Innholdsfortegnelse for 14-Nov-2020 i Amateur Gardening

“I must confess to feeling sad when it’s time to start the winter clearances. Pots and containers that once flourished with life and colour are now a spent force. The toms I grew from seed, whose ripe fruits adorned my salads, are no more. Their withered leaves and dying stems are sent to compost, where they will regenerate and play a useful part in future garden work. Winter heralds the end of one life and the beginning of another, as we plant for spring and beyond.” Contact us: Editorial: 0330 3903732 Email: amateurgardening@futurenet.com Subscriptions: 0331 333 1113 Advertising: 07817 629935…

Got a story? email ruth.hayes@futurenet.com WHEN we wrote about how gardening brands had dealt with the vast increase in online orders during lockdown, we asked our readers to get in touch with their experiences. Many of you did – thank you very much! – and your responses were a mixed bag of positive, negative and downright frustrating. Former SMP Sir Brian Donohoe ordered some black petunia seeds, costing ?16.96, from online retailers Eckman, only to be sent Petunia ‘Black Velvet’ plants in September when it was far too late to plant them out! In his email to AG on September 23, Sir Brian said: “I am perplexed that having ordered two packets of ‘Black Velvet’ petunia seeds, I have been sent plants that, as annuals, are useless at this time…

WHENEVER folk talk about getting chickens, they’re mostly interested in getting fresh eggs. It’s rather an obvious reason. However, a gardener should look on a chicken run and coop as their own fertiliser factory. You see, it’s easy to make garden compost – this is a good general feed for your soil, adding fertility – but it rather lacks oomph. The sort of oomph you get when you use well-rotted manure instead. Now, chickens can lay lots of eggs, but they also more regularly lay far more highly concentrated munitions-grade droppings. So strong are these droppings that they will rapidly kill plants if you foolishly apply them undiluted or ameliorated mixing with something less fierce. Thus, most often, their droppings (along with their moulted feathers and bedding waste) are added…

THE tomatoes are down, and so are the cucumbers, but it’s not just nature that abhors a vacuum – we gardeners do, too! If you’re lucky enough to have an under cover growing space, it seems a shame to waste it during the chillier months. So, why not keep on cropping it throughout the winter? Even if you’d assumed you couldn’t grow anything under glass (or, indeed, a polytunnel) from November until February, plenty of vegetables, herbs and salads can be started off now (see the panel, right). By insulating the area you’ll really open the doors to winter cropping, so do yourself a favour and invest in some bubblewrap and, if possible, a heater (see below). The right equipment Provided the temperature doesn’t fall below 6°C, you’ll be able…

Q I love Japanese maples and would like to grow one in a pot because I don’t think we have the right soil and we might move soon. Which one should I choose, and what container size and compost will I need to keep it healthy? Donna Dunlop, Clitheroe, Lancashire A There are several advantages to growing these beautiful small trees in containers. We don’t all have the slightly acidic, humus-rich and welldraining soil they prefer and this is easy to fix in a pot. Although these trees are naturally compact, root restriction helps keep them neat. Best of all, they are mobile, and as well as moving house with you (use a sack truck for large containers), potted trees are easily shifted out of locations that turn out to…

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@futurenet.com Fattening up for winter AFTER our amazing experiences with the robin babies in the spring, we thought that would be the end of the youngsters in the garden. But no… a hedgehog and her two babies (or maybe three) delighted us with their appearance the other night. Although they seem to be very active, they are still very small. We hope they will reach a substantial size and get through the winter. We are offering them a bit of a helping hand by giving them a five-star gourmet dinner of cat food, which they seem to be enjoying. We are keeping our fingers crossed for…

amateurgardening.com Daily blog and more WHEN thoughts turn to adding some plants to the garden, we generally think of spring and autumn, when the soil is damp and warming up or retaining heat from summer. However, as long as the soil isn’t frozen or waterlogged you can increase your stocks of trees, shrubs, fruit canes and bushes and roses from late autumn through to late winter, just before trees start to green up again. You do it by bare root planting, using young trees, shrubs etc that are lifted when they are dormant and replanted as soon as possible where you want them to grow. They don’t usually look anything special (they are called ‘whips’ thanks to their slender form) but once they break dormancy they will grow fast. We…

WITH their vibrant colours, glossy petals, and foliage in rich green or bronze, dahlias are definitely not ones for hiding their light under a bushel. But now their glow is dimming and their verdant leaves are blackened by the first frosts, so it’s time to move them into their winter accommodation. You can go down one of two routes with tuberous dahlias growing in the soil (find out more about bedding dahlias in the panel, right). If your soil is light and free-draining and your garden relatively sheltered, you can cut the stems down to 6in (15cm) and leave the tubers in the ground. Then generously mulch around the root area with compost, manure or bark chippings. The plants should survive winter unless the weather is extremely cold. If you…

IT has been a rather wet and windy autumn so far and parts of the garden are looking somewhat battered and leaf-strewn. Rather than let these build up over the next few months, we need to get out there and restore some order before the next bands of low pressure head in. I can tolerate a few leaves on the soil as they will degrade and be dragged under by worms, helping to open up the soil and enrich its structure. Leaves on the lawn, however, are a different matter and need to be raked up and either added to the compost, stuffed into black bin liners with holes punched in the sides, or piled up in a wire bin. They will break down over the next couple of years…

John will reply personally to all your gardening questions every week How do I care for a moth orchid? Q What is the right bark or compost for my moth orchid, and how do I care for it? Margaret Laneres, via email A Ideally, site it in light shade in a temperature that hovers around 61°F (16°C). The best way to water it is to dunk the pot in clean rainwater whenever the compost is becoming dry, which is usually every two or three weeks. Leave it in the rain water for an hour or so to soak, then remove it and stand it on gravel, in a drip tray, to drain. Additionally, feed your plant monthly with a liquid orchid fertiliser from April to September. Ease up on watering…

THERE are two ways to tackle the stump and roots of trees and big shrubs. The first is to cut the stump as low as possible to the ground, then treat it with stump killer. The second is to dig it out. Treating the stump takes little effort and is quite cheap, but it works very slowly, taking a year or more for the wood to rot away. It also means that the area occupied by the stump and roots is difficult or impossible to cultivate until it has rotted. However, it’s really the only way if you’re cutting down a tree or shrub in a densely planted border, as you’ll damage nearby plants if you try digging the stump out. It’s also a good option for an area you’re…

amateurgardening.com Daily blog and more IF I had to choose a desert-island flower, the bloom I’d rescue from the breakers is Nerine ‘Zeal Giant’. I love shocking-pink flowers, and this nerine’s petals are pinker than the Pink Panther sharing candyfloss with a flamingo… in the back of a pink Cadillac. This plant also knows how to survive a shipwreck. Nerines hark from the Western Cape of South Africa, but when the first bulbs arrived on Blighty, rather than trot down a gang plank at a port they bobbed onto a beach after floating free from the hold of a stricken ship. This was back in the mid-17th century in Guernsey, where, thanks to the mild maritime climate, the flowers naturalised to become a cornerstone for the cut-flower industry of the…

Who’s for the chop? Autumn and winter are when deciduous trees get a trim, and in next week’s AG I show you how – and what should be left alone until spring. BARE root plants are easy to order, buy and plant, but they need to be treated well once they arrive at your house. They will have been packaged with their roots wrapped in plastic, so the first thing to do is unwrap them and check the roots for moisture. If they are damp, re-wrap them and store them somewhere cool and out of the wind. If the roots feel dry, immediately soak them in a bucket of water for a few minutes before re-wrapping them. Keep a bucket of water with you when planting and dunk the roots…

Listen to Peter’s free podcast every Thursday. Search for ‘This Week In The Garden with Peter Seabrook’ on iTunes amateurgardening.com Daily blog and more I FEEL that many recommendations coming from environmentalists make no sense and appear to defy logic/common sense. I am advised to wrap my sandwiches in grease-proof paper, but where does the grease come from? And if my lovely ripe tomatoes split, the juice comes through the paper, anyway! Using the polythene bag that AG used to come in for my sandwiches (and washing after each use) gave several recyclings, and when holed it could go clean in the local council recycling bag. Currently, the Irish peat producers can no longer get licences to cut horticultural peat, when only 0.4% of Irish peat lands are harvested for…

amateurgardening.com Daily blog and more I’VE learnt a lot since I began making gardens some 50 years ago, and I cringe at some of my mistakes! I made a narrow crescent and planted 12 different hybrid tea roses in a variety of bilious colours. They were all different heights and they all flowered at slightly different times, so they looked awful. There was no space around them to plant anything except for an edging of white alyssum and blue lobelia. The alyssum and lobelia both packed up quickly, although there are better long-flowering lobelia to be had today. It taught me that 12 of the same rose would have looked far better and never to plant upright hybrid teas in a narrow bed again. I also try to avoid pink…

HEATHERS are ideal low-maintenance plants. They’re evergreen, easy to grow, small and manageable, and long flowering. However, since the height of their popularity in the late 1960s and 1970s – when they became associated with dwarf conifers – their image has suffered and, really, I don’t know why. Right now, of course, the winterflowering varieties are about to come into their own – brightening up low beds, the fronts of borders and containers everywhere. They also have another great attribute: they are bee-friendly plants. They are a lifeline for the few solitary bees and bumblebees (which do not store food) that are flying around during mild spells in winter and early spring. Let’s take a sideways look at winter heathers. Erica carnea: the acid test I WOULD like to bust…