Innholdsfortegnelse for 12-Dec-2020 i Amateur Gardening

“Who says the winter garden is dull? To me, it is awash with colour and shape. Even in early December, I’m enjoying the bright gold and leathery russet leaves on a copper beech hedge, the dark burgundy of my sedum heads, the burnt ochre of my acer and the light, delicate pink of my ‘Lady of the Lake’ roses. I’m watching the leaves yellow and wither on my mophead hydrangea, just as its petals change from deep pink to a light brown. Dull? No, bursting with interest!” Contact us: ■ Editorial: 0330 3903732 ■ Email: amateurgardening@futurenet.com ■ Subscriptions: 0330 333 1113 ■ Advertising: jessica.wong@futurenet.com…

■ January THE year started on an environmental note with Garden Organic launching the For Peat’s Sake campaign to encourage wider sales of peat-free compost. Spokeswoman Sarah Brown said: “We are asking people to always buy peat-free compost and if their garden centre doesn’t stock it, to ask why not. “We know there are many peat alternatives that are out there that are as good as peat-based composts, and some of them perform even better. So always ask.” This announcement was echoed by Irish compost manufacturers Bord na Mona, who announced the arrival of their first peat-free line, called Happy compost. ■ February FEARS were raised about the arrival in the UK of a deadly plant disease called Xylella fastidiosa, which has already killed millions of olive trees in Southern…

DURING the hot summer of 1976, I met a Canadian cultivating what he called ‘Friendship Gardens’ on the sidewalk (‘pavement’ to you and me) in front of his house in Toronto. It was not until he started cultivating and planting flowers out front that he got to know his neighbours. I’ve noticed how there are a lot more people walking up and down our street since the imposition of lockdowns. When I am out there cutting grass, trimming the hedge, weeding borders and so on, many of them would stop and speak. It was with this in mind that some of what would have been my indoor Christmas decorations have this year been moved to within sight of the street. Currently, as I write, we are not allowed to have…

IF there’s one horticultural bugbear that drives me crazy, it’s saggy wires – I simply cannot stand them! Supporting raspberries and trained fruits is critical at any time of year, and now is a great time to make sure that everything is as it should be. Ever since discovering a quick and highly effective way to keep wires tight, I’ve adopted it in my gardens. It will help your plants, too. Nobody wants supports to sway around and wobble. With winter being a key season for fruit tree, cane and bush planting, you’d be advised to try this simple technique (see panel, right). It doesn’t require specialist equipment and it is ideal for supporting raspberries as well as trained fruits such as fans, cordons and espaliers. The beauty of this…

FOR me, a great way of limbering up before a stint of leaf raking or compost spreading is to stride about the garden, homing in on specific areas that illustrate the joys of the season. Winter has the effect of stripping bare; however it also brings to the fore twiggy outlines and the extraordinary colours and textures of stem and bark. For most of the year these are masked by an abundance of summer growth; but choose the right trees and shrubs, and from leaf fall to spring, gardens come alive with snaking fissures, waxy lenticels and glowing stem tips. The beauty of bark Of course, this performance is not played out primarily for our benefit; it has evolved to help trees live long lives and to adapt plants to…

WIN £30 No: 548 This word search comprises words associated with cereals, oats and grains. They are listed below; in the grid they may be read across, backwards, up, down or diagonally. Letters may be shared between words. Erroneous or duplicate words may appear in the grid, but there is only one correct solution. After the listed words are found, there are six letters remaining; arrange these to make this week’s KEYWORD. CEREALS OATS GRAINS BARLEY BRAN BREAKFAST CORNFLAKE CROP EAR EXCHANGE FIBRE GERM GRASS MAIZE MILK PORRIDGE RICE SEEDS WHEAT ZEA HOW TO ENTER: Enter this week’s keyword on the entry form, and send it to AG Word Search No 548, Amateur Gardening, Pinehurst 2, Pinehurst Road, Farnborough, Hampshire GU14 7BF, to arrive by Wednesday 23 December 2020. The…

TopTip A popular shape is the ‘pyramid’, where the central leader is retained and pruning used to deliver a Christmas tree shape, often used for pot-grown trees. Should I prune my apple? Q Our young apple tree was weighed down with fruit, which bent the branches and spoiled its shape. Should I prune it? Della Thorne, Norwich, Norfolk A Most of us buy apple trees grafted onto a rootstock suitable for keeping plants compact and helping them to fruit early in their lives. You can start with a first year, single-stem ‘maiden’ – but more often, plants are bought in their second year. Many will have had their single stem pruned in the nursery and responded by sending out several lower side stems. This early pruning starts the classic open-centred…

JUST as the mountaineer Edmund Hillary risked all on the remote slopes of Everest, I braved the perilous overgrown incline of the busy A379 ‘because it was there’. While Hillary wanted to conquer his hill, my aim was to lay claim to something growing atop the gorse-choked gradient – cuttings from a fruit-laden apple tree that even now has its harvest of golden baubles hanging from its branches. Fruit trees growing by busy roads are common, and you don’t need to be Poirot to know that they come from the millions of unwanted cores, thrown from car windows when no-one is looking. Most road-side seedlings are flavourless shadows of the parent ‘Braeburn’, ‘Cox’ or ‘Jazz’ cores they came from, but once in blue moon a pip chucked from a passing…

GARDEN plants aren’t the only ones that need different levels of care as the days shorten and the temperature drops. Indoor greenery is also, by and large, slowing down for its winter rest and while you can take your foot off the care pedal a little, there are still things you need to do to keep them healthy. As the days shorten, move plants to where they can make the most of all available natural light. However, don’t leave them on windowsills overnight, stuck behind closed curtains, as cold air will be trapped there, which does them no good. They will be happiest somewhere with a steady temperature, away from sources of direct heat (radiators for instance) and out of direct light and draughts. We aren’t the only creatures clinging…

WE have a young grape vine growing up a sheltered sunny wall and this year it produced its first ‘proper’ crop of grapes. We should have thinned them out more thoroughly, but we still had a respectable harvest of bunches of small fruits that were tasty (if crunchily pippy) and made a delicious juice. The aim now is to have a better crop in 2021, so this week I have been pruning the vine to encourage lots of growth and more grapes, which grow on new shoots put out that year. Free-form grape vines growing up a wall respond well to hard pruning so I cut the side shoots back to two buds from the main stem. Vines are pruned in mid-winter (usually November and December) otherwise they lose lots…

IN only a fortnight, the days will start lengthening so it’s time to get any unfinished pruning done. Now, you can leave a few fruit bushes alone for years and they’ll not suffer much nor lose you much crop by it. Blueberries, for example, are better pruned every few years, but can be left undone with little problem. On the other hand, brambles really do need tying in (if not pruning) and it is sensible to remove the old dead fruited canes and then to tie those new in place. The same goes for raspberries, cutting out the old and dead, and tying in the new (except autumn fruiters, which you cut all down close to the ground). With both brambles and raspberries and all their hybrids, it also makes…

John will reply personally to all your gardening questions every week Why do my winter baskets always fail? Q Every year I plant winter hanging baskets, but every year the flowers seem to fail, even the cyclamen. I line them with paper, water them well and add water-retaining gel so they don’t dry out. What am I doing wrong? Terry Lees, via email A I am sorry that your hanging basket plants have flopped, it is always a depressing sight when you have worked hard to keep them going. I suspect that poor drainage is the cause. If excessive water remains around the roots and deprives them of oxygen, plants may die. As winters are becoming increasingly wet I would recommend you don’t add water-retaining granules to the compost when…

THE combination of winter weather and potential lockdown is hardly inviting us outdoors, which is where houseplants come into their own. Research suggests that the plants we nurture indoors can do wonders for our mental and physical wellbeing, which is why there is such a drive to get them into offices, schools and other communal places. The sight of green growth and the sensory delight of touching the leaves, especially on textured plants such as ferns raised the spirits and reduces stress. According to the Royal Horticultural Society, research shows that plants help reduce anxiety, boost mood and even improve tolerance to pain in a hospital setting. They are known to help clean the air by removing carbon dioxide and toxic particles. As well as helping keep the air clean,…

I WAS looking out of the dining room window the other day and caught sight of something small and reddish ditting about in the hedge at the back of the garden. It was a male bullfinch, a stocky little chap with a brilliant red chest (more orange than a robin’s breast) and rather smart grey and black plumage over its back and tail. Female bullfinches are not so gaudily dressed as their mates, with grey-brown feathers replacing the striking reddy-orange of the males. Their call is a short, sharp ‘deu-deu’, though they will also give it an extra flourish with a medley of other small sounds and cries. Bullfinches have a strong, broad beak that they use to eat their favourite foods: seeds and fruit tree buds for the adults,…

AS we approach the shortest day, 21 December, I’m thinking about the year past while listening to a robin’s piping song. I’ve positioned myself on the south-facing seat and I’m enjoying the winter sunshine. Whenever the weather’s good enough, I wrap up and take my cup of tea outside. If I sit still long enough, the birds keep coming to the peanuts, fat balls and sunflower seeds. There’s always a flurry of feeding half an hour before the sun sinks below the horizon, and we enjoy some of the best winter sunsets in December because the garden at Spring Cottage faces due south. On a good day, I can enjoy the sunrise and sunset from my seat. The advantages of winter sun and fresh air have gone up in my…

This week it’s: FOR me, winter is the season when I have porridge for breakfast. When I started eating it again a few weeks ago, I realised that I didn’t actually know what porridge was. It contains oats, of course, but what exactly are oats? Then, my wife said she wasn’t sure if cornflakes were actually flakes of corn. And if they were, what sort of corn: wheat, or the corn you get on cobs? Then this opened the floodgates. Was Weetabix wheat? And what are grains – seeds? I had to investigate and let you know. OK, it’s not pure gardening, but there are many links between cereal crops and garden plants – and any true plant lover will, I’m sure, forgive me this little diversion! Doing porridge! THE…

IF you want to ‘improve’ your garden soil, you first need to know a bit about it in relation to what kind of plants you’re planning to grow. You may already be aware that your soil will be generally acidic if there are azaleas or rhododendrons growing in it, or calcareous (limey) if you grow pink mophead hydrangeas. However, it can vary across a plot, so it’s worth doing a soil test in several different places. Even simple tests will give you an indication of the level of acidity/alkalinity, known as the pH range. Most plants grow well in a fairly neutral pH range of 5.5-6.5. If your soil test indicates that it is significantly higher (alkaline) or lower (acidic), you can either stick to growing plants that like that…

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 Star letter Neighbourly competition MY neighbour and I are both keen gardeners, and have been swapping plants since lockdown began. Fran is a ‘lift, divide, pot up and share’ type of gardener, whereas I am more of the ‘grow from seed and foist on the neighbours’ type. So earlier in the year, I benefited from aquilegias, persicaria, primroses and Japanese anemones, to name a few. In return, Fran got cauliflower, broccoli, lettuce, lobelia and aubergines. Therein lies the rub. Thirty healthy broccoli plants were well grown in pots: 15 for Fran and 15 for me; both sets planted out in raised beds and netted. Mine…