Innholdsfortegnelse for 24-Jul-2021 i Amateur Gardening

“Robert Bruce and the tenacious spider that inspired him not to give up came to mind when I levered the first of my ‘last chance garlic’ from its earthy slumber. I had tried growing garlic in the past, but the harvest was so small as to be barely usable. After two disappointing seasons, I really didn’t want to waste the growing space in my border a third time. However, I decided to give it one last chance and do a container planting in October rather than in spring, as I had previously. Eight months later, and I harvested the bulbs in the picture above. If at first you don’t succeed: try, try again.” Contact us: 03303331113 03303903732 03303906566…

IT is looking comparatively sparse in the greenhouse, now the seedlings, tender perennials, olive and lemon trees have moved into the garden for the summer. However, despite the reduction in plants, there is still no let-up when it comes to keeping the greenhouse and its summer contents of tomatoes and aubergines in good order. If it gets too hot, plants will wilt, and if the atmosphere dries out it creates perfect conditions for glasshouse red spider mites. These tiny sap-suckers weaken plants, causing the leaves to look mottled and eventually fall. They also signal their presence by covering plants in fine webbing. They can be deterred by keeping the greenhouse environment damp by wetting the floor and leaving bowls of water dotted around to raise humidity. If you already have…

THERE have been many memorable exhibits built at our national shows over the years, and taking cuttings from some garden pinks reminded me of the eye-catching display staged by Whetman Pinks in 2012. This company has carried out very successful dianthus breeding over the years and its strongly scented cut-flower cultivars ‘Bridal Star’ and ‘Pink Ruffles’ more than make up for the lack of perfume in cut flower spray carnations. While all of the pinks are hardy perennials, after around three years plants tend to get woody and are better replaced by new stock, easily rooted from softwood cuttings in summer. Old plants can be cut back in spring to rejuvenate them, but to be on the safe side, propagating more now is to be recommended. “The right type of…

■ If your plot isn’t kept up to scratch you’ll be given official notice to improve it, and if you don’t, you’ll lose it. ■ You can’t take produce from an abandoned plot – you’d be trespassing! ■ While allotments can’t be used for commercial activity, most authorities allow the sale of genuine surplus. ■ Keep your plot as free from weeds as you can, to prevent nuisance seeds from blowing onto neighbouring plots. ■ You’re allowed to grow cut flowers on an allotment, but avoid invasive plants such as bamboo and willow. ■ Pests that carry health risks like vermin (such as rats in a compost heap) must be controlled by the plot holder.…

John has been answering reader queries for 50 years When and how can I relocate my fuchsias? Q I want to move four full-grown fuchsias to a better place in our garden. Can you tell me when it is OK to move them, please, and how to go about it? James Thornton (via email) A The best time to move your fuchsias, presumably hardy varieties, is in October or November when the soil is still summer warm. Your charges will recover well before winter. Start by shortening stems to within 1-2ft (30-60cm) of the base, to reduce water loss. Then lift each bush with as large a rootball as possible. large a rootball as possible. Reset them in generous planting holes enriched with soil-conditioning compost and water them in. If…

WE always expect the height of summer to be packed with flowers and colour, but sometimes the garden can look a little sparse. The bouncy alliums, foxgloves, ornamental thistles, knapweeds and pulmonarias of spring and early summer are starting to fade and the full glories of midsummer may not have got fully into their stride. By tending plants carefully, cutting back, deadheading and planting, you can create a seamless wall of colour. Keep plants flowering strongly for as long as possible by feeding, watering, deadheading and keeping them free of pests and disease. Control weeds every week by running a hoe over your soil to cut unwanted seedlings off at the roots. At this time of year you can still just about get away with the Chelsea chop – removing…

AG reader Jenny Carter has shared a genius idea for keeping tall greenhouse plants upright as they grow through summer. She said: “My greenhouse tip is to use shower curtain clips to attach tomato main stems to a support cane. It’s also easy to move them up the cane as the plant grows.” Alan Bocking from Stockport in Cheshire said: “While I no longer have a mini greenhouse as I upgraded to a 10x8 greenhouse, I found a number of things useful. “While the plastic covering often splits with age, if you put the clear sticky plastic film that you can buy on a roll from places like Smiths, over the tears to mend them, it saves buying new covers continually.” He added: “Having got rid of both of my…

RIGHT now we have a huge stand of honesty in the garden. Its pink and white flowers have faded and the trademark flat penny seedpods are developing, still green, but in autumn they will turn that distinctive peppery brown, which means they are ready to collect and sow. Honesty (Lunaria annua) is one of our most recognisable plants. A hardy biennial and member of the brassica clan, it produces large clumps of flowers that are superseded by the delicate seedpods beloved of flower arrangers. The frothy blooms are usually white, occasionally pink, but this week’s batch of free seeds from Mr Fothergill’s is a delightful mix of the two. Sow now in well-raked soil and the seeds will germinate in time for the seedlings to develop strong root systems before…

I DON’T have to tell you that this April was one of driest for decades, and it was also the frostiest since records began in 1960. Growth stalled in my even-colder-than-usual Cotswolds garden, then May arrived and delivered a deluge, and that pushed the start button. Everything began to grow, and then the slugs came out from their hidey-holes and began to nibble. Lots of gardeners will have been tempted into buying slug pellets in order to protect their vulnerable plants such as hostas and bedding plants. It’s a timely reminder that Highgrove House in Gloucestershire, the organic garden of HRH The Prince of Wales, holds a Plant Heritage collection of larger hostas. The gardeners control any slug problems with the help of their abundant wildlife (birds, amphibians and beetles).…

1 Hang wasp traps or deterrents among vulnerable crops such as grapes and orchard fruits to deter numbers. Also, rake up all fallen fruit. 2 If you have bare patches that won’t be filled by new crops, sow a quick-maturing (like mustard) or a hardy (ryegrass) green manure now. 3 Take semi-ripe cuttings of woody herbs such as lavender, rosemary, thyme and sage. Position them somewhere shady and keep well watered for success. 4 If you’ve applied nematodes as biological controls against slugs, weevils or ants, keep the soil consistently moist so that the eelworms can swim through the soil. 5 Stake plants like chillies, sweet peppers and aubergines before they set excess fruit and become top-heavy. Keep applying high-potash liquid feed frequently.…

This week it’s: Miniature and ground-cover roses If you want a pretty low-growing rose, then try one of these! WHILE many of us absolutely adore roses, some of us have one or two mainly because we feel obliged to. You can tell which camp I’m in as, at the last count, I have 27 roses of different types, shapes, sizes and colours – and if I had room I’d have many more. Sometimes gardeners feel they don’t have sufficient space for a rose, yet if they looked at the increasing range of miniature and ground-cover varieties they’d see that they could always squeeze in a few. Let’s take a closer look at these two groups. ■ Miniatures range in height from 3-12in (7.5-30cm); any taller, and they merge into what…

■ From AG 18 April 1885 The Gruyère cheese plant Some think that Melilotus officinalis is a British plant, but of that there is some doubt, although in parts of Norfolk and Cambridgeshire it is plentiful in the hay fields. It grows 2-3ft (60-90cm) high and has triple leaves, which are narrow and serrated. The pale-yellow flowers appear from June-August, and are succeeded by seed vessels that are large and long in proportion to the flowers. The whole plant is powerfully aromatic, and when it occurs in the hay the fragrance of the field is peculiar, and reminds one of the remarkably rich odour of mountain hay on Dartmoor, Snowdon and other elevated regions, the high valleys of the Alps included. The beekeeper may with advantage speculate in a few…

Q Over the past few years, we’ve planted different varieties of phlox into mixed borders. The plants seem to have shrunk and make one or two spindly stems with few flowers. How do we encourage a proper show? Meg Duncroft, Doncaster, South Yorks. A There are alpine phlox, dainty semi-evergreen blue phlox (cultivars of P. divaricata) and annual phlox (P. drummondii), but I think we are dealing here with cultivars of the herbaceous perennial Phlox paniculata. These fragrant phloxes are the best known of their group and should make generous clumps of fluttering flowers around 3ft (1m) tall and at their best from July-September. Their tall straight stems are great for cutting, making them a favourite florist’s flower for summer bouquets. The species is native to eastern parts of the…

I’VE just spent the night in the garden – not because I’ve lost the house keys, but as a show of support for Send a Cow’s ‘Gardens for Good’ Campaign. I wish I could say that pitching a tent on the lawn and sleeping under the stars was like taking a holiday at home, but it wasn’t. Not only do I lack comfortable camping equipment, but it turns out that my garden is noisier than downtown Marrakesh on market day. From the moment the sun went down, the hullabaloo of the birds was incessant, with seagulls cackling at their own jokes, followed at midnight by a blackbird trilling the last post from a spot right by my tent. After a few short hours, he packed up his bugle only for…

AREN’T biennials blooming amazing? These generally low-maintenance plants add so much colour, variety and beauty to our gardens. Biennials are plants that germinate one year, sit through winter then flower, set seed and die the following year. They include some of our brightest and best: wallflowers, vipers bugloss, Nigella, foxgloves, sweet William, sweet rocket and hollyhocks (which are best treated as biennials even though they are actually short-lived perennials). If you sow them now, nurture and pot on your seedlings and plant them out in late summer or autumn while there is still warmth in the soil, they will grace your garden with effortless colour and interest next year. Some of them are also prized for what they offer after flowering as well. Take honesty, for example, the seeds of…

PRUNING is so often seen as a winter task, when often it’s better done around now. You see, winter pruning, when the trees are ‘dormant’, is better for the initial shaping, forming trunks and branches. Pruning is also kinder done in winter when a large amount of timber is to be removed. The drawback is that winter pruning promotes a resurgence of growth, replacing just as much as was removed. This does not help in keeping control of the size, nor does it encourage fruiting – it just encourages more growth. Alternatively, when you prune in summer, you can redirect growth in your favour – for more fruit, not wood. Furthermore, the stone-fruit family (apricots, cherries, peaches and plums) can only safely be pruned in summer to avoid letting in…

THERE are well over 300,000 of them in the UK, and they offer an excellent route to grow fruit, vegetables and herbs if you don’t have a sizeable garden – plus, they inject a colourful sense of community and culture into our lives. I am, of course, talking about allotment plots, and the way we look after them has an impact not just on ourselves, but also on our plot neighbours and the local area. So, when it comes to allotment etiquette, what are the hard-and-fast rules? Management schemes The set-up of your site will dictate its management. For example, allotment sites can be privately or council owned, and additionally they may be managed by an elected committee via an allotment association. When you take on a plot you will…

RUNNER beans are stalwart veg in allotments and gardens up and down the land. Even if your plants aren’t yet podding up, they’ll no doubt be covered in blossom. Bees are the main pollinators so, provided your plants are in a sunny and relatively sheltered spot, pods will eventually form (if plants get dry at their roots flowers can drop off, devoid of pods, so water well). Flower clusters and shoot tips can get smothered in blackfly. It’s essential that blackfly numbers don’t get too high, so blast them off with a jet of water, or apply an organic fatty acid-based spray should the population look to be exploding. Ample water is a must if you want runners to yield well – douse plants generously first thing in the morning…

THE brassica family gives us a huge proportion of our leafy crops, and namenia (Brassica rapa) is no exception. Sown now and given plenty of water, this hardy salad leaf will bulk up gently throughout autumn to give generous pickings all winter long. Either sow into drills direct into the soil, or, if sowing in the autumn months, start clusters of seeds off in modules under glass. Mature plants will ultimately form a rosette of green, slightly peppery, serrated leaves – eat raw as a salad leaf or wilt down in stir-fries. For those of you familiar with mizuna, this leaf is similar in growth and taste. It will grow happily outdoors all winter, but under cloches or even in greenhouse borders its foliage will be more buttery and soft.…

HAND shears are not hard to find or purchase, but it is important to find the best ones to suit your needs. The shears you need to trim a hedge may not be ideal if you have topiary to trim. Where you have smaller plants you want to train and shape, the size and shape of the shears are important. There are many models labelled as topiary shears, ranging from single-handed ‘slippers’ through to models that may be called topiary shears, but are really more suited to trimming a hedge. The shape of the blades is important and should be considered a crucial part of your selection process. The finer the work you intend to do, the narrower the blades should be and any that are short with a fine…

I MUST write and add my two pennyworth as to your waste News item (AG, 19 June). Councils such as ours charge an annual £50 for a collection every two weeks, where as before it was free, which is a lot of money for people on low income. Gardens today such as mine are tiny with no space for garden waste or compost areas and so waste goes into the general waste bin and penalties are imposed. It’s a catch-22 situation! In our close, we have all chipped in to have a few bins picked up and a rota usage in place, not ideal but it works. Councils do need to have funding from the government to help people recycle, and to help the planet for future generations. Trev Wilson,…