Innholdsfortegnelse for 14-Aug-2021 i Amateur Gardening

AS summer wends its way towards the final curtain – hopefully with a last hurrah of heat and sunshine – I have been spending time nurturing our smaller woody shrubs and carrying out last-minute midsummer pruning. This is the most important task as from September, silver leaf spores will start circulating again with the potential to infect late-pruned cherry, plum, gage, almond and apricot trees. It is a debilitating problem that turns the foliage a silvery colour before infecting woody material, and it enters the plant through pruning wounds. The spores are most widespread during damp spells in autumn and winter, which is why vulnerable trees are cut back in summer, when there is less chance of infection. Always use clean, sharp pruning tools that are cleaned and disinfected after…

WHATEVER climate change throws at us, the one thing you can rely on with a British summer is that we will complain when it is too hot and sunny, and grouch even more when it rains! But come what may, we will still have to water our plants, and as water becomes more and more precious, it is important not to waste it. There are several simple ways to optimise the water you use. Watering in the early morning or early evening, before or after the worst of the day’s heat, lets it sink into the soil before evaporating. Water slowly, so liquid has time to absorb where needed, rather than running off when compost or soil is very dry. You can also mitigate this by creating little moats around…

THIS week’s free seeds are a new recruit to Mr Fothergill’s impressive roster. Nettle-leaved bellflower Campanula trachelium), which is also charmingly known as ‘bats in the belfry’, is a charming hardy perennial that carries a cascade of bell-shaped blue flowers above serrated leaves. As well as being an attractive addition to the garden, these flowers are also incredibly alluring to bees and hoverflies – we have a stand of them out the front and you can hear the buzzing among the blooms from several feet away! An added incentive is that like many native wildflowers, these tough plants are happy in poor, dry soil, so they require minimal care and will happily get on with growing by themselves. Growing to just over a foot in height, bellflowers can be sown…

IF it’s true that we eat with our eyes, then we should all cultivate a range of edible flowers in our garden. Let’s look at the selection available and how best to eat them. I don’t know why eating flowers seems such an alien concept to us, when we merrily eat leaves, roots and tubers. After all, what is a globe artichoke if not a giant flowerbud? Hopefully, you will not find it weird, because the buttery texture and range of colours can bring extra depth to so many dishes. Oh, and don’t forget those amazing colours! Once picked, just remember to allow your blooms to sit for a while so pollen beetles and other insects have time to remove themselves. “They can bring extra depth to so many dishes”…

Spanish beauty Q Can you please identify this plant for me that grew among my coleus plants? C. Jones-Evans (via email) A The plant in question is Spanish flag (Ipomaea lobata). A perennial climber related to morning glory (Ipomoea tricolor), it’s a native of Central and South America. Usually raised from seed sown in gentle heat in March or April, seedlings are hardened off and planted outdoors when frosts finish in late May or early June. It has great appeal when adorning an arch or trellis, where its tubular scarlet flowers, maturing to orange and yellow and finally white, command attention. Curious caterpillar Q What is this beastie? Graham Wright, Stonehouse, Glos A This is the caterpillar of an elephant hawk moth, which has striking pink and green wings. The…

By-gone days of gardening Star letter IFIRST started gardening at the age of 18. I used to grow large exhibition chrysanthemums for showing and the other day I came across a medal which I won, presented by Amateur Gardening. It is about 65 years old and I am very proud of it. There is a lot of talk about peat free compost. I can remember the time soilless compost came out for the first time, I think it was Levingtons. In those days we used to make our own John Innes compost with a kettle element installed in an old tin and a bucket with a hole cut out of its bottom and a wire funnel inside which steamed the loam and killed any bacteria. The soilless compost was a…

WOODY herbs such as sage and lavender are coming to the end of their flowering now and can be tidied up and their flower heads saved to scent the home. I am loath to deadhead lavender at this point as the bees are still flocking (or swarming) to it to drain every last drop of its pollen. But I do like to collect a few handfuls of English lavender stems to dry and store to scent the home, as the perfume lingers even when the flowers start to go over. I leave alone the French lavender, with its bulbous, tufted flowerheads, and only snip off the faded flowerheads to keep the plants shapely. Harvesting English lavender is easy; just grasp a handful of stems and cut through using a sharp…

LUSCIOUS homegrown berries are one of the highlights of the summer harvest and this year was no exception. Our strawberries and early raspberries were extremely generous in their fruiting and now that has finished, it’s time to repay that generosity with some seasonal care. Summer-fruiting raspberry canes that have cropped need to be cut to ground level now, and the best of this year’s unfruited canes tied back for next summer’s crop. If you have a large row of canes with new and old plants growing together (like ours!), the canes to remove are the ones looking past their best, with tatty, yellowing leaves and drying stems. You can also start propagating strawberries. Each summer, the plants throw out ‘runners’, long overground roots that develop tufts of new leaves at…

DEPENDING on the weather, our lawns and grassed areas tend to grow little throughout August, which is often drier than the month of July. And it is during such long dry periods when sward can really suffer, going from dark, then pale green through parched to finally a browned-out bareness. Obviously watering is the cure, but it’s a profligate waste unless you are desperate to save your lawn. After all, grass usually recovers later in autumn anyway. Interestingly, though, it may be well worth looking closely at your sward right now to see if the lighter and darker patches can reveal some garden history. An old wall, foundation or path will be the sort of thing to show its hidden position in this way. Take photographs now, so if some…

◼ Agastache and bergamot: Pick, dry and blend with a standard loose-leaf tea to create your own bespoke infusions. ◼ Chives: Excellent if you’d like to add a mild onion flavour to salads, but find actual onion too harsh. ◼ Dandelion and calendula: Scatter petals over bowls of cooked rice as a far cheaper (and prettier) saffron substitute. ◼ Lavender: With their heady perfume, these tiny blooms are ideal for flavouring sugar and pepping up bland biscuits. ◼ Roses: To create a show-stopping centrepiece cake, coat a tiered sponge in butter icing and then add rose petals to cover it. ◼ Sage, dill, rosemary and basil: The flowers of these herbs give a milder flavour than the leaves, making them an ideal garnish for meat or fish. Lucy’s choice 3…

You can listen to Steve on alternate Sundays 10am-2pm on BBC Radio Kent’s Sunday Gardening (BBC Local) NOTHING tastes as good as fresh fruit straight from the garden, and as gardens get smaller this can be difficult – but not impossible. Family trees allow you to grow three varieties on a single stem and patio trees can be grown in containers, but even these need attention. In the case of family trees, careful pruning is needed to ensure that one variety does not become dominant and force out the others. Pruning should be year-round It is perfectly possible to grow fruit successfully in a small space and get a good yield, but you need to rethink your ideas about pruning. Despite accepted wisdom, pruning is not just a winter task…

Photo of the week It’s a jungle out there… JUST thought you might be interested in our delphiniums we grew from seed from your magazine a couple of years ago, they are magnificent. That’s my husband peeping through them! Mrs M Barker, Dronfield, Derbys ‘Weird beauty’ IN gardens, beauty is in the eye of the beholder as well as everywhere else in life. Our stunning roses can’t get much more perfect and to me this very bizarre sempervivum has pulled out all the stops in its train planter for its own perfection and weird beauty, utterly fascinating plants. Sylvia Monk, Hayling Island, Hants Reader’s Tip WHEN growing tomatoes, I add some bicarbonate of soda to the soil, making sure that none is sprinkled on the plants themselves. It counteracts acidity…

NORTHERN Ireland gardeners are still effectively unable to buy seeds by mail order from mainland UK because of complex post-Brexit rules, writes Matthew Appleby. UK seed companies are not selling packets of seeds direct to customers in the province because after the UK left the European Union in 2020, all seeds intended for planting moving to Northern Ireland require a phytosanitary certificate and require pre-notification, making individual seed-packet sales impossible. Kings Seeds’ horticultural director Andrew Tokely said: “We are not exporting any seed to Northern Ireland, or Ireland, due to costs and import complications – Animal and Plant Health Agency rules. So we are only servicing customers in Great Britain.” Northern Ireland Protocol The rules are in place because of the new relationship between the EU and the UK including…

STARTING a border from scratch is easy, while maintaining new plantings by regular hoeing for weed control or using a weed-suppressing membrane is also pretty straightforward. The tricky bit is when plantings of a perennial nature begin to grow too large for the space available for them and others are worn out. Woody shrubs can be pruned back and a good general rule is to prune after flowering, possibly taking out one third of the old branches each year, so that by the third year a shrub has been completely renewed. There are exceptions, though. Brooms (Cytisus) and lavender (Lavendula), for example, do not take kindly to being pruned back into old wood and are better lightly trimmed after flowering. “Lavender is a short-lived plant and most had died” The…

I BOUGHT a new-to-me car last November, in the middle of lockdown, and it’s been very economical. I was still on the same tank of petrol five months later, because I couldn’t get out! It’s only been in the carwash once since I’ve had it, so it already has that lived-in look both inside and out. I have had to use screen wash once or twice, but there are not very many insects splattered on my car. It was all so different 30 years ago, when my daily commute was 40 miles (65km) long. In the summer I would have to allow an extra five minutes in the morning, twice a week, to scrape the windscreen, otherwise I couldn’t see properly. The headlights had to have the same treatment, because…

Solving the slug issue naturally Q I have a problem with slugs, but because I garden in a wildlife-friendly way I don’t want to use pellets. What are the best alternatives? Aimee Newman, Coventry A Slugs are a universal nuisance to gardeners, but there are lots of ways of helping control them that don’t involve the use of poisons or chemicals. You could try beer traps, but make sure the rim of the container stands proud of the soil into which it is sunk, to reduce the risk of beneficial ground beetles falling in and drowning. Nemasys supplies a nematode worm called Nemaslug, which you water on to the soil. The nematodes – microscopic parasites – enter the slug and kill it. It will not harm children, pets or other…

This week it’s: Petunias galore We look at a staple of summer bedding BETWEEN all the seed companies and nurseries specialising in bedding plants, there are hundreds of different types of petunia on offer. Therefore, with all the minuscule variations of shades and colour combinations, a gardener so inclined is able to create the most precise selection for carefully colour-themed plantings. As a bedding plant devotee (I grew up in the Royal Parks of London, where my father worked), I rank the petunia as not just the quintessential summer bedding flower, but also an absolute requirement in any garden during the season. Let’s take a closer look. ◼ Petunias also offer a multitude of other features: small or large flowers, single or double flowers, dwarf or large plants, bushy or…

Dealing with rose problems Q I understand why I should leave roses unsprayed for the benefit of wildlife, but what can I do about my precious rose buds being spoilt by greenfly and rose leaves being decimated by blackspot? Lorna White, Maidstone, Kent A Standing back and letting nature take its course can be frustrating if you’ve been used to striving for perfection, but in my experience this is well worthwhile. Most roses bud up ready for their first flush of flowers at the beginning of June and there will be greenfly often in such numbers they cover buds completely. They attack leaves, too, sometimes causing puckering and distortion. Yet we’d be in trouble if there weren’t any aphids. Just think of all the small birds struggling to feed their…

I FIRST saw giant viper’s bugloss in 1980, growing in a front garden on the other side of the valley from my mum’s house. Although half a mile away, the azure-blue tower of the flowers was unmissable, standing as tall as a lamppost and quickly becoming the talk of the town. Since that early encounter, I’ve had a soft spot for what botanists call Echium pininana, and from London to Cambridge to Devon I have grown them in my garden. Echiums have a live-fast-and-die-young monocarpic survival strategy, in that they flower once and then turn up their toes. This usually happens in their second year, but only after they’ve produced around 20,000 seeds per spike, which, once they’ve fallen, will come up all over from cracks in the paving and…