Innholdsfortegnelse for 18-Apr-2020 i Amateur Gardening

THE mild, wet winter created the perfect conditions for garden pests and we will have to work harder this spring to protect our plants from these pint-sized invaders. Slugs and snails are in the ascendancy right now and I’ve heard reports of lily beetles being spotted as far back as late January. We must be on our guard and prepare our armouries! Thanks to Coronavirus, all nonessential shops such as garden centres are closed and online suppliers are overwhelmed with orders. In the panel to the right I look at homespun methods of controlling pests, which can be just as effective as (and often preferable to) using chemicals. We try to keep our garden as organic and balanced as possible and are happy to sacrifice a few plants in return…

Got a story? email ruth.hayes@ti-media.com Nests not nets: The RSPB is calling for organisations to stop netting areas where birds build nests. Universities, councils and supermarkets have all been asked to stop the practice and the public is being asked to take photographs of any netting they see and write to their MP or upload it to social media with the tag #NestsNotNets. IN these difficult times of self-isolation and potential loneliness, we must look out for each other and stay in touch. This is why AG has set up a Coronavirus blog by Gardening Editor Ruth Hayes and Features Editor Les Upton. Ruth is writing about how gardening is helping her through a period of self-isolation while her husband recovers from the virus, Les is looking at the effect…

Listen to Peter’s free podcast every Thursday. Search for ‘This Week In The Garden with Peter Seabrook’ on iTunes LAST autumn, I visited the Brackenhurst Campus at Nottingham Trent University. The walled garden there has a lovely old range of glasshouses, the like of which I had not seen before. I believe it was the last job for Messengers of Loughborough in the early 1900s and was built to last. “Cool air is sucked in as hot air floats out in hot weather” The wrought-iron work, ventilation gearing, door handles and overall design are remarkable – they really knew how to furnish walled gardens in those days. Peaches, nectarines and other tree fruits, trained against the south-facing wall, are protected by large ‘English lights’ that can be slid one behind…

IN the current situation many people will now want to grow their own food in addition to those who already are, and there may be difficulty getting enough seeds. So what can you do if you cannot get ‘proper’ seed? Disregarding slight risks of importing pests or diseases in these awkward times, I rate the following as the best options. Tomatoes are easy and should be started as soon as possible to crop well. Almost any shop-bought tomato has viable seeds, but it will probably be a greenhouse variety. Even so, if started indoors and put out in late May, plants from these seeds should be fine. “Shop-bought tomatoes will have viable seeds” Potatoes are grown from sets (small tubers) and shop-bought spuds that are planted will grow, though it’s…

BUSY Lizzies were once the most popular bedding plant in the UK, loved by gardeners for their ability to provide sheets of colour for months on end, whether in sun or full shade. More than 50 million of them used to be snapped up annually for beds, pots, hanging baskets and traditional bedding schemes. Few could have predicted their dramatic fall from hero to zero, when a virulent fungal disease swept across the country in the summer of 2011. Known as impatiens downy mildew, the disease hit the country’s displays of busy Lizzies hard, causing yellowing of leaves, leaf loss, stunted growth and death of plants. Unfortunately, there was no cure for the disease, as the strain had become resistant to the fungicide used to treat it. In order to…

Houttuynia cordata ‘Chameleon’ I find the coloured leaves too garish but many people like them (some say they smell of orange peel). However it does have an invasive habit, so if you are a fan it’s best grown in a pot to be on the safe side. Aquilegia vulgaris An undeniably beautiful cottage garden favourite, aquilegia is also an abundant self-seeder. Control the number of seedlings you allow to grow on, and cut off spent flower heads before they are able to broadcast seeds. Muscari This charming spring bulb can take over gardens – and no amount of digging out seems to dent its vigour. Look for a non-invasive variety, or stick to alternative little blue bulbs such as Scilla siberica. Phalaris arundinacea var. picta Attractive but invasive, this perennial…

■ Sit your basket inside an empty pot to keep it steady. ■ Ensure you don’t bury the chains. ■ Line with plastic or coconut fibre. ■ Make cuts to enable plants to grow through the basket’s sides. ■ Place a plant pot tray in the bottom to contain water. ■ Fill the base of the basket with compost, and mix in some waterretaining granules. ■ Gradually plant up, adding more compost as you go. Essential kit ■ Choose a container that allows growth out of its sides and bottom. Don’t worry what it looks like as it will soon be covered by growth. ■ Line with coir (coconut fibre), cardboard or upcycled plastic from an old compost bag or similar. ■ You can add some moss from the lawn…

Euphorbia palustris AGM The zingy acid yellow flowers of euphorbias make a great addition to any spring and summer garden, and thanks to the toxic milky sap in their leaves and stems, slugs will give them a wide berth. H&S: 39in (1m). Geranium pyrenaicum ‘Bill Wallis’ For their flower power, range of colours and total lack of appeal to slugs and snails, geraniums are hard to beat. Appearing for months, the small vivid purple blooms of ‘Bll Wallis’ are a magnet for bees. Self-seeds, but easily weeded out. HxS: 1ftx20in (30x50cm). Tellima grandiflora Those scallop-edged leaves make great groundcover, while their tiny hairs keep them off the menu for slugs. From May to July, tall spikes of greenish-white, bellshaped flowers emerge. Good in dappled shade. HxS: 32inx1ft (80x30cm). Erigeron karvinskianus…

This week it’s: Rhododendrons and azaleas We look at these evergreen and deciduous woody plants from the heather family ACCORDING to the Botanical Garden at the University of California, there are 1,024 naturally occurring, mostly Asian, species of rhododendron in the world. These are just the species! When it comes to cultivars, hybrids, varieties and other forms, there are more than 28,000 listed in the International Rhododendron Registry held by the Royal Horticultural Society. You can see, therefore, that the rhododendron is a huge and diverse plant group. As we are about to enjoy the main season for rhododendron and azalea flowers, let’s take a timely look at just a few of their stories. Spot the differences RHODODENDRON is the largest genus in the heather family (known as Ericaceae). How…

How can I get my clivias to flower? Q I bought a Clivia miniata in bloom two years ago and have been waiting patiently for a repeat performance. Do they need special attention to flower again? Annie Cresswell, Sherstock, Dorset A Clivia miniata is one of my favourite flowering indoor plants. Showy and long-lived, they are real toughies, but we do have to tick a few boxes to make sure they flower reliably. Originally from South Africa, plants grow wild in the filtered light of forested areas. We have to mirror this indoors, as harsh sun will bleach and scorch their strappy evergreen leaves. Yet place them in deep shade and they won’t bloom. Early in the year pale flower buds peep from the middle of mature crowns. Stems extend until…

■ If you are running short of supplies and deliveries are taking their time to get through, you can keep pests at bay using common sense and store cupboard items. ■ The key is not to let pest numbers get out of hand. Check your plants regularly and use your fingers to pick off or squish small colonies before they become an infestation. ■ Set patio containers in large saucers of water and away from overhanging plants to prevent flightless vine weevils getting in. ■ Last year I also got immense satisfaction blasting blackfly off our globe artichokes using a jet from the hose, though this is only advised on plants robust enough to withstand it! ■ Slug pubs are on old favourite. Just sink a pot of fruit juice…

The Tulip (Hardback, Bloomsbury Publishing £40) ANNA Pavord’s passion for this flower is evident throughout this tome, which runs to 467 pages and is a 20th anniversary edition of the classic first published in 1999, featuring new material. This definitive study of the tulip, which includes beautiful illustrations, deals with the flower’s history, starting with it being a ‘flower of the East’. There is a list of species tulips and a list of tulip cultivars (including a revised checklist and descriptions of all 15 divisions). Finally, a chronology of the tulip runs from 1451, when tulips were grown in the garden of Sultan Mehmed II, to 2019 when 6,000 tulip cultivars are registered with the Dutch KAVB (Royal General Association for Bulb Culture). This book is not full of practical…

SALVIAS are a must for anyone who wants to see colour stretching from summer through into the autumnal days – and who doesn’t! This week’s free seeds from Sarah Raven are clary ‘Blue Denim’, a hardy, annual variety that produces bushy stems supporting startlingly blue bracts. They are a stunning addition to any garden and one of the best attributes is that they will regenerate and produce more blooms after the first cut or deadheading, so they will go on and on. Outside, this easy-to-grow plant delights in the herb garden and as a lining for paths and border edges. It is also highly prized by flower arrangers for its longevity indoors and the way it holds its beauty when dried. A third reason for growing it is its benefits…

WHAT a strange spring we’ve just had! Not only was it the wettest February in my part of the world, ever, but it’s also been resolutely dull and grey here for months. This year I had to wait until a sunny day in March before I saw any bees visiting my spring flowers. I missed watching them and listening to that satisfying hum. I spend a lot of time looking at bees and willing my plants to grow a bit faster, because spring comes late in cold Cold Aston! One of my favourite early colour combinations is a slate-blue amsonia and a frilly peachy-orange geum. This soft colour combination seems to chime with the gentle days of late spring, when foliage begins to flourish. The light is still deliciously soft,…

Impatiens ‘Wild Romance Pink’ This newbie for 2020 is a New Guinea impatiens that has gardenia-like, pale-pink flowers on bushy, 50cm (19in)-tall plants. Bred by a Dutch nursery, it’s available from Thompson & Morgan. Impatiens ‘Beacon Salmon’ Bred by PanAmerican Seed and research company KeyGene, this is one of six colours of a downy-mildewtolerant busy Lizzie series that will be available from garden centres this year. Impatiens ‘Beacon Mixed’ New for 2020, these busy Lizzies in six different colours are resistant to downy mildew and cope admirably with all weather conditions. Plants form 30cm- (12in) tall by 36cm (14in)-wide hummocks. Impatiens ‘Imara Violet’ Compact and well-branched, this mildew-resistant busy Lizzie produces masses of large violet coloured flowers on 30cm (12in)-tall plants all summer long, fizzling out with the first frosts.…

Paving and drives Small, shallow-rooted weeds can be pulled out or removed with a special tool; but once the tap roots of dandelions or docks get established in the cracks of paving or walls, hand weeding always leaves some root behind, and they simply send up more shoots. To banish them for good you need glyphosate, which will kill the plant outright. The same applies to hard-packed gravel drives where plantains and dandelions survive being driven and walked over. They grow tight to the ground with a tenacious grip in the hardpacked surface. You risk losing your nails trying to pull them out! ■ Best solution: Target specific weeds with a sprayer; do this on a calm day. Clumps of plants Couch grass and ground elder are adept at getting…

Herbs This aromatic, culinary basket contains a variety of herbs: chives, different types of basil, parsley, coriander and sage. Ideal for hanging close to the kitchen door for easy pickings. You’ll need a sunny spot for best results. Fruit Fruiting plants (such as strawberries, chillies, blackberries and tomatoes) make good candidates for hanging baskets, and will crop well. Here, ornamental marigolds have been teamed with tomato ‘Balconi Yellow’, a compact plant with a lovely trailing habit.…

IT’S tempting to imagine that a rotavator powered by a petrol engine makes the job of preparing a big area of soil for planting quick and easy. It’s true that it will speed things up considerably, but using garden machinery of this calibre takes quite a lot of physical effort as well as preparation. What’s available There are lots of different types of machine available. Tiny lightweight soil tillers are great for weeding between long rows of fruit or veg, or cultivating soil in a small bed, but you’ll need a bigger machine to tackle an allotment plot or for preparing a new lawn area. Both front and rear-tine rotavators are available. The most powerful are usually rear-tine models that also have driven wheels. Bigger machines are expensive to buy,…

Box-tree caterpillar: These green-yellow caterpillars decimate Buxus and cover them in webbing. Remove by hand, use pheromone traps against the pale-winged adults or plant an alternative such as berberis. Chemical controls are often ineffective against the moths’ dense of cocoon-protecting webbing. Vine weevils: Adult vine weevils chew leaves, but their fat white grubs do the real damage, eating the roots of container-grown plants. Pick off and squish the adults, encourage natural predators such as voles, beetles and hedgehogs, and treat grubaffected soil with a chemical drench or a nematode. Slugs/snails: These slimy menaces loved our warm, damp winter and are now out massacring our precious new shoots. Get rid by picking them off, using metaldehyde-free pellets, woollen mulch, beer traps or by encouraging hedgehogs and slow worms into the garden.…

INCREASINGLY stormy weather with higher winds is making life harder for foraging bees, according to research by scientists at a leading British university. It is hoped that the results of the experiment will encourage beekeepers to place their hives in sheltered areas and will prompt gardeners to grow bee-friendly flowers in calmer areas of their garden. Scientists at the University of Sussex tested the flying power of honeybees against a household fan and timed the number of visits each one was able to make to a flower in the teeth of a ‘gale’. The bees, which live in hives on the university campus and feed on nearby flowers, were lured into an experiment shed one at a time, and their visits to artificial flowers there were videoed and timed under…

IT has been the wettest winter on record, with the water butts full and the water table high. But things can change fast and as we head into the warmer, drier months it is worth making provision for every eventuality. We have attached water butts to downpipes on the garage, greenhouse, house and shed, and this not only reduces our water bills but also makes watering the garden much easier in the peak times when water is needed. Should we have a dry spring and summer you will need to prioritise your plants during prolonged periods without rain. Established perennials, trees and shrubs are low down the list as their roots will have stretched far and deep enough to collect sufficient moisture. Newly planted perennials, bedding, annuals and container-grown plants…

A RESIDENT bird, the great spotted woodpecker breeds in suitable localities throughout England and Wales, but is rare further north. It is seldom found far from trees, but is by no means a rare guest to garden-food tables, particularly when they are adjacent woodlands or groups of trees. It has a distinctive black and white plumage with brilliant crimson under the tail coverts and the male’s neck also carries a red patch. Most of their insectivorous food is obtained from cracks and crevices in the bark of trees, and to extract insects from such places the woodpecker’s long tongue is equipped with two sharp barbs. To dislodge these lurking insects the birds often hammer their heavy beaks on the tree at lightning speed and the noise thus produced (known as…

THEY’RE rampant, yield generously, store forever and taste delicious, so why on earth wouldn’t you grow winter squashes? Here are my hints for a bumper year. Temperature and timings Winter squashes are part of the cucurbit family and botanically they belong to three main species: Cucurbita maxima, C. moschata and C. pepo. Like pumpkins and marrows, they have the ability to set hard skins and store well into the winter. “Winter squashes store forever and taste delicious” Many have a long growing season, needing more than 100 days from sowing to fruit maturity. Being tender, sowing outdoors early in the year isn’t possible (at least 13°C/55°F soil temperature is needed), so the solution is to start them off under cover instead. Seedlings are ready to transplant outside four-five weeks after…

BUSY Lizzies flower their socks off in sun, part-shade or shade. They are ideal for providing long-lasting colour in beds, borders and bedding displays. Another option is to plant them in containers, such as hanging baskets, patio planters and window boxes. Few plants will grow under trees due to the tree roots soaking up all the moisture. A clever way of adding a splash of colour to these troublesome spots is to plant busy Lizzies in a growing bag. This can then be moved into position and is best kept damp via an automatic irrigation system. Water busy Lizzies regularly during the growing season, especially in hot, dry spells to prevent a check in growth. Feed them every week during the growing season with a high-potash plant food to produce…

Fat hen Chenopodium album colonises a border fast and is a host to black bean aphid. Hoe and pull up to control. Stop it seeding – the seeds can live for ages. Hairy bittercress Small but pervasive, Cardamine hirsuta's explosive seed capsules will shoot their seeds up to 3ft. Hoe off before the little white flowers are produced. Groundsel Senecio vulgaris has small yellow flowers. Hoe off or pull out; never leave pulled-up plants on the ground – they can still set their wind-borne seeds.…

PLANTING up a hanging basket is an easy, enjoyable job for a spring day. In a few weeks’ time it will transform into a boule of tumbling foliage and flowers, and then remain a mass of cheering colour throughout summer. Many garden centres still sell the same plants that we were using to fill hanging baskets in the 1970s and 1980s. And while there’s nothing to say you can’t use and enjoy those old favourites, there are lots of ways to make your basket look a bit more up-to-date. Adding foliage plants such as compact carex, silver-leaved artemisia or purple sage, and incorporating flowers in striking colours like burgundy or orange are two simple updates. Single blooms are also good – they not only look more contemporary but will provide…

Lysimachia nummularia ‘Aurea’ AGM Golden creeping jenny forms a ponytail of round yellow-green leaves (there’s also cup-shaped yellow flowers). Lovely in baskets until summer’s end, when you can transplant and use it as groundcover beside a pond, in sun or partial shade. H: 4in (10cm). Hedera helix ‘Goldchild’ AGM Evergreen ivy with leaves in a pleasing mix of green and gold – they darken over time but maintain the variegation. At the end of summer, transfer to a container of winter interest plants, or plant out in the garden in a sheltered spot in alkaline soil. H (eventually): 8ft (3m). Carex comans bronze-leaved A useful evergreen grass that will complement many basket favourites, bronze New Zealand hair sedge grows into a thick tuft of slender, pale gold to reddish brown…

John will reply personally to all your gardening questios every week How can I create a healthy pond? Q I have a new pond that I’m struggling with. What plants do I need for a healthy balance and where should each variety go in the water? Patricia Wood, via email A Start by planting oxygenators, such as goldfish weed (Lagarosiphon) or pondweed (Potamogeton) 12in (30cm) apart in perforated containers of loam, to release oxygen into the water and lessen the risk of pea-soup or blanketweed algae colonising the pond. Next, set the marginal plants: flowering rush, sweet flag, water plantain, marsh marigold and Iris laevigata, among others, in pots on the side shelf that comes with the pond, to create enjoyable focal points. Finally, position a small water lily, such…

Write to us: Letters, Amateur Gardening magazine, Pinehurst 2, Pinehurst Road, Farnborough Business Park, Farnborough, Hants GU14 7BF (please include your address). Email us: amateurgardening@ti-media.com Star letter Flower of the day IT’S difficult to keep our pecker up at times like this, but absorbing nature, however we can, in our gardens, balconies and pot plants indoors bring much interest. Even curtain-twitching at others’ gardens is good for the mind as we self-isolate. I started every morning taking a picture of what was coming into flower, as spring is bursting in my garden and now my flower of the day is sent to my friends either by email or Facebook and goes down well. It gives me structure to start the day with and friends are loving it – we don’t…

WHAT an extraordinary time to be alive… so extraordinary that I’ve been inspired to put pen to paper and write this amazing profundity that you can pass off as your own – any time you like: “For the first time, since the dawn of time, we have time to take our time.” It needs work, but thankfully I have time on my hands to give it the time it deserves – and then I’ll potter in the garden. Gardening in a crisis might appear like rearranging deckchairs on the Titanic, but the benefit of being outdoors as the seasonal wheel turns is profoundly important. Every day fresh seedlings sprout, and the bees find new flowers to plunder, creating a present that’s more captivating than anything on TV. “Nature is more…