Innholdsfortegnelse for 11-Mar-2023 i Amateur Gardening

A reader recently wrote to me to demand that we do not publish advertisements for peat-reduced compost. First, selling compost which contains peat is not an illegal activity (yet) and therefore we have no legal grounds on which to refuse such an advertisement – otherwise, we will be breaking the law ourselves. Second, we are lucky to live in a democratic society where people have a choice about what they can legally buy and use, and not an authoritarian state where people are deprived of free will. I appreciate that people have strong views about peat (on both sides of the fence). However, choice is an aspect of freedom that everyone must be allowed to exercise it if is legal to do so, without being demonised for their choice.” Contact…

LONG regarded as cottage garden staples, I think that hollyhocks (Alcea rosa) work really well in any style of garden, with dwarf varieties available for containers and smaller borders. Usually grown as biennials or short-lived perennials, they are easy to grow from seed and thrive in most soils. Hollyhocks come with single and double flowers in a wide range of colours, from palest cream to deep pink. If you are gardening for wildlife the single varieties are better for attracting pollinators such as bees and butterflies. They are also long-flowering, often adding colour through summer and well into the autumn if they are in a spot they like and receive the right care. We have a few hollyhocks gracing our borders and this week I moved one that was being…

LITTLE Dahlia ‘Mignon Mixed’ are dwarf half-hardy perennials that produce a wealth of brightly coloured flowers with yellow centres above verdant green foliage. They flower between June and October, attracting butterflies and other beneficial pollinators to your garden. After flowering, don’t be surprised to see garden birds foraging for their seeds as they feed up in preparation for the colder months. Don’t be too hasty to dig up and compost the dead flowers when the season ends. If you leave the plants in the ground until the first frosts of autumn as you would do with larger tuber-grown dahlias, and then carefully dig them up, you will find that some of their roots will have formed small tubers. These can be lifted and stored in dry sand and compost through…

ENGLISH roses, often known as David Austin Roses after the expert who developed them, were seen for the first time, in England, in 1981. They brought together the best qualities of the old-fashioned roses – wonderful colours, elegant flower form and intoxicating fragrance – with the neater and bushier growth, the long flowering season and disease resistance that today’s gardeners demand. All were developed by the nursery’s founder David Austin, who established a research programme developing new roses. Hundreds of thousands of possible new introductions are screened each year, and more than 140 English roses have now been introduced, although some of the early varieties have been replaced by more recent improvements. Along with their other fine qualities, disease resistance has always been a top priority. Gardeners have become more…

WHICH came first, the colour orange or the orange fruit? Well, the colour has been around since the dawn of time, whereas orange (citrus) trees have been around for mere millennia. So, there’s your answer. Except… the colour we know as orange was named after the fruit, probably in the 1400s. Before this, in Britain, shades of orange were referred to as saffron (after the stamens of the saffron crocus), or geolucrog (which translates from Old English as ‘yellow-saffron’; crog was another name for saffron), or geoluread (yellow-red). Let’s take a closer look at both the orange colour and the orange fruit! ■ Over the centuries, orange things were usually described as red: think of robin ‘redbreast’, red squirrels, red deer, red hair, and so on. Orange: the fruit ORANGES…

WHILE many plants have a natural support system to hold them up, such as tendrils, twining stems, sucker pads and even stem thickness, many more do not and these may rely on help with their natural growth habit to save them from being damaged or becoming overly congested. Additional support Using additional support allows us to affect the natural growth pattern to our benefit as well as the plant’s. Plants like tomatoes and cucumbers, for instance, naturally have a trailing or bushy habit, and would sprawl along the ground if they were left to their own devices. This is not due to having weak stems, it is simply their natural habit. Young plants, especially woody ones, tend to benefit from being supported in their early years to prevent damage and…

GARDEN centres are full of summer bulbs and they are one of the most failsafe ways of adding colour to the garden that should improve year-on-year Some can be planted outdoors now but others are best started off undercover and moved out when the late frosts have passed. This is because many of the bulbs we plant for summer colour originate in warm climates and can’t handle our colder climate. So we either mulch tubers in autumn, or in very cold areas lift the most tender varieties such as dahlias, cannas, freesias and store them in trays of dry compost and sand in the greenhouse or shed. There are as many summer bulbs as there are suitable places to plant them, either in the soil or in containers. If you…

IT’S time to give houseplants some love after their winter lull – and I had two urgent cases on my hands. The first was a weeping fig in the bathroom that on close inspection was infested with scale insects, which had led to it becoming covered in sooty mould. The second plant was an inherited Calathea that was struggling in very old compost. Spring is the best time to re-pot houseplants as they start to grow again, so I seized the opportunity. But first, the fig. Scale insects are sap sucking pests with hard protective shells that make it hard to deal with them using chemicals. They excrete a sticky substance called honeydew, a breeding ground for black sooty mould. Hopefully I solved the problem by wiping the leaves with…

Plants for a wildlife-friendly plot Q Please could you recommend some wildlife-friendly shrubs and plants for our new garden? Mike and Lesley Crouch (via email) A When choosing suitable plants, it is important to know whether your soil is acid or alkaline, and buy the right plants for the site that may be sunny, shaded or a mix of both. There are lots of wildlife-friendly plants to choose from: Berberis: Either a deciduous purple-leaved one such as Berberis thunbergii or an evergreen one such as B. darwinii. Viburnum opulus: This has wonderful flowers and berries and looks attractive. Leycesteria (Pheasant berry): This is an attractive soft-stemmed shrub with burgundy bracts and berries. Shrub roses: Rosa canina (dog rose) and Rosa rugosa have sweet flowers and lots of jewel-coloured hips in autumn.…

APPARENTLY, it’s not just postmen and joggers who wear shorts in winter. According to my wife (who knows about these things), gentleman wearing above the-knee breeches all year long is now a thing, “especially in urban areas.” You’re as shocked as I am, I can tell. But with fashion, the avant-garde quickly becomes the new normal, so rather than risk looking like a fool, I’m rushing to get my Hawaiian tribal leg tattoos finished wiki-quickie (as they say in Honolulu) to complete the look! Attitudes to couture change quickly, but foodie fashions can take an age to bite. When Sir Walter Raleigh brought the potato to Europe in 1589, he thought it would catch on quicker than the neck ruff and shoe buckle. Instead, his tubers were regarded as a…

WHEN planting summer and autumn bulbs, first check the packet and plant them in the right situation (sun, shade, or dappled shade). Most will thrive in a sunny spot, though some will tolerate light shade. Tall varieties are best planted somewhere sheltered so they aren’t knocked over and damaged by storms. Bulbs need free-draining soil if they are to grow well and be less prone to rotting, so heavy soils should be opened up and lightened by forking in lots of well-rotted manure or compost, with added grit. Adding manure and compost also improves light, stony soil by bulking it out, adding nutrients and helping it retain moisture. Bulbs should be planted at three times their depth, and roughly a bulb’s width apart. The exceptions are nerine bulbs, which should…

WE are all grateful for better weather and the chance to get back out into the garden, but we need to give our structures and hard surfaces a little TLC too. Patios and decking gets slippery in winter thanks to less sunlight and more moss and algae, water butts may start to fester and smell and gutters need clearing to cope with spring rainfall. This week I’ve spent time tackling all three of these jobs. We have an area of patio by the back door that gets no sunlight in winter so it’s a haven for algae and moss and gets dangerously skiddy. I washed it down with Ecofective Path, Patio and Decking Cleaner, which you brush or spray onto hard surfaces, is child and pet-friendly and works effectively over…

I’M lucky enough to live in Gloucestershire and our county flower is the wild daffodil, Narcissus pseudonarcissus subsp. pseudonarcissus. It was once widespread in woods and meadows, and Richard Mabey’s excellent Flora Britannica says that John Gerrard recorded it in the 16th century as “almost euery where through England.” It was collected from the fields of Cheapside and sold as a cut flower in London. However, the wild daffodil has suffered a decline since Gerrard’s day. It had already been lost from much of my county by the time the Rev. H. J. Riddelsdell’s Flora of Gloucestershire was published posthumously in 1948. Harry Joseph Riddelsdell (1866-1941) was one of many well-educated parson-naturalists of the 19th century. This link between botany and religion isn’t surprising, because divinity students also studied the…

INCREASING your own plants is one of the most enjoyable aspects of gardening, as well as being the cheapest way of obtaining new stock. Basically, there are two ways of propagating plants. There is the vegetative method, which embraces cuttings, layering, budding, grafting and division or splitting of plants. The other way is to raise plants from seed. Over the next 12 weeks, I will be discussing all these methods of propagation and giving many examples of garden, house and greenhouse plants that can easily be raised by amateur gardeners. By collecting these articles, you will have a comprehensive guide to the various techniques used in the propagation of a wide range of subjects. Let us start with the raising of plants from cuttings. These are simply portions of a…