Innholdsfortegnelse for 5-Jun-2021 i Amateur Gardening

EVERYTHING should be growing healthily in your garden, but there may still be gaps in borders that you’d like to fill. Plan ahead for next year by taking softwood cuttings from some of the many perennials and deciduous shrubs, including pelargoniums, penstemons, verbena, buddleja, fuchsia and lavatera, that may be growing in your garden. They are called ‘softwood’ because you use healthy, non-flowering plant material that has grown this season that it is still soft and sappy as it hasn’t had time to ripen and harden. Unlike growing from seed, plants propagated in this fashion remain ‘true’ to their parents when it comes to foliage and flower colour. Taken now, they will grow through summer and can either be planted out in autumn or kept undercover until next year once…

SOMETHING is afoot in the lounge, and I don’t like it. In recent weeks we have found three adult vine weevils stalking the room, which has been unnerving to say the least. They were swiftly evicted, but the question is ‘where did they come from?’ I suspect they overwintered as creamy, brown-headed grubs in the compost of one of the room’s many houseplants and my money was on either a weeping fig that has been slightly droopy and sad for some time, or a new white jasmine salvaged from a garden centre ‘TLC bin’. While the grubs eat the roots of plants, the large brown adults with their slightly drooping snouts bite notches on the edge of leaves, though I haven’t seen any evidence of their feasting indoors. Pests are…

BY the time you read this, we’ll almost be out of lockdown (hopefully)! Missing my family was the worst thing, but there has been one unexpected benefit – I have rediscovered the joy of weeding on my knees! Armed with my trusty kneeler, fork and CobraHead tool, I plug away at my borders, instinctively plucking out the weeds before they get the upper hand. I’m alone with my thoughts, and hidden from view, and there’s often soothing birdsong. After an hour or two, I find that my troubles disappear. The late Christopher Lloyd, of Great Dixter in East Sussex, a former Amateur Gardening columnist, used to say he put the world to rights when weeding on his knees. He thought of suitable replies to criticism, or tricky family conversations, after…

Q I have a patch of grass in which daffodils, snowdrops and muscari are naturalised. What could I plant to follow on from them in the summer? Helen Cant (via email) A What a lovely spectacle that area of lawn must be! For the best results year after year, deadhead the plants after they have flowered and let their leaves die back naturally. Keep the foliage watered regularly and fed fortnightly as it withers away, and this will help feed the bulbs for the following year’s spring display. As for bulbs to continue the show into summer, I suggest that you consider the following, which will bloom among ever taller grasses: ■ Triteleia laxa: Clusters of pale-blue trumpets from June to July. ■ Quamash (camassia) in variety: Spires of starry…

MOST of these plants will be going to the Mart in the village into their eleven raised beds around the car park and some of the pelargoniums will go into two tubs outside the local fire station. I am a volunteer in a small village gardening group and happen to have a wonderful Gabriel Ash leanto greenhouse against a southfacing wall, which retains the heat, hence I’m able to protect frost sensitive plants over winter. We had a plant sale on Saturday at the craft fair at the Mart – it was bitterly cold, wet and windy day, but four of us stuck it out and together with bird boxes, feeders and benches from a combined local SHED group we made over £200. One has to love gardening to do…

IF you have done most of your summer planting and your beds are full of perennials and bedding, it’s time to fill any remaining gaps with some quick-growing seeds. Many summer annuals take just a matter of weeks to go from seed to flower, and if you scatter them now, they will soon flourish in the warm soil. I like to mix a variety of quick seeds in a pot and scatter them throughout any empty areas in our beds. This year I’m sowing a mix of poppies, scabious, nigella, marigolds, California poppies and schizanthus. Hopefully several of them will selfseed too, and grow again next summer. The key to success here is to choose your site (a sunny, sheltered spot will get the best results) and prepare your soil…

LATE May and early June are always a busy time in the garden, and now the chance of frost has passed (I sincerely hope, after frosts every night through April) all the half-hardy flowers, fruits and vegetables can be planted out. Hardy plants are growing like steam, not to mention weeds, so there are jobs to be done wherever you look. And it’s not just the coming months, as over the next few weeks we need to be planning and then sowing for spring 2022. On my list are wallflowers, with an aim to grow some 22 different cultivars for trial, forget-me-nots, foxgloves, sweet williams and Iceland poppies (Papaver nudicaule). There are flower buds just opening on a new sample of these poppies – one of the few poppies that…

Q I have given up my allotment, but would still like to grow veg. Do you think doing so in containers is worth the effort and what should I try? Susanna Miller, West Houghton, Greater Manchester A Growing veg in containers will require a different mindset, but is definitely worthwhile. You are losing the prospect of self-sufficiency, including the mounds of beans and sacks of potatoes, but are gaining tasty pickings of fresh, flavoursome veg to enliven your meals. Advantages include very little weeding, crops within easy reach of the kitchen and no gluts! To make the best use of space in containers, raise veg in modules first to plant when the last crop comes out, or keep things simple and sow direct. Crops to start now include mangetout and…

LILIES are admired the world over for both their spectacular beauty and enduring mystique. They have a place in any garden, whether it’s formal or informal, massive or tiny. And their popularity has increased dramatically in the past couple of decades, as new gardeners have found them to be easy to grow. There are around 90 species in the lilium genus, but the most popular lilies are the Asiatic hybrids, quickly followed by the Oriental and Aurelian hybrids. Lilies are growing apace now, with flowers about to burst open (if they haven’t already), so the time is right to take a look at these captivating plants. ■ Lilies are second only to roses as the most popular cut flower, according to direct2florist.co.uk. Millions are sold to customers every day! Introducing…

THE ‘Smart Dyson’ might be well designed, but it clogs up on weedy ground, so the training method for my grapevine (what did you think I was talking about?) has to be one that keeps the fruits well clear of the soil. I’ve been looking into various vinetaming techniques for the seedless ‘Suffolk Red’ grape planted alongside my garden office, which, if left to its own devices, would turn into a knot of leafy but fruitless stems. But with a little discipline, pruning and training, I’ve high hopes it will provide a reliable harvest. At first glance vine care can seem complicated, but in gardens most are grown like climbing roses, with their main branches tied in to permanent supports from which flowering sideshoots emerge each summer. Still, while climbing…

THE use of peat in horticulture continues to be the industry’s hottest topic, with charities such as Garden Organic, the National Trust and the RHS trying to wean gardeners off using the material, backed by Government initiatives. AG has been talking to industry leaders about how they are moving towards a peat-free regime – and why it has taken so long. Keith Nicholson, marketing director Westland, said the brand has spent the past two decades working to reduce the peat content in its growing media. It’s New Horizon peat-free range has proved very successful and the company is working hard to find a reliable alternative to peat for the remainder of its growing media. Keith said: “We have been on this journey for the past 18-20 years and spent £38-40…

IF the unseasonably cold and dry start to spring was hard for us, spare a thought for our pollinating insects who turned up on time, only to find that many of the garden plants they rely on for food were several weeks behind their usual timetable. Things have caught up now, but our vital garden insects – the bees, butterflies and other winged creatures that help fertilise our plants – still need our help, especially as many of their natural habitats are being lost to intensive agriculture and development. Give them a reason to flock to your garden with this week’s free seeds, a special mix designed by Mr Fothergill’s to feed and nurture our butterflies. The mix may vary from packet to packet but its contents may include corn…

WITH luck, our crops should be in their fullest flush of growth. Light levels are high even when the sun is obscured by clouds and, just as importantly, our daylight hours are approaching maximum. Think about it: with light from just before dawn until just after sunset, plants are working 17-plus hours a day. Thus, right now they need massive supplies of food and water to make use of all that light to grow vigorously and swell good crops. If we’ve done our job well and our soil is in good heart with plenty of humus, then this will hold moisture between rains and provide fertility as it warms up. Of course, we cannot depend on the rainfall to top up our soil moisture. On average, most vegetables and fruits…

CALABRESE, also known as Italian broccoli or green sprouting broccoli, is an anomaly in the large brassica family, preferring to develop its harvest in summer rather than winter. Early sowings should be ready now, or you can sow now for later harvests. But how do you get the best from it? Stretching the harvest window This sturdy form of Brassica oleracea belongs to the same species that gives us our stalwart winter brassicas, yet it was developed in the Calabria region of Italy. While calabrese will grow through winter in an unheated greenhouse, most of us grow it as a summer crop. “Help plants to develop ample leaf surface area” The age-old issue of gluts is easily avoided if you sow small batches once a month from March until June;…

You can listen to Steve on alternate Sundays 10am-2pm on BBC Radio Kent’s Sunday Gardening (BBC Local) GROWING plants in containers allows you to extend your garden onto hard-surface areas or lets you grow plants if you have no garden at all. However, keeping up with the watering can be difficult, especially with larger plants that need a regular supply in hot weather or if you are away for a few days. Unlike plants in the ground, which can send new roots in search of water underground, those growing in containers are entirely dependent on you for their supply. Insufficient water shows as wilting in the early stages, but there is a ‘permanent wilting point’ beyond which they will not recover and you will at least need to prune off…