, at which point they’re lifted and stored for use during autumn, winter and early spring. Lifting and storing is a simple process, but it’s important to get it right if you want to keep your crop for the maximum length of months. See column (right) for details of what you need…

Next week: Get your fruit store ready, control mildew on cucumbers and squashes, revive tired French and runner beans, prune summer raspberries, pick and prune hybrid berries. Just 10 years ago, few people would be growing blueberries. Now, second only to strawberries, they’re the most popular fruit crop grown in home gardens – and for very good reason. the harvests are abundant, the plants are easy to grow and the fruit tastes utterly delicious. At last, we’ve all cottoned on to how fantastic blueberries are! Pot culture has been pivotal to their popularity, too. Blueberries are an acid-loving crop and will become sickly and yellow-leaved if grown in the wrong soil type. A large tub of ericaceous compost is all you need to address this, allowing you to grow a…

I ALWAYS say that I’ve been a lifelong organic gardener for all the wrong reasons. You see I’m an energypacked chatterbox who wakes very early and immediately begins to talk. When I was a small child I shared a room with my twin brother, so my grandmother would snatch me from the cot as soon as she heard me in an attempt to allow him to sleep. In spring, summer and autumn I joined her in our small town garden and learnt from her. My gran, Lucy Elizabeth Hardy (1881- 1965), had never known anything other than gardening naturally – nowadays we’d call her an organic gardener, though back then she wouldn’t have known today’s meaning of the word ‘organic’. She was a contemporary of Britain’s first gardening celebrity, E.…

Now’s the time to start sowing mixed salad leaves and individual varieties capable of putting up with cooler conditions. There are plenty to get the taste buds going. ‘Leaf salad winter Mix’ contains mustards, pak choi and rocket, while ‘Frilly Mixed’ is a blend of varieties with attractive leaves, such as Greek cress and mizuna. American land cress is a fast-growing plant that tastes like watercress, and lamb’s lettuce has a nice, nutty flavour. Unfortunately, salads sown later in the year take longer to germinate and to reach fruition than those sown in spring or early in summer. However, despite lower temperatures and light levels, you can still look forward to harvesting some delicious leaves in around four weeks or so. Hardy salads are perfect in 12in (30cm) containers. Add…

IT needn’t always be the sun that causes burn damage to plants. I couldn’t work out why the foliage of a perfectly healthy Astilbe ‘Professor van der Wielen’ shrivelled up. The others next to it were fine and there were no signs of pests and diseases. My conundrum was solved when I saw my dog Ollie peeing on it one evening. I now keep a closer eye on him and hose down any plants that have attracted his attention! Next week Tamsin Westhorpe AG’s country garden expert Cacti for kids Making a mini desert garden diorama for their bedroom Let the foraging begin Collecting honeysuckle flowers for freezing and cooking  Maintain summer fruits Tidying up the strawberry plants…

Bearded irises are showstopping plants for early summer with striking flowers and elegant foliage. Now is the best time to buy and plant them. although you can plant until October, it’s better to plant in late-summer, as the rhizomes need to be baked by the sun in august and September to put on a good show of flowers next year. Tall bearded varieties stand at around 28-35in (70-90cm) although there are some that clock-in at around 3.2ft (1m), flowering above attractive sword-like leaves that fan out beneath them. The flowers come in a huge range of colours from white, yellow and orange through to the deepest blacks and purples, including bi-colour varieties with one colour in the upper petals and a complementary colour in the lower petals (the fall). The…

Colchicum ‘Lilac Wonder’ Produces a succession of up to 10 deep lilac-pink flowers, each narrow petal sparked by a white line down through the centre. An old variety, but very free flowering. September /October. Height 6-8in (15-20cm). Colchicum ‘Waterlily’ AGM The best double-flowered form available, the mass of slender pinkish violet petals, paler in the centre of the flowers, opens widely in the sun and appreciates the support of neighbouring plants. October, perhaps November. Height 6in (5cm). Colchicum speciosum ‘Album’ The finest pure-white colchicum, the colour of its creamy-green stems tints the base of each goblet. Grows unusually well, superb in shade and grows happily through ivy ground cover. September/ October. Height 7-8in (18-20cm). Colchicum ‘The Giant’ Tall, with weather-resistant flowers, the slender, purplish goblets open from paler buds and…

These autumn-flowering crocuses prefer a sunny site in well-drained soil. They grow happily and increase well in rock gardens and borders, or will naturalise in grass. They do well in both limey and acid soils but dislike wet soil in summer. Plant in August about 4in (10cm) deep, 4in (10cm) apart or in clumps of three or five. Crocus ‘Zephyr’ Grey veined, pearly-white flowers with a golden throat, they have stronger stems than most autumn flowering crocuses so are less likely to blow over in gales. September/October. Height 4in (10cm). Crocus speciosus ‘Albus’ The easiest of the autumn flowering crocuses and ‘Albus’ is especially pretty. Yellow tubes support white flowers, each with a yellow throat. Increases steadily. October/November. Height 4in (10cm). Crocus speciosus ‘Oxonian’ The form with the largest flowers,…

Nemasys No Ants is available from biological control suppliers such as Green Gardener (? 01493 750061 or ??greengardener.co.uk) and releases naturally occurring nematodes to kill larvae, irritate and disperse adults. 1 Dilute the packet of nematodes into a bucket holding eight litres of water and stir vigorously to make a stock solution. 2 Further dilute 500ml of stock solution into a 5-litre can of water, fitted with a coarse rose. 3 Should soil be dry, pre-wet the nest thoroughly and then open it up with a fork or spade. 4 Water one can full of nematode solution into each nest. They’ll thrive in warm (above 10°C/50°F) moist soil and get to work.…

IT’S as tall as a house and still growing. Brenda and Robert Mallett are no strangers to tall hollyhock plants in their garden – but their latest, at nearly 16ft (5m) in height, is a whopper. The couple, from Aylmerton, near Cromer, reckon that it could be the tallest in norfolk, and it’s climbing further up their house every day. Mr Mallett said: “It was planted in the springtime and will probably keep on growing up until October. “I don’t know why this hollyhock has grown much taller than all those before it, other than that my wife nursed it along, and put a lot of kindness into it.” The tallest hollyhock in the Guinness Book of World Records was 19ft, 7in, grown at West Clandon, Surrey, in 1978.…

We try before you buy TURN your back on a hedge and before you know it things will be out of control, your garden will be shrinking and the neighbours will be looking for a spat. To get the job done quickly and easily you need a hedge trimmer. Corded hedge trimmers may tie you to a mains socket but they have the big advantage of being lightweight and affordable, there’s no fuel to mix or to spill, no acrid emissions, no screaming engine and no battery you’ve forgotten to recharge. Simply plug in and get trimming. As a general rule longer length blades get the job done quicker (but can be more unwieldy) and the wider the tooth gap, the thicker the material you can cut. Invest in a…

Write to: Wendy Humphries, Amateur Gardening, Westover House, West Quay Rd, Poole, Dorset BH15 1JG or email: amateurgardening@timeinc.com WHAT was an area where nothing but grass grew now overflows with coriander, chives, parsley, thyme, mint, sage and rosemary. A bay tree provides year-round greenery nearby in the lawn. I grow herbs because they improve the appearance and flavour of so many dishes. My handy herb ring for the kitchen was made with a metal ring from a florist’s shop: damp moss, tied onto the wire with raffia and pierced with bunches of my favourite herbs. Sprays of water keep the ring fresh or herbs can be dried in a warm place for a few days and then arranged for winter. Patricia Stammers, Diss, Suffolk Froggy bottom I THOUGHT you might…

Nurseryman and former Gardeners’ World host WHAT is it about the unusual that we gardeners find so attractive? New varieties create excitement and if I spot something novel at a nursery, it takes all my willpower not to take it to the till, even when I have no room to plant it. This floral-feebleness is down in part to the enjoyment of experimentation but more than that, the ‘new’ offers a chance of discovering a flower, fruit or vegetable that’s easier, more floriferous and better than what we grow already. And best of all, a plant that none of our friends and neighbours can better. This year I’ve majored on new blends of schematic meadow (annuals mixed together to create a flowery natural effect) and vegetables including wasabi and spinach-like…