Innholdsfortegnelse for 15-May-2021 i Amateur Gardening

“I’m hoping for this season to be my best year for roses. Four varieties (three climbers and a rambler) were planted in different parts of the garden three years ago, with three taking well and one a lot less happy — probably due to my putting it too close to a thirsty hedge! That one was moved to a new site with less competition in January, and is now looking much better. For the first three years, their up-keep consisted of regular watering and pruning, as well as mulching in winter, but this year I’m also going to be feeding them like newborn babes. I’ll let you know how we all get on. Have a great gardening week!” Contact us: ■ Subscriptions: 0330 333 1113 ■ Editorial: 0330 3903732 ■…

WE love hearing readers’ stories about the horticultural exploits of their family, so we were thrilled when John Bryan contacted us about his wife’s greatgrandfather, Peter Bryant Westcott. Peter, who was born in 1867, lived in the village of Braunton in Devon and was a keen gardener who also ran his own market garden. This was something of a first for the Westcotts who were a family of keen seafarers, but from an early age Peter knew that horticulture was the career for him. His first job was in the garden at Alnwick Castle in Northumberland, where he earned the princely sum of £1, a shilling and fourpence a month. He learned a lot while he was there and when he returned to Devon he set up a market garden…

WE all need a bit of colour in our lives and what better and easier way to get it than by sowing this week’s free seeds – Zinnia ‘Jazz’. These funky favourites will not only brighten sunny beds and borders, but they are great as cut flowers, grow well in patio containers and will attract beneficial pollinators to the garden. Half-hardy annuals, they can now be sown directly where you want them to flower, and as they are bushy plants that reach a height of around 12in (30cm), they are best put at the edge or towards the front of borders. The large seeds are easy to scatter thinly on soil that has been raked to a fine crumble-like consistency, cleared of stones, weeds and debris and then watered. After…

WITH our changeable weather becoming even less predictable, we need to be careful otherwise we may get caught out. Records show that for much of the UK we can expect an occasional late hard frost in mid-May, even during a spell of warm weather. Of course, we might not get one this year, but sadly only one frost is all it takes to destroy tender vegetables, set back hardier ones and blacken blossoms and fruitlets. It really can be a disaster. The irony is that those sudden hard, late frosts usually come when we are enjoying beautiful warm, sunny days. We spend the days planting out bedding and vegetables (that perhaps could have been hardened off a bit more…) and overnight these can be burnt or even liquefied. What has…

Euphorbia amygdaloides var. robbiae AGM As a foil for cranesbills in shade, the acid yellow flower structures of this evergreen spurge are perfect from spring-summer. Wear gloves when handling plants, as sap can irritate skin. H&S: 18in (45cm). Penstemon ‘White Bedder’ The upright spikes of the white, funnelshaped flowers provide a shapely contrast to hardy geraniums from midsummer-autumn. Leave old stems in place during winter and cut back in spring. HxS: 8x12in (45x30cm). Rosa Molineux (‘Ausmol’) AGM The moderately fragrant, rich goldenyellow blooms of this compact shrub rose contrast well with white or blue-flowered hardy geraniums. It has good disease resistance and deadheading encourages a long flowering season. H&S: 3ft (1m). Salvia nemorosa ‘Ostfriesland’ AGM Vertical racemes of pink-bracted, rich violet-blue flowers held from summer into autumn will both act…

Q We love French beans, but we are fed up with the pencil-thin types available to buy. We tried growing them in the garden, but only managed to produce a few servings. How can we harvest plenty, with some to freeze? Sam Duncan, Leeds A There is nothing wrong with the narrow or ‘Kenya’ type green beans widely sold in supermarkets (try ‘Safari’ or ‘Ferrari’), but there are many others that have flat or cylindrical pods of yellow, purple or cream with maroon flecks. For an abundance you will need bed space, so perhaps you need to edit out other crops. Good potatoes, carrots, swedes and courgettes are more easily bought, and extra room will give you the opportunity to experiment with both dwarf and climbing bean varieties. French beans…

THE tulips look stunning and the tidy ranks of vegetables in the kitchen garden are quite literally food for the eye, but if I had a favourite spring sight it would be the embryonic roots of my rose cuttings reaching through the drainage holes in their pots. Part of the joy is relief… I took the hardwood cuttings just as February melted into March, which is late for this type of propagation. As if that were not risky enough, I’d also boasted about my endeavours on the pages of AG. I’m not a superstitious man, nor one to catastrophise, but overconfidence brings bad juju. And as the weeks poststriking ticked by, I worried that my sleeping beauties would never wake or be caught up in a freak accident involving a…

IF you are a plant grower, then pests are a given, whether they be whitefly homing in on growbag tomatoes on your urban balcony or badgers and wild boar turning your rural lawn into a ploughed field. The same goes for the diseases that stalk our plants, ready to strike as soon as they sense a weakened individual or the perfect conditions they need. In the past gardeners often took a ‘nuke-em’ attitude to problems, launching all-out attacks with an arsenal of high-velocity chemicals and poisons. Attitudes started to change in 1962 when environmental scientist Rachel Carson wrote the powerful book Silent Spring about the effects of indiscriminate chemical use not just on pests, but on the wider natural network. Although the big chemical companies launched fierce opposition, public opinion…

THE RHS Chelsea Flower Show may have been moved to September thanks to the continuing effects of Covid, but there is one very important showrelated task you should still be carrying out round about now. The ‘Chelsea chop’, is a nifty and simple technique that helps keep sprawling plants in check and encourages a second flush of flowers later in the summer. I use it on our large Nepeta (cat mint) bush, but it can also be used to give flowering a boost in later-flowering perennials such as echinacea, heleniums, Phlox paniculata and strongly upright-growing sedum. Our Nepeta (catmint) grows beautifully until late spring when it starts to collapse outwards, leaving its shrubby centre on display. Matters aren’t helped by our two cats who favour it as their drug of…

IDENTIFYING bumblebees isn’t all that easy because the queens, males and workers often have different markings and face colours. Size varies, too. The first bees to emerge from the nest are often tiny, but as the colony develops more food becomes available. As a result of more food, the size of the bees increases. I encountered both problems in the mid-1980s, when I tried to track red-tailed bumblebees (Bombus lapidarius) for a nationwide survey. The early workers were so tiny that I failed to identify them. I have learnt to ignore size and concentrate on the bands and tail markings instead. Queen bees are the easiest of all to identify, and many of these large bees fly fairly slowly early in the year, because temperatures are low. Many warm themselves…

John will reply personally to all your gardening questions every week What can I grow on a chalky soil? Q We have just moved to a new house and the garden is very chalky with lots of white stones on the soil. Can we improve it and what can we plant in it? Peter and Zoe Bowen (via email) A The good thing about chalky soil is that it is free-draining and won’t get waterlogged, so it is easier to work than clay. The downside is that if it is very thin, it won’t hold on to many nutrients so some plants may struggle. The first thing to do is dig down to see how deep or thin the layer of topsoil is. In some cases it may be thin,…

Write to us: Letters, Amateur Gardening magazine, Future Publishing Ltd, Unit 2, Eelmore Road, Farnborough, Hampshire GU14 7QN (please include your address). Email us: amateurgardening@futurenet.com Star letter SINCE moving house to a rural part of York 15 years ago, we have been blessed by the wood pigeon families to our garden. They are not always a welcome visitor to peoples’ gardens, and it crossed our minds that they would discourage other birds from using our bird feeders. We soon realised they are the most messy (poo everywhere), territorial bullies we have ever encountered, the most embarrassing promiscuous birds, known to us, they choose the best parts of the lawn to sunbathe, feed on our young cherry tree buds in spring, and have become so tame that we can almost hand…

WE have seedlings everywhere right now, some in their original compost, others pricked out and potted up. Tender half-hardy varieties are on windowsills indoors or in the greenhouse, while hardy sunflowers, clary and larkspur are thriving in the mini greenhouse and cold frame. Seedlings are vulnerable to pests and disease, so need close monitoring and regular care. Watering is best done from below, by standing your seedtray or pot in water and letting it soak up through. Good ventilation is also important and helps avoid fungal diseases such as damping off, which can wipe out a tray of seedlings in a day. When seeds germinate, remove the lid or open the plastic bag sealed around the pot. This week I have been pricking out AG’s free Tagetes ‘Starfire’ seedlings. When…

THERE are a number of plant cultivating methods developed in commercial horticulture, that have over flowed usefully into gardens. Straw bale gardening was first developed at the Lee Valley Research Station in the 1960s, developing rootstocks and grafting greenhouse crops to combat soil-borne diseases are good examples. When it comes to supporting greenhouse crops of cucumbers, melons, tomatoes and sweet peas in my polytunnel, I follow commerce and use strings. Go into the huge commercial greenhouses soon after planting tender fruits and vegetables and all you can see is gleaming white strings. It is not always easy to lay hands on the white plastic twine and even if you do it tends to rot in strong sunlight and can be only used for a season. Always liking to recycle and…

ONCE you have tried fresh, homegrown sweetcorn, nothing shop-bought will ever compare again – but isn’t it tricky to grow? Not with the right treatment! Let’s look at how to make the most of this must-grow crop… Super grass Sweetcorn is actually a massive, lofty grass. It has a reputation for being fickle because of the way it photosynthesises. Giving you a quick biology lesson, most plants use the C3 pathway for this energy-giving process, but sweetcorn, having evolved in arid regions, uses C4. “Sweetcorn is a grass and is wind-pollinated” C4 is excellent in hot, dry summers but can struggle in cool, damp ones. So a bad summer can result in poor corn. But don’t despair! There are lots of ways to combat this – like starting your plants…

This week it’s: HARDY geraniums are invaluable in the garden. They bloom in a wide variety of colours, and they have equally varied growing habits, ensuring their suitability for almost any garden. The late Rosemary Verey (a leading plantswoman of the 20th century), maintained that hardy geraniums were the “backbone of her planting”. They would be planted in just the right places to be enjoyed, and then everything else in the garden would come later. Well, hardy geraniums are starting to come into flower now, so it’s the ideal opportunity to take a sideways glance at them. ■ In 2013, Geranium Rozanne (with flowers of rich mid-blue, each with a white centre), was named by gardeners at the Chelsea Flower Show as Plant of the Century. A question of size…

IT sounds a bit Goldilocks to say this, but there seems to be either too much rain or too little. It’s never exactly right – but then, what may be right for one garden will be wrong for another. How much you need to water your plants to keep them alive depends on so many things: ■ Are the plants in pots or in the ground? ■ What kind of potting compost have you used? ■ How big are the plants? ■ Are the plants in sun or shade? Many of us now have a metered water supply, so it is important to have goodquality watering equipment, as well as using the water wisely to make sure our plants and gardens get the maximum benefit. If our summers are going…

■ We delve into the archives of Amateur Gardening to share some interesting readers’ letters, this week taken from issue dated 12 June 1926 Sir, – Everlasting flowers! Ugh! Dry, rustly, straw-like things these are. And what a contradiction of terms it is that a blossom delicate and fragile, living and growing, should be everlasting! The true flower lover will have one of them, yet here is ‘Ranworth’ suggesting that we readers of Amateur Gardening, we band of beauty lovers, should decorate our homes with these dust-collecting objects. Few of us can afford to buy flowers in winter; at least, we can afford to have something alive! Even the ubiquitous aspidistra, so often scorned, is alive, and needs a little of our personal attention, which is the deepest bond between…