Innholdsfortegnelse for 29-Jan-2022 i Amateur Gardening

“I am very sad to have to report the recent passing of our much-respected columnist Peter Seabrook, from a heart attack, aged 86. Peter’s column graced the pages of AG for over 35 years and in that time he helped generations of amatuers to become better, more informed growers. Peter devoted his life to the promotion of gardening as a health-giving, environmentally beneficial hobby. He was a ceaseless campaigner who had the courage and integrity to stand up for what he believed in, regardless of popularist opinions. Chelsea will never be the same without his displays in the Great Pavilion, and RHS Hyde Hall will be the poorer for his passing — both should create a memorial. I have lost a friend and mentor who cannot be replaced. Goodbye, dear…

THE Government has launched a wide-ranging consultation aiming to ban peat products by 2024 – and the views of AG readers will play an important role in deciding the way forward. The consultation, which runs until March 18 2022, covers everything from banning the extraction and imports of peat products, to implementing point-of-sale tariffs in garden centres. Other issues include, controversially, potential exemptions for scientific purposes with a maximum amount of peat harvesting allowed to prevent exploitation. Further research will also be carried out into the quality and global impacts of peat alternatives including coir, wool, wood fibre and sphagnum moss, which is faster growing than traditional peat bog moss. Commitment to ban peat The consultation is being led by Rebecca Pow MP, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Department…

GARRY, our editor, has been drawing attention to the need for more information on the outside of growing media bags. His worry, quite rightly, is that we need to know the recipe for any specific bag of peat-free seed, cuttings and potting compost because the chances are that every brand will be different, so will need different regularity of watering and feeding. Not just every brand, but quite likely different batches within a brand may vary as the season advances. Last year, I was told a major garden plant retailer switched from peat-based compost-grown plants to coir for their container grown lavenders and was surprised to find the plants dying in a very few days. It turned out that they died from drought, drying out much more quickly than they…

WE’RE in the dark days of winter and the weather can get very cold and bleak in the Cotswolds where I live. Despite that, there are early flowers around, but they’re not big and blowsy affairs. If they were, the wintry weather would reduce the petals to mush. Early flowers need to be weather resistant and they often consist of tiny, subtle collections of stamens in equally subtle colours, including ivory-white, pallid-lemon and cool-pink. They can’t lure the pollinators in by colour or flower power, so they resort to fragrance – and that’s very pleasing for the gardener, too. When you get a warmish January afternoon, that fragrance can carry for several yards if you’ve planted your winter-flowering shrubs in a sheltered, warm position. The first honey bees have already…

AS gardeners, we are the guardians of our little plots and if we view that as a microcosm of the greater whole, we can see ourselves as what Alan Titchmarsh calls ‘guardians of the planet’. Sadly the planet is facing a tough time and while we might feel helpless in the face of the wider climate emergency, we can take ownership of our gardens and local area, and make small but important changes there. Put together, the UK’s gardens take up an area roughly the size of Norfolk. That’s a lot of land that can be used for the good. Key environmental concerns are carbon emissions, single-use plastic and the devastating loss of habitats and the creatures that live there. We can all do our bit to help reverse all…

FOR me, one of the delights of gardening is being able to ‘sample your wares’ in summer as you go about your tasks. A mixture of summer and autumn-fruiting raspberries grow successfully up our sunny garden fence, and I feel extremely fortunate (and not a little naughty) as I pick a few here and there to fuel my pottering. They are relatively young plants, but last year provided a generous supply of juicy berries from June right through until late in the autumn. Our summer canes were cut back immediately after they had fruited, and the healthy, new canes were tied up in anticipation of this year’s harvest. The first weeks of the new year are when the autumn-fruiting canes are pruned and the ground mulched, as this creates enough…

I’M writing this a week before Christmas and we still have a penstemon bravely flowering. It is a mature plant, so more able to withstand winter than a youngster, but if you have success with this week’s free seeds you too can have long-lasting flowers in your borders from midsummer right through to the onset of winter. Penstemon ‘Scarlet Queen’ is an eye-catching hardy perennial with pinkish-red trumpets lined with pristine white. Sown early, they can be planted out into fertile soil in a sunny spot where they will flower for months in their first year, attracting pollinators and adding to cut flower arrangements indoors. Although they are hardy perennials, penstemons don’t take kindly to extremely cold weather, being able to tolerate freezing conditions to-5C0/230F. However, they seem relatively happy…

EVERYONE should experience that pivotal moment when the fork prongs are pushed into the soil to unearth the first new potatoes of the season. For those of us growing them outside, this will usually happen in early or mid-June. However, you can force Mother Nature’s hand by growing in tubs under glass. So how do you go about getting the best early crops? Choosing ‘earlies’ is key – this is the name given to varieties that take 100 days to mature (whereas maincrops can take at least 130). These early varieties hit the ground running as soon as they enter warm soil. Warm soil is crucial – impatiently planting into cold earth won’t reap any rewards. At best, the tubers will sit in stasis until things warm up, while at…

This week it’s: Onions, garlic and shallots We look at these pungent culinary ingredients ONIONS are essential to modern cuisine, flavouring everything from sauces and flans, to burgers, chutneys and bhajis. And nothing (in my view) goes better with cheese in a sandwich! A few hundred years ago onions were mainly just stewed with meat! But what about shallots: how do these compare to onions? Then there’s garlic, another key ingredient in lots of dishes now, although this is a relatively new phenomenon – in the UK! Let’s take a closer look at these members of the onion tribe. The onion is Allium cepa. Other edible alliums include shallots (A. oschaninii), garlic (A. sativum), scallions (various allium species), leeks (A. ampeloprasum) and chives (A. schoenoprasum). It also includes wild species…

THIS year Her Majesty the Queen celebrates her Platinum Jubilee, and to celebrate this we are invited to plant a tree as part of the Green Canopy initiative. Many gardeners and non-gardeners alike will be planting trees this year, so once you have weighed up the size, shape and type of tree you wish to plant, you need to know how to do it properly so this long-lived investment will thrive. Taking care at the planting stage will give your tree the best chance to live a long life, and good soil preparation is important. Dig the area first to remove large stones (or other debris) and perennial weeds before starting to plant. Bare-root trees are sold without soil and can be planted directly, but planting a container-grown tree involves…

Don’t chuck it out Star letter I AM sure lots of people received a moth orchid for Christmas, so I wanted to share the story of mine last year. After the flowers died I cut off the branch expecting some more. When nothing happened I decided to throw the plant outside. Then I read in AG that orchids rest for about four months before growing again, so in haste, I retrieved it from the garden and put it up in my bathroom. I then instructed my husband not to open the window after his shower but let the steam stay around the orchid. I then gave the plant instructions to start growing or it would go out to the compost. To my amazement a new leaf grew, then I spotted…

OF all the gardening jobs that I’ve ever done, probably the worst was in the 1980s, cleaning the large roof of a nursery greenhouse. It was a terrifying task requiring both a head for heights and the balance of a prima ballerina Access to the roof was up a ladder to a narrow gutter that ran between the glazed peaks of the ridges – a gully so narrow, it would have been a challenge for Cinderella’s famously small slippers, never mind my steel-capped size 10s. Its thinness meant you had to totter, one foot in front of the other, with arms outstretched like a tightrope walker – all the while holding a bucket and sponge. The experience scarred me… quite literally, as I once fell through the glass. So now,…

I RECKON we have around a month or so left before trees and shrubs start to develop their springtime fuzz of green and it is too late to take hardwood cuttings. Time is of the essence, so I have spent some time this week taking cuttings from our blackcurrant bushes. They are easy to propagate and blackcurrants are such a versatile and delicious fruit you can never have too many. You can take hardwood cuttings of most deciduous trees and shrubs now, when they are dormant. They can be rooted in pots or in a trench in a sheltered part of the garden. The main requirement is patience, as they will take up to a year to develop roots and be ready to be potted on again next autumn. The…

AS much as I love birds, I wish they would leave my fruit alone. But I know they also eat tremendous numbers of pesky bugs and create lots of guano/fertiliser in return. So birds are really only a problem from when the first fruits start to ripen until when they’ve eaten the very last. Now, for most fruits, that’s a few weeks and then we’ll have picked them, anyway. Thus, birds only need to be kept off for a fraction of the year and not the other 11 months or so. The traditional fruit cage works well – indeed, the roof was always arranged so it could easily be taken off when not required. Storing it in the dry and dark extends its life and prevents any heavy snow building…

John will reply personally to all your gardening questions every week What evergreens can fill my barren gap? Q I have a 12-15in (30-38cm) strip of garden border that has a brick wall one side, a house wall on the next side and a block paved drive on a third side. The soil is mostly very dry due to a slight roof overhang. I am looking for suggestions for an evergreen shrub that likes dry sunny conditions and is shallow rooted that will get to around 6x3ft (1.8x1m) wide or can be kept that size. Can you help? Mark Jones (via email) A There are several contenders for the situation you have in mind, but because the site is in a ‘rain shadow’, work in a good quantity of moisture-conserving composted manure…

Q We’ve had the sad task of clearing a relative’s house and have brought back a number of mature houseplants, including a Christmas cactus, a clivia and begonias. They have been well-cared for in the past, but not recently. Should I bin them, or do you think they are worth rescuing? Margaret Critchly, Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk A There is nothing more satisfying than bringing plants back to health, so I would be offering these orphaned plants a home. My last houseplant rescue was a cymbidium orchid, and after division and repotting one of the new plants has rewarded me with a flower spike. The only time I would close my door is if the plants were crawling with difficult pests like mealybug and scale insects. I hope the plants…