Innholdsfortegnelse for 7-May-2022 i Amateur Gardening

“It’s May at last and, hopefully, here comes the sun – we deserve a good summer of warm days and a few night-time showers to keep the gardens happy. We are bringing you the sun in our pages this week with Hazel’s article on sneezeweeds or heleniums, those wonderful warm-hued flowers that delight in late summer and autumn. I have one helenium that has been moved three times (so far) in an attempt to find it a home where it will flourish. It is finally growing well this year, so hopefully 2022 will be the year it flowers.”…

DO you have a rare garden plant that you may unwittingly be helping avoid extinction? If you do, then Plant Heritage wants to know as part of its 2022 Threatened Plant of the Year competition, which runs until May 16. The award was established three years ago to rescue cultivars of plants that have fallen off our lists of favourites and potentially face vanishing altogether. It cost £9.50 – a lot of money in 1985! Vicki Cooke, the conservation manager with Plant Heritage, said: “We set up the Threatened Plant of the Year because there are so many cultivars out there at risk of disappearing. “We want to gather them up and conserve them, but there is a problem because gardeners are not always good at keeping labels or knowing…

I KNOW I bang on a lot about gardening for wildlife, but it is an important part of our remit. As Alan Titchmarsh once said, gardeners are ‘custodians of the planet’, nurturing plants and their ecosystems. As well as being a haven for wildlife, our gardens also help create important corridors between areas of natural habitat. You don’t need a large garden or even give over all of what you have to help wildlife. We have a corner where we stash old prunings to create a habitat pile. It’s planted with foxgloves, borage and other insect-friendly plants, and we often see signs of hedgehogs, badgers and foxes left on the grass. We also have a pond and have dotted the garden with saucers of water for thirsty birds and other…

DO you love sweetcorn – and if so, have you tried growing it? Well, right now is your best opportunity for a brilliant crop. You see, we want our cobs to swell and ripen rapidly, becoming plump, succulent and sweet. Such vigorous growth requires strong bright sunshine – something too often in short supply in Blighty, even in the height of summer. So if we want brilliant cobs, they need to ripen during July or August. Before they can flower, though, sweetcorn plants need to produce a set number of leaves. This used to take much longer with older varieties that would often not ripen until too late. So breeders worked at reducing that time to 90 days or so, which is effectively three months. However, that’s only at best,…

LILACS are exceptionally cold-tolerant and drought-tolerant deciduous shrubs, many of which will perform well even when badly neglected. They are among the most resilient of all garden shrubs, with many being long-lived. The common lilac, Syringa vulgaris, is the wild lilac from which all modern varieties have been bred. The name Syringa comes from the Ancient Greek word syrinx, meaning pipe or tube, and refers to the easily hollowed-out branches of S. vulgaris. Powerful fragrance Some lilacs mature as shrubs, while some become small well-branched trees. Sadly, their foliage is generally an unremarkable dull green in colour, but their main claims to fame are their fat spikes of tiny colourful late-spring/early summer flowers and their sweetly powerful fragrance. For many lilacs, a two or three-week spring season of glorious flowers…

WITH their glossy leaves and highly fragrant flowers, citrus are popular indoor plants. Even the foliage is scented and they are ideal plants as natural air fresheners, especially if you are allergic to artificial ones. Citrus come in many sizes and prices, from under £10 to hundreds for an older plant. Varieties include kumquat, orange, lemon, calamondin and lime. Some have full-sized edible fruit, while others are small and bitter, although they can be added to marmalade for extra tang. Growing outside The large range of cultivars means some types have vastly different requirements regarding temperature and hardiness to others. Japanese yuzu can tolerate temperatures of -10°C for short periods, while the red lime (Citrus limetta rossa) can only tolerate temperatures down to 5°C for short periods and much prefers…

IT’S time to take advantage of the healthy new growth appearing in the garden and start to think about taking cuttings. New gardeners may find the prospect a bit daunting, but propagating from cuttings is actually relatively easy and gives you new plants identical to their parent – unlike growing from seed, which can be more hit-and-miss. Any softwood or semi-ripe cuttings taken last autumn and overwintered in a snug frost-free place should also be ready to move on into containers of gritty multi-purpose compost, so they can grow on and be hardened off ready to plant out in a few weeks’ time. I took some pelargonium cuttings last autumn, so this week I have been potting them up individually and will keep them in the greenhouse until they are…

I LOVE the simple elegance of hostas, but having lost several to slugs and snails many years ago I haven’t had the heart, nor the inclination, to grow any since. But now there are so many non-toxic slug deterrents on the market I am giving hostas another go, protecting them with cordons of wool pellets. The varieties I have chosen are ‘Guacamole’ and ‘So Sweet’. ‘Guacamole’ grows to 3ft (90cm) in the right conditions and has glossy, slightly puckered leaves that are golden-yellow to light green. It produces scented mauve and white flowers. ‘So Sweet’ is clump-forming, has leaves edged with white and funnel-shaped flowers that are white with purple stripes. I am planting them at the margins of the branches of a weeping ornamental pear. Most hostas thrive in…

GARDENING partnerships aren’t easy! My gardening hero, Margery Fish, married her husband Walter when she was in her 40s. They had both worked at the Daily Mail and Margery was secretary to six different editors, one of them being Walter. They decided to move to East Lambrook Manor in Somerset in 1937, after realising that the country would soon be at war. They often clashed swords over the garden, because I suspect Walter still imagined he was in charge! The problem was that Walter loved formality, and spaced, clipped and pruned evergreens everywhere. He also had a penchant for vivid bedding plants. Margery loved subtle, gently hued flowers, and she pioneered the use of pulmonarias, euphorbias, astrantias and hardy geraniums in their two-acre garden. Though widely planted today, she popularised…

John has been answering reader queries for 50 years What should I use to feed my clematis? Q I have a pair of two-year-old healthily growing Clematis napaulensis, one in a large pot and the other in the ground in a light sandy soil. Sadly, I am still waiting for them to bloom. Is this usual? Could you suggest what I can do to encourage flowering this autumn/winter? Beryl Stringfellow (via email) A All climbing clematis like to have their roots and the base of the stems kept cool in the shade, regardless of whether the top growth should be in sun or shade. Overfeeding, as with many plants, can result in a lot of leafy growth at the expense of flowers. When feeding, organic material is best, and clematis…

Disappearing sunflowers Q We have a bit of trouble getting sunflowers to take off in the garden. The seeds germinate, but when we plant them out, we never see them again. What are we doing wrong? Louise Dexter, Truro, Cornwall A Helianthus annuus varieties are hardy annuals with a lot of growing to do, as many reach great heights before they produce their large flower heads. I sow ours into small pots or modules under glass at the beginning of April and plant them out where I want them to grow. Many also germinate on their own in the kitchen garden. We leave the seedheads for birds and some seeds fall into the soil or they end up in the compost heap and are spread in mulch. They germinate and grow…

WHILE filming for BBC Gardeners’ World at Cotehele in Cornwall, one of my favourite National Trust haunts, I picked up a fantastic tip for bulking up daffodils. Cotehele’s gardens are home to daffs by the tens of thousands, including many heritage varieties saved from extinction from the surrounding Tamar Valley. Before flowers were imported by air-freight all year round, early or out-of-season daffodils came from Cornwall, where they flower weeks – even months – before they do in London, Birmingham and beyond. At its peak, the daffodil industry employed 10,000 workers in the Tamar Valley alone. But this wasn’t to last, as during the Second World War the daffodil fields were requisitioned for edible crops. While some of the bulbs were ploughed in, many were bunged onto the headlands, from…

I LOVE the exuberant flowers of cosmos and this summer I want to fill our garden with them. I’ve already started several batches of the pink ‘Candy Stripe’ variety as part of our AG compost test, so this week’s free seeds will make an interesting change. Cosmos ‘Polidor’ will burst into flower throughout the garden in delicious citrus shades of red, yellow and orange. The plants stand 30in (75cm) tall and produce a mass of pollinator-friendly flowers above elegant frondy foliage. Perfect for filling gaps in borders and also happy when grown in pots if room is limited, cosmos ‘Polidor’ will delight into the autumn. Cosmos are half-hardy annuals and don’t like a chill, so sow them undercover now. This will give the seedlings time to grow so you can…

WITH autumn-sown varieties ready now, and even some varieties started this week cropping come September, there’s more to the humble broad bean than you think. The best beans for you If you’re like me, you’ll be eyeing up a bed of autumn-sown ‘Aquadulce Claudia’ – the benchmark for autumn sowing. It’s super-hardy, so it will get through all but the very wettest winters (waterlogging and sub-zero temperatures can cause rotting), especially on free-draining soils. There are four main types of broad bean: Seville (autumn-sown types); longpod (such as ‘Exhibition Longpod’, with seven or so seeds per pod); Windsors (such as ‘Green Windsor’, the standard spring-sowing types); and fan-podded (such as ‘The Sutton’, with multiple pods on compact plants). “Tiny and tender gives the best-quality beans” Seed colour varies: green-seeded varieties…

This week it’s: We’re mad about tulips Read all about this colourful spring bulb MAY is the month when, generally, tulips are at their best – and everyone knows it when their bright flowers (in practically every colour apart from blue) turn flower beds, borders and containers into living vibrancy. Ever since Man has grown plants to look at (rather than for food or medicine), we have been mad about tulips. Before the Dutch had their ‘tulipomania’ period (1634-37), when a tulip bulb could be bought for the price of a house, the sultans in the Turkish Empire were ordering their subjects to collect thousands of tulip bulbs so they could be grown in their pleasure gardens. There is no better a time than now, therefore, to look at some…

Star letter Lovely ladybirds NOW that spring is here and temperatures have increased, I have noticed an abundance of ladybirds in the garden, with their stunning bright red shells and little black spots. They like landing on washing on the line, furry plants and other soft materials, and they are not averse to perching on the odd human, hitching a lift to green pastures, where they can just fly off when reaching their destination. They are social insects with attitude and, like us, enjoy sunbathing in their choice of small, fragrant flower – which to them is equivalent to a hammock. We could learn a lot from them. Mrs Gloria Wilding,Prescot, Merseyside Simply potty about bulbs JUST to say a big thank you for describing how to make a ‘lasagna’…