Innholdsfortegnelse for 6-Aug-2022 i Amateur Gardening

“Do you grow dahlias and, if so, do you lift the tubers to save them from the frosts or leave them in the soil? Most people seem to lift, but I have gambled for the last two years and left them underground, consequently catching a bad dose of gambler’s remorse and dreading their possible frosty demise! A nagging feeling that I made a mistake and should have lifted stays with me throughout spring and into early summer. On my morning garden inspection, I look to the spot where they should arrive, willing them to reappear. And then, when the dahlias finally show their heads, I am both relieved and vindicated — I was right after all! I think this is the magic of gardening. One never really knows for sure…

REGULAR readers will know that I am not a massive fan of pin-neat gardens, preferring instead the colourful craziness that can develop when plants are left to do their own thing. However, I do draw a line somewhere and when one of our main beds turned a little feral I had to step in and restore some order. It came at a time when the early summer alliums had faded and their leaves and stems died back and a selection of self-seeded opium poppies and nigella had popped up and started to flop over. In among all this were a young salvia and geum trying to gain a foothold, along with several annual heliotropes, snapdragons and rudbeckias that should be at their best later in summer. Removing dead material and…

THIS week’s free seeds are perfect if you want a profusion of flowers at the front of your borders or in a vase at home. Godetia ‘Azalea Flowered Mixed’ produces masses of pretty, ruffled single and double blooms in shades of pink. They are perfect for the front of beds and are highly regarded as excellent cutting flowers with a long vase life. Godetia are hardy annuals, so you can sow some now directly into the soil for an early flush of colour next spring. If you choose this route, consider laying fleece over the seedlings if we have a very cold winter, then removing it when the temperatures rise. You could also sow more seeds undercover, as well as a further batch in the soil, next spring and they…

DAHLIAS are one of our most flamboyant summer flowers. Dahlia flowers vary in size from small single flowers shaped like daisies to dinner-plate dahlias with fully double flowers 12in (30cm) across. Strong growing, fleshy shoots grow from dahlia bulbs (technically tubers) shaped like a collection of very fat fingers connected at one end, where the shoots develop. Hollow stems carry bold divided foliage that is usually dark green but can be heavily bronzed. From early summer the fat buds burst into bloom and the flowers can keep coming until the first frost of autumn. Outstanding in a sunny border, superb – and very fashionable – for cutting, dwarf types are ideal for patio containers. Abundance of wonderful flowers The experts at one flower bulb company tell us: “Dahlias provide us…

HOW can one basic tool have so many names? Edging knife, edging iron, lawn edger and half-moon are all commonly used terms for a simple tool used for trimming a lawn edge – and there may be other names I’ve not mentioned here. More than aesthetic use Call it what you will, though, this tool is normally used for creating a good edge to a lawn or tidying along a path. While this is mostly done for the appearance of the lawn, it also serves to create a gully where the grass meets the bed or border, eliminating the damp shady areas where slugs like to spend the day. Blade shape The shape of the cutting blade can vary, but the most common profiles are either a semi-circular (or ‘half-moon’…

THIS week I will be finishing off my summer pruning before cleaning and sharpening my tools and setting them aside until I return to the task of cutting back in autumn and winter. Shrubs that flower in late summer, evergreen bushes, unruly ornamental hedges and trained fruit trees are all in the line of fire at this time of year. This is also your last chance to prune plums, cherries and other varieties vulnerable to silver leaf disease, as the spores of this fungal problem will start increasing by the end of this month and moving into September. While you are doing this, look for signs of pests and disease and other conditions such as drought stress. This is especially important for trees and shrubs planted last winter, as they…

SOCIAL media often gets a lot of stick (sometimes rightly so) but it can also be a force for good. The day after we had cleared space in a raised bed, one of my gardening friends on Twitter asked if we’d like his excess leek plug plants. Not wanting to look a gift horse in the mouth, we exchanged them for a jar of homemade chutney and added the healthy homegrown plants to our bed. Leeks like fertile soil in a sunny sheltered area, so before planting I enriched the soil with well-rotted compost and blood, fish and bone. I planted the leeks using the ‘puddling in’ method, which involves creating a deep hole into which you drop a leek plantlet, then water it gently to puddle the soil around…

Contact John Negus by email address below Email: amateurgardening@futurenet.com Should I hard prune new clematis? Q I have just purchased three clematis, a ‘Broughton Star’, a ‘Blue Angel’ with some flowers and a macropetala ‘Wesselton’. They were jumbled up, entwined and very top heavy. Should I prune them when planting or leave them to do their own thing until next year? Llinos Morgan, Llandovery, Carmarthenshire A It is best to prune all newly planted clematis as this avoids the development of a straggly single stem and encourages branching lower down. This pruning is best done in February or March, even if they were planted the autumn before, and whatever the eventual pruning regime will be. The best method is to cut back all the stems to 6in-1ft (15-30cm) from ground…

ALTHOUGH most fruit trees are pruned during the dormant months of autumn and winter, there are some that require trimming now to let light and air to their fruits to help them ripen healthily. Trees that are fan trained, espaliered (with their branches growing at right angles to the trunk) or grown in any other restricted shape should be pruned now, leaving those grown as ‘normal’ standards to the winter months. Trained trees are given a summer trim when the bottom third of this year’s new shoots have become firm and woody. For pear trees, this is usually from mid-July, trained apples from early to mid-August, though in northern areas you may need to wait a week or so longer, depending on the weather. New shoots that are more than…

AFTER a slow start, our previously leggy ‘Gardener’s Delight’ tomatoes have grown well and are now robust plants with healthy foliage and lots of trusses of little tomatoes. We have plants in the greenhouse and on the patio and have been feeding and watering them all at the recommended rate. This week I have been pruning and ‘stopping’ the greenhouse plants as they now reach the roof and are starting to bend over. Stopping takes place in August or September, depending on where you live in the UK and at what stage your tomatoes are at. It is when you cut off the top few inches of the plant, which will encourage bushier growth and larger fruits lower down. I also cut away some of the leaves that had started…

COLD Aston, a bleak village on top of the Cotswolds, does not attract many visitors when it’s cold and chilly. However, once summer’s here, plenty of people turn up. June brings the peonies and then the roses appear, which, in turn, are followed by the phloxes. The vegetable beds are full of promise, too, except for our carrots. Try as I might, my carrot seeds are failing to germinate for me yet again, despite several attempts. Everything else is doing well and this year there has been no four-legged rabbit or hare to crop off the beans, so they were half-way up the poles by mid-June. All my friends know that I shun all types of chemical fixes. There’s no slug bait, weedkillers or pesticides used in my garden, because…

This week it’s: Condiments of heat! We look at some of the hot stuff we use as food ON the first Saturday in August each year, the world comes together in one glorious unified event – International Mustard Day! As a child, I couldn’t abide mustard. It burnt the tongue, and ruined the taste of food. Now, it is, for me, one of life’s essentials. As we age, our taste buds become less keen, yet our palates become advanced, with variety and flavour being more important: hot foods, like mustard, are much more appealing. So now, my ‘mustard cupboard’ contains at least six different kinds! Let’s take a look at mustard, and some other hot condiments. ■ I’m not including chilli peppers, and other members of this family, as I’ve…

IF an English man’s home is his castle, his garden fence is the outer fortification – which probably explains why so many look like they’ve been through the wars. The larch-lap calamity around my sister’s garden that I’m helping her replace certainly does. Its wonky posts and broken panels have been fixed more times than Trigger’s broom. To be fair, the fence was doomed from the day it was built, as the base was buried below the soil of the border. Where neighbouring gardens sit at slightly different levels, it’s all too tempting to use the panels to hold back the earth – but it will only ever be a temporary fix. Wet soil and timber go together like, er… fish and wood chips, as the weight of the soil…