Innholdsfortegnelse for 31-Dec-2022 i Amateur Gardening

“How was your gardening year? Mine was a mixture of successes sprinkled with an occasional dip into failure. But failure doesn’t concern me as much as one may think. No one always gets it right (don’t get me started on Monty and his retinue of helpers), and often making a mistake is the best way of learning. My biggest failure in 2022 was my attempt at a winter potato crop. I planted two rows of 10 seed potatoes and only about five of them rose from the ground, and those plants were pretty feeble-looking. What went wrong? That is something I have yet to discover. Perhaps I should have better protected the few plants that did rise with cloches, but that doen’t explain the no-shows. Oh well, 2023 is another…

Weather with you: Next week we look at protecting our gardens from whatever winter throws at us AFTER such a dry summer I was pleased with what I grew on my allotment. OK, a lot didn’t grow well, and some crops didn’t survive at all, but considering the conditions I was happy. We don’t have access to hosepipes on the allotment, so all watering was carried out using watering cans! The outdoor tomatoes – ‘Crimson Crush’ and ‘Sweet Baby’ – produced a bumper crop. The leeks (‘Jolant’), which I covered with Enviromesh as soon as they were planted, were the best I’ve ever grown. In previous years leek moth has decimated the crop, but covering them seemed to work. Even the climbing French beans (‘Blue Lake’) provided a few good…

YOU don’t need a gardening magazine to tell you that we are in ‘economically interesting’ times, but you may need one to give you some suggestions about how to save money on your favourite hobby. The cost of everything is rising and gardening isn’t immune. The price of compost, equipment, plants, feeds and seeds is heading north, so it pays to pick up bargains when you see them. It is also worth investigating ‘own brand’ products from garden centre chains and supermarkets. They are generally cheaper than ‘named’ brands but often work just as well. Supermarket plants can make good bargains, though they rarely get the same level of care as in a garden centre. I have got lucky with bedding plants and even fruit trees, so have a look…

Contact John Negus by email address below Email: amateurgardening@futurenet.com Keeping a hippeastrum over the years Q My grandchildren have once again given me a lovely amaryllis plant for Christmas. How can I keep this one alive so it comes back next year?  Marion Coles, Stockport A Amaryllis, also known as hippeastrum, are popular Christmas gifts and look amazing in flower. However, they can be temperamental when it comes to getting them to put on a ‘repeat performance’. From January until autumn, keep your amaryllis on a sunny, warm windowsill. Water to keep its compost moist, but not saturated, and feed weekly with a liquid houseplant fertiliser. Deadhead when the flowers fade, but keep watering the pot when the compost feels dry. Stop watering in late September, and let the compost…

This week it’s: Artichokes, cardoons and thistles We look at some prickly plants loved by wildlife THISTLES, whether we are talking about valued garden plants (such as echinops, the globe thistle) or weeds (like the Scotch or spear thistle, Cirsium vulgare), are loved by wildlife. Bees and butterflies flock to the nectar-rich flowers, birds (especially goldfinches) love the seeds and the caterpillars of many butterflies (particularly painted ladies) feed on the leaves. Let’s take a look at some of the more interesting thistle plants we grow in our gardens. ■ Why are thistles Scotland’s emblem? James III, King of Scotland from 1460-1488, is believed to have adopted the thistle as the heraldic emblem of Scotland because its prickliness represented the defence capability of his country! Edible and ornamental IF you’ve…

Steve Bradley MA MHort (RHS) has written (or co-written) over 40 gardening books, including Propagation Basics, The Pruner’s Bible, The Ground Force Workbook and What’s Wrong With My Plant? He is resident expert on BBC Radio Kent, Sussex and Surrey, and he has built medal-winning gardens at both Chelsea and Hampton Court Palace. You can listen to Steve on alternate Sundays 10am-2pm on BBC Radio Kent’s Sunday Gardening (BBC Local) THE most common species of vine weevil in the UK is the black vine weevil (Otiorhynchus sulcatus) and it is possibly the most damaging pest of all to many ornamental and some fruit-bearing plants, particularly strawberries. Feeding habits All the adults are female and they feed on the leaves of plants, leaving semi-circular notches along the leaf margins before laying…

Squash hopes quashed but lots of joy elsewhere WELL that was quite the year wasn’t it! A scorching summer when many crops and plants failed was followed by a mellow Indian summer and ridiculously mild autumn that led to our canna lilies flowering into late November and spring knapweeds having a third flourish at the same time. In March I sowed ‘Gardener’s Delight’ tomatoes as part of our free seeds schedule and in a previously unheard-of development in my world, every seed germinated. As a result we’ve had a bountiful crop of small and medium-sized tomatoes from the garden and greenhouse, so many in fact that a freezer drawer is full of tomato halves and home made tomato sauce, and I made a good haul of chutney too. Our ‘Cox’s…

JUDGING by your letters, 2022 provided the gardening community with some severe challenges. Not only did we have a long drought, we are also getting to grips with a peat-free future. But there were plenty of successes too. Most gardeners reported a good flowering season and autumn bought many bumper harvests. My ‘Bramley’ apple tree was laden with delicious fruit, perfect for winter pies and crumbles. My other success was with tomatoes. This year I grew ‘Moneymaker’ plants in the greenhouse and had a 14lb yield, but the family’s favourite was the succulent cherry toms on the patio that were the sweetest we’ve ever tasted. A blessing in disguise came in the form of the dreaded box tree caterpillar. They devastated about 20 yards of established hedge so we decided…

IT’S easy to fall into a lethargic funk in the indulgent days after Christmas, so to try and work off some calories and keep active, I’ve been out in the garden doing some fruit tree pruning. This is my favourite piece of pruning because the results literally bear fruit the following year. However, because this year has given us a bumper crop of apples, I won’t be surprised if our trees take a ‘year off’ in 2023. The dormant months of winter is the right time of year to prune pears and apples, but leave plums, cherries, gages, apricots, nectarines and almonds until midsummer when they are less likely to be attacked by silver leaf disease. Our ‘Brown Turkey’ fig also fruited prolifically this year and the branches are still…

ONCE Christmas is over, I can start my new gardening year with fresh vigour and, quite possibly, a slightly thicker waist! I’m already on the lookout for my first pollinators of the New Year. This is often the honeybee (Apis mellifera), lured out by a warm January afternoon. The Latin name means honey-bearing bee and these creatures have been domesticated for thousands of years, for their delicious honey. We get plenty of honeybees at Spring Cottage, because there are at least two beekeepers in our small village. These bees often visit my winter honeysuckle, Lonicera x purpusii ‘Winter Beauty’. This shrub produces fragrant flowers in the New Year, if the weather’s warm. The white blooms are little more than collections of pendent stamens. This arrangement allows warm air to flow…

This word search comprises words associated with artichokes, cardoons and thistles. They are listed below; in the grid they may be read across, backwards, up, down or diagonally. Letters may be shared between words. Erroneous or duplicate words may appear in the grid, but there is only one correct solution. After the listed words are found there are eight letters remaining; arrange these to make this week’s KEYWORD. ARTICHOKES CARDOONS THISTLES CENTAUREA CIRSIUM DAISY ECHINOPS GLOBE IRRIGATE JERSEY MILK ONOPORDUM PLUME SCOTLAND SOW HOW TO ENTER: Enter this week’s keyword on the entry form, and send it to AG Word Search No 652, Amateur Gardening, Future Publishing Limited, Unit 415, Winnersh Triangle, Eskdale Road, Winnersh, RG41 5TP, to arrive by Wednesday 11 January 2023. The first correct entry chosen at…

I HAVE always purchased marigolds as plug plants from the garden centre but when I plant them out they seem to shrivel and die. So I was a bit sceptical when I received marigold seeds but thought, why not give it a go… and my goodness, what a display. They all came on brilliantly. I will definitely be going for seeds again and not plugs. I also grew Malop ‘Vulcan’ and dahlias from seed. So well done AG for the free seeds and loads of information in your magazine which has helped me a great deal, especially this year. Mrs Wendy Bostridge Welling, Kent JUST wanted to share some of my successes this year. Here’s a photo of the beautiful sweet butternut squashes, I also grew a crop of tromboncino,…

EACH new year brings a fresh start, and I am sure I’m not the only one to look at the 12 months ahead and resolve to do better than I did the past 12. I include gardening in this because, obviously, it is a large part of my day-today life. So my first resolution is to practise what I preach, and keep on top of the weekly tasks I advocate. All gardens present challenges and the way to create a flourishing plot and be a happy gardener is to mix the mundane with the exciting. So for every water butt that needs cleaning, there are new plants to grow. For every greenhouse gutter to unblock, every pest and disease that needs tackling, there are new flowers to appreciate and crops…

RHUBARB is one of my favourite vegetables – that’s right, it’s a veg not a fruit – and I think of it as a real springtime treat, bringing something sharply sweet (or is it sweetly sharp?) and special to crumbles, pies and preserves. Ours has been growing for a good few years now and this spring the yield wasn’t up to scratch, so it’s time to split the plants. Dividing rhubarb needs to be done every five or six years, in early winter when they are dormant – remember they are one of the first edibles to sprout in early spring. Carefully lift the crowns by digging widely around them. Then use a spade to divide the crown into sections, making sure each one has a section of healthy root…

MORNING glories, and moonflowers, are mainly summer-flowering vines for sunny situations that have a continuing succession of large, exotic-looking trumpet-shaped flowers from early or midsummer until the first frosts. The flowers open only for part of the day, unfurling in the morning and closing at night or opening in the evening and into the night. These plants are mainly annuals, growing, blooming, seeding and dying all in one season, but some may survive two or three years – sometimes more – in warmer areas. The flowers come in a wide range of colours, although not orange or yellow, and, sometimes two or three colours are splashed together in one flower or the flowers have two or three zones in different colours. They are popular with bees and other pollinators. Morning…

Dates with destiny A timely gift from a friend gives Toby the impetus to plan ahead so he can enjoy his favourite flowers for longer I DON’T know when it started, but every year my friend Geoff sends out a homemade calendar as a Christmas gift. It’s not as you might expect, filled with images of family holidays to Florida and children receiving awards. Instead, it captures the changing months with pictures of products from his stone-yard. Each year, I always pick out a favourite. Flicking through the 2023 edition, June’s dusty brick is wonderful. But beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and my daughter doesn’t think the images of paving slabs and gravestones suit the front of our fridge. I know! But I still have a use…