Innholdsfortegnelse for 22-May-2021 i Amateur Gardening

“In late April, I dug three trenches and planted seed potatoes straight into the soil in my border, rather than the containers I’ve had so much success with in the past. I wanted to try the traditional way for myself. However, after all the space had been filled, I still had 24 spuds left. So I decided to plant the remainder in containers to give me the chance to test how peat-free compares with conventional peat (see page 6). I’ve heard good reports about peat-free and I have been using it, but this is a genuine opportunity to see the results in terms of crop yield and size in a controlled environment, albeit a natural one. Roll on, July!” Contact us: ■ Subscriptions: 0330 333 1113 ■ Editorial: 0330 3903732…

LIKE a lot of AG readers I have been using peat free compost for a while now, but I’m still not entirely sure how comparable it is to peat. I think there is a doubt in many people’s minds about this: they want to change, they are prepared to pay the extra cost, but what about the results? The best way for me to answer this for myself is to conduct a test. So using some leftover seed potatoes, I set up 12 containers: six with peat (on the left) and six with peat-free (on the right). The potato variety is ‘Desiree’, the peat compost is Westlands Jack’s Magic and the peat-free is Westlands New Horizon specialist veg compost. I can’t claim this test to be scientific, but it is…

YOU don’t need to be a small bear from Peru to appreciate this week’s free seeds, which are guaranteed to bring the sunshine into your garden, and attract the bees in at the same time. Rudbeckia ‘Marmalade’ is a joyful half hardy perennial, that is usually treated as a half hardy annual. It grows to 18in (45cm) and has large, sunny, yellow flowers with contrasting black centres. The flowers can withstand whatever the summer weather throws at them, and look beautiful in borders and pots and also make long-lasting cut flowers. In most areas of the UK it is safe to sow them outdoors now. Create a seedbed of finely raked, dampened soil, scatter the seeds thinly and cover with more soil. Lightly tamp it down and label the seeds…

BUTTERNUT squashes are becoming very popular. These are modest marrow-sized crops with a buff skin, and swollen at the flower end. Excellent eating when picked and good for storage into winter, these can crop well in a good summer. However, as with most other squashes, they’re not as obliging as marrows – and in less than the best conditions, they may well give disappointing crops. If you wanted a giant pumpkin, you would fill a huge hole with muck and manure and all things rank, keep it wringing wet, and plant it in a mound on top. Think the same for butternut squash, but just on a slightly smaller and more achievable scale. Next, keep your plants warmer than, say, courgettes – especially if it’s windy as well. A cloche…

John has been answering reader queries for 50 years Is it safe to prune roses now? Q I have a couple of new roses that are growing some branches more vigorously than others. They look strange, so is it OK to prune them now? Jenny Palmer, Exeter, Devon A There is no harm in pruning roses at any time of the year if it is needed to control their size. We always think of doing them at the end of the dormant season, but actually summer pruning is also recommended for some types. My concern is why some of the branches are significantly larger than the others. Are these branches coming from at or below ground level, possibly slightly away from the plant? I have a rose that has done…

Can I save a sunny border? Q One of the few hot, sunny borders in our garden has been taken over by lawn and weeds. What steps should we take to win it back and replant it? Joanne Critchly, Darlington, Co Durham A Gardens are full of different microclimates, and finding the best plants to thrive in them makes for an easier life, and a garden that works well and looks great. In even a tiny plot, there are likely to be frost pockets, cool shady areas, wind tunnels and sheltered borders that bake in the sun. Soil type has a part to play, too. Most plants that enjoy hot, sunny areas also like a well-drained soil and might baulk at winter wet. The answer lies in raising beds slightly,…

PRIDE of place in the trophy room at Buckland Castle is a silver statuette of a golfer, earnt by yours truly during a tightly contested competition at the famous Ryder Cup course at Celtic Manor in Newport, South Wales. Naturally, visitors think that I won the tournament – and being a modest man, I never let on that it’s for the more challenging triumph of ‘Most Balls Lost’. I mention this, as I was honing my ball-losing skills in the wooded boundary of the local golf course when I spotted piles of soil around the trunks. The heaps spread inside the dripline might seem harmless, but they had the potential to choke the life from these old oaks. As every primary school pupil knows, trees produce oxygen – but what…

AS far as I am concerned, anything that comes under the banner of ‘brightly coloured annual’ is fair game as far as summer bedding is concerned. There is something absolutely joyous about filling your beds, borders and containers (which I will be looking at next week) with one-season wonders guaranteed to bring colour and fun to the garden for the next few months. There are the traditional stalwarts, the begonias, petunias, busy lizzies, antirrhinums and pelargoniums, which pack a real summery punch when planted en masse to form blocks of colour in a bed. Then there are the more exotic options, which people don’t necessarily consider to be ‘bedding’, but will gussy up your garden a treat this summer. Cosmos in every shade from bright orange to shell pink, flamboyant…

ALTHOUGH our garden has extremely chalky soil, one of its late winter/early spring glories is a vast mound of pink early heather. If this seems wrong on such alkaline soil, think again, because winter and spring-flowering varieties (Erica carnea, Erica x darleyensis and Erica erigena) will grow well in most soil types. It is their more picky summer-flowering cousins, the Erica vulgaris strain, that require an acidic soil that is lighter in structure, which is why they are usually found on heathlands where the soil is thin. Early-flowering heather is a spirit-lifting addition to the garden. It provides a stunning start to the gardening year, heralding the arrival of brighter days and giving a gorgeous splash of colour against fresh green grass and springblue skies. More importantly, our vast outcrop…

ARE you old enough to recall the cards we used to get in packets of leaf tea? Sadly, I am! The cards ran from 1954 to 1999, and there were usually 50 in each series, though I never managed to get the entire set of any. The first one published was the 20 British Birds set in 1954, and there was a Wild Birds of Britain set of 50 in 1964. Somewhere between the two, I became a twitcher, and I would cycle around West London with a huge set of war-time binoculars and a notebook. This freedom was allowed because I was an honorary boy. I qualified due to having two burly brothers and several equally burly boy cousins. I visited some scenic places, like Osterley Park and Kew…

This week it’s: Pumpkins, squash and gourds A brightly coloured bounty of interesting facts TO countless gardeners, and children everywhere, pumpkins provide endless fascination. These brightly coloured members of the cucumber family can grow to enormous (even grotesque) proportions. They break records, they are eaten, and they are grown and sold in their millions! Then, of course, there are the squash and the gourds. The family is huge, and captivating. We are now coming towards the end of the period when they should be sown, so let’s take a closer look at these stalwarts of the veg garden, allotment and show bench! ■ This is the week when, in a normal year, the Chelsea Flower Show would have been taking place. Because of Covid, it has been moved (for the…

Write to us: Letters, Amateur Gardening magazine, Future Publishing Limited, Unit 2, Eelmore Road, Farnborough Hants GU14 7QN (please include your address). Email us: amateurgardening@futurenet.co.uk Star letter Egg-stordinary gift THE weather has been dry here in Devon for some weeks now. The fields around the house are drying out and even our stream has dried up. The local wildlife is leaving the cover of the hedgerows and pastures, venturing nearer the house searching for water and titbits of food. Philip, the cock pheasant, has become bolder. He forages under the bird feeders by the back door for the scraps discarded by the nuthatches and tits and then stands for phases, peering in through the lower kitchen windows as if asking for more. Occasionally he brings his mate, Liz. We have…

THE hanging basket I planted up last autumn is starting to look rather battered in parts after spending six months swinging in the elements. Some of the plants are still looking healthy, so I wanted to salvage these and reuse them in the garden. In particular, there is a beautiful silver-leaved Cineraria, a jaunty yellow pansy, a hart’s tongue fern and a trailing thyme that I will add to a rockery. It can be tricky easing the plants out of their container, so water them first to soak the compost and once they are free, carefully tease the roots apart to separate the plants from each other. The fern has been rehomed in a shady spot, the Cineraria is now growing alongside some alliums, where its foliage will provide beautiful…

THE combination of tulips and daffodils swaying in the sunshine is a quintessential sight of spring. Now, sadly, their best is passed and all that remains is withering leaves and untidy borders. This is one of the most important parts of their annual cycle and how you treat them now will influence how well they perform next year. Always deadhead your plants, so energy goes into growth not producing seedpods, and let the foliage die down naturally (see panel on the right) as this process feeds the bulbs so they have energy for next year’s show You should always water and feed the leaves as they die and this is especially important this year as April was such a dry month. If your bulbs didn’t flower as well as you…

WHILE the ‘Virtual Chelsea Flower Show 2021’ will now be done and dusted for most people, with a bit of luck our pyramid display, which was to have been built in the Great Pavilion in London, will still be decked out in the Floral Fantasia area at the RHS Garden, Hyde Hall, Essex well into June. This is the second year we have had to relocate from the Great Pavilion, and we soon found building a display out of doors on a hilltop exposed to the elements can be quite demanding! Our original plan was to launch the new soft pink Verbena ‘Margaret’s Memory’, along with a number of other plant novelties, at the Chelsea Flower Show in London. Uprooted to Hyde Hall, and staged alongside the mammoth 277-cultivar pansy…

WITH autumn-sown varieties ready now, and certain seed varieties started off this week managing to crop come September, the humble broad bean (aka fava bean) has more growing potential than you might think. Here’s how to make sure you are getting the most from your selections. Know your beans If you’re like me, you’ll be eyeing up a bed of autumn-sown ‘Aquadulce Claudia’. But there is still time to sow and plant broad beans if you get the right variety. There are four main types: Seville (autumn-sown types); longpod (such as ‘Exhibition Longpod’, with seven or so seeds per pod); Windsors (such as ‘Green Windsor’, the standard spring-sowing types); and fan-podded (such as ‘The Sutton’, with multiple pods per cluster on compact plants). “Enjoy beans from June to October” Seed…

You can listen to Steve on alternate Sundays 10am-2pm on BBC Radio Kent’s Sunday Gardening (BBC Local) GROWING plants has always been a balancing act between the gardener and the pest population. Some insects are welcome pollinators, while others like ladybirds are natural predators that help control damaging pests such as greenfly. Some, like aphids, are obvious, while others do their damage unseen until it’s too late. Danger to plant roots Chafer grubs and leatherjackets are both larval stages of insects and rely on eating plant roots for their development. Unfortunately for us, this includes our lawns. Vine weevil larvae are similar, but less fussy. They will munch their way through most young roots and the first you know about it is often when the plant collapses. Nature needs a…