Innholdsfortegnelse for 3-Jul-2021 i Amateur Gardening

“I don’t know about your garden, but mine is positively blooming at the moment. The roses are bountiful, the rock garden is ‘rocking’ and the potatoes are getting closer to cropping. However, as we all know, there is little time to admire the view as it’s peak deadheading, watering and (in the case of my spuds, toms and chillies) feeding time. And then there are the pests to deal with. I generally let the insects and slugs get on with it, so my main battle is with plant pests, and public enemy No1 for me is bindweed. What an amazing plant: I can’t help admiring its ability to creep up on my other plants, wrapping itself around their stems. Every morning, I’m on bindweed patrol, but they just keep coming…

OUR raspberries grow well against a wooden fence. The canes grow so prolifically they need tying back but because we need to access the fence for running repairs, we can’t erect a permanent support for them. So far we have made do with canes and twine or wire, but I think we have found a more satisfactory solution. GHeko Stem Ties are plastic pieces with a hole for twine or wire. They are designed to sit securely between fence panels and once a line of them is in place horizontally, or set vertically, you can tension wire or twine between them to tether climbing and rambling plants. I fixed a line of them to the fence behind our raspberries, and successfully used twine between them to hold back the raspberries.…

SOWING foxglove seeds for our garden is like shipping coals to Newcastle. We have chalky soil and Digitalis thrive in it, self-seeding one year and delighting us the following spring with their tall spires of freckled pink trumpets. It’s just as well we like them! This week’s free seeds are for Digitalis purpurea ‘Alba’, which produce white trumpets with delicate freckling inside. They grow to 48in (120cm) and will glow out from sunshine or the dappled shade that, as woodland plants, is their preferred environment. There is a wealth of folklore behind these attractive biennials. Some say their name is an adaptation of ‘folksglove’, as in gloves worn by fairy folk, while others say they were worn by foxes to keep the dew off their paws. The rich veins of…

THIS is a busy time in our gardens as we move from mostly sowing and planting to non-stop harvesting. Indeed, harvesting can become so time-consuming – especially with all the watering that’s also required – that we neglect to carry on starting new crops. While our plots may be full to bursting point, space will become available as crops mature, and we should not let such opportunities escape. Before long, garlic, onions and new potatoes (to name just a few) will be lifted and gone, so be ready to use that spare soil as soon as it’s free. You can sow quite a few crops as soon as there is any space, because although they may not make a great size they will still give a fair harvest. Carrots, beetroot…

John has been answering reader queries for 50 years What can be ruining my strawberries? Q I have started growing a few strawberry plants and until a couple of weeks ago I had unblemished fruit. However, now more than a third of the strawberries have damage at the top. They are in an area that is covered by a net, so it’s not birds. Can you give me any suggestions on how I could prevent this? Peter Holmes (via email) A I am sorry that a third of your strawberry fruits are damaged. As your crop is covered with netting we can discount birds, unless they are perching on it, weighing it down and seizing fruits that come within reach. I am wondering what sort of damage your crop has…

Is it too late for biennials? Q While leafing through an old magazine, I saw some pictures of a plant called Lunaria annua ‘Corfu Blue’. I love the colour, and would love to grow it. If I can track down some seed, is it too late to sow it? Rebecca Hyde, Horsham, West Sussex A This is a particularly lovely seed strain of honesty, with flowers more violet-blue than the usual purple – a theme carried through to purple-tinged seed pods and bluish foliage on plants up to 3ft (1m) tall. I believe seeds are available from chilternseeds.co.uk or avonbulbs.co.uk. Despite the name Lunaria annua, honesty is usually biennial, the term given to plants that grow from seed one year, overwinter as rosettes of growth, and flower the following year.…

THE height of the summer is upon us and our gardens should be looking glorious, full of life and colour, and with the promise of more crops and flowers to come. Mature perennials, trees and shrubs can largely be left to their own devices, apart from those that require deadheading, as well as summer pruning (cherries, plum varieties, and shrubs that flower in early summer such as weigela and philadelphus). Annuals and bedding require more attention, especially if they are growing in containers and need regular top-ups of water and food. These also need deadheading as soon as flowers start to fade to keep them tidy and flowering for longer. With consistent care, annuals and bedding can keep going until the first frosts if they stay healthy. If left unchecked,…

I GO very gooey over dahlias because they have few equals when it comes to style and colour through summer and autumn. I love their endless variety, whether they have close-petalled pom-pom flower heads or carry more expansive blooms that open out like water lilies over foliage that is either lush green or eye-catching bronze For all their beauty they are pretty robust, and will flower from midsummer until well into the autumn, only giving up for the year when the first frosts have blackened their leaves. However, although they are fairly self-sufficient, they can’t be left entirely to their own devices as pests and other problems do seem to flock their way. Snails, earwigs, capsid bugs and aphids will make a meal of petals and leaves, leaving plants looking…

THE weather is very unpredictable these days, and we’ve had four really dry springs in a row in Cold Aston. They have all been different, and spring 2020, which I shall always refer to as the ‘lockdown spring’, followed a wet autumn and winter when it seemed to rain every day for months. Although the sky was cloudless in April and May, the nights were warm and there was plenty of moisture in the ground. As a result, everything germinated like cress in my garden, including the parsnips. Summer was then unsettled, and rain returned. Last year, many gardeners began to grow their own for the first time and conditions were perfect. A recent press release revealed that 46% of Brits (their word, not mine) grew some fruit and vegetables.…

This week it’s: Paradoxical marigolds We look at this special top-selling bedding plant GARDEN marigolds are a paradox. Neither the French nor the African marigold comes from the countries they’re named after – the tagetes genus is essentially from Central and Southern America! Another paradoxical feature is that marigolds are among the top-selling bedding types, yet people claim to dislike them more than any other type! Colour is one factor in this, as most varieties are marked by a fierceness of orange. On the plus side, marigolds are arguably the easiest of summer flowers: they tolerate dryness, they flower profusely, there are few problems (apart from slugs on young plants) and they last a long time. Let’s take a closer look. ■ All true marigolds (that is, members of the…

■Watering: Plants need regular watering, especially if they are in a greenhouse or containers. Harvest waste water (and lighten your bills!) by installing water butts and using ‘grey’ washing up water that isn’t too dirty. Save the runoff that flows while the hot tap is heating up. ■ Feeding: Feed anything cropping, plants that are still flowering and anything that you have deadheaded that might have a second burst of colour. Hungry crops such as tomatoes need feeding weekly, while annual bedding will appreciate a fortnightly boost. ■ Planting: Keep on planting! It will extend the summer’s colour and fill any gaps that appear as plants finish flowering or are lost to pests. Make sure you stand plants in water first, protect them from slugs and keep them well-watered while…

THE blasted snails made a meal of most of our Rudbeckia seedlings, but there are a few survivors to be potted on and moved to the mini greenhouse. They are half hardy perennials, though usually treated as half hardy annuals, and as they are still far too small to plant out I plan to overwinter them undercover and get them into the garden next spring. This will involve potting them on once more, at least, before winter, but that’s fine by me as their sunny, sturdy, yellow flowers that can withstand all weathers, with beady black centres make them one of my favourite summer plants. It doesn’t hurt that they are also popular with pollinators and are extremely versatile, growing well in borders as well as containers. While I was…

MANY of the popular plants in our gardens have occurred by chance. The late Ralph Gould, for example, introduced over 100 new flowering plants when working in seed production for a then-Essex based seed company. Walking row after row of plants being grown in fields for seed and pulling out anything not true to type, called ‘rogueing’, he would spot the occasional mutation. This is the way we got red flowered nigella, commonly called love-in-a-mist and blue in the original cultivar. His selections could be for plant habit with more compact growth, variegated foliage, different flower colour (called a sport) and double rather than single flower form. Ralph would mark such plants with a tall stake, ready to go back to either carefully lift and pot up to grow on,…

WITH eager spring sowings and the correct storage, it is possible for you to supply your kitchen with homegrown beets all year long. So how do you ensure that those supplies keep rolling in? Hopefully, your garden contains at least one row of beetroot, but I’m here to encourage you to swell that to three or four rows. That’s the secret to great beetroot – sow small batches every month outdoors from April until July for a succession of roots. If you really love this nutrient-packed veg, make a final larger sowing now. “The sweetness levels are now much improved” This harvest (made in late October) will keep in storage for months; I’ve kept mine in perfect condition well into May. All that’s needed is a box of sand and…

WE are regularly asked how to propagate difficult-to-root plants. These may be plants that usually need specialist propagation facilities or those that are normally grown as two plants joined together (with the desired variety grafted onto a rootstock). Plants like these are expensive, unusual or, more frequently, of sentimental value. Many expensive, choice plants and new introductions have been propagated using specialised techniques, such as grafting, mist propagation or micro-propagation under laboratory conditions. There is a way to propagate some of these at home, but it requires timing and patience, as it can take up to 18 months for some plants to produce roots. The method here is called ‘layering’ and it produces a new plant that is identical to its parent. Although it may seem long-winded, it has the…

Little book of plant names BETTY Nowell (AG, 5 June 2021) does not find gardening names easy to pronounce. Nor do I, but I have a copy on a bookshelf somewhere, not my bed-side table, entitled Plant Names Simplified by Johnson and Smith which may be of some help to anyone with similar difficulties. As you say there may be no right or wrong way, I remember many years ago when I occasionally read a lesson in our village church asking the vicar about the pronunciation of a particular word. Not knowing himself, his answer was it did not matter, but if the word occurred twice in the same lesson then you must use the same pronunciation each time, or else someone at the back of the church could pick…

APHIDS reproduce so quickly, they make the fabled old woman who lived in a shoe look like a poster girl for family planning. Never mind speed dating – aphids don’t even need to mate to produce young and, unusually for insects, waste no time hatching from eggs. Instead, they cut to the chase and give birth to live young, babies that are already pregnant with the next aphid generation in their belly. And they give birth a lot. Each insect can have four babies a day, and one or two can become thousands in less than a week. In fact, entomologists with a mathematical bent have calculated that should all the offspring born from one greenfly survive predation, by the end of summer the parent would have a billion descendants…