Innholdsfortegnelse for 3-Jun-2023 i Amateur Gardening

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WITH the peat ban kicking in next year, time is running out for gardeners to make the most of what many regard as nature’s finest growing medium. The race to banish peat means that traditional composts are becoming scarce as peat-free takes over, while retail giant B&Q has pledged to be 100% peat-free this year. With many of our readers writing in to express disappointment at the performance of some peat-free products, AG has compiled a guide to peat composts on sale this season. However, a number of formerly peat-rich brands have been diluted with ‘sustainable’ ingredients such as wood fibre or green waste, and may perform differently to peat composts of the past. Responsible Sourcing Scheme (RSS) QR codes printed on packaging, designed to reveal each product’s environmental impact,…

RUDBECKIA hirta, also known as black-eyed susans and coneflowers, are beloved for the way they deliver late-summer and early autumn colour. Half-hardy perennials, they need lifting and overwintering undercover in most areas of the UK, so are most commonly grown as half hardy annuals and composted when they start to fade as autumn progresses. The variety we are giving away as this week’s free seeds is ‘Gloriosa Daisy’. It will grow to 36in (90cm) and has a bushy habit topped by yellow flowers with burnished centres. Rudbeckias like a sunny site with free-draining soil and their strong, sturdy stems make them excellent as cut flowers. They are also brilliant for attracting pollinators to the garden. They can be sown straight into soil that has been raked to a fine tilth…

HAVE you ever found yourself in one of those coffee-shop queues? You’re behind a group of people ordering different things. I’ll have a cappuccino with soya milk and an Americano with almond milk. You know you’re in for a long wait while the barista hisses and steams his or her way through the order. The pollinators in your garden are just as selective and fussy. They opt for different types of nectar-rich flowers to get their sugar-rich energy fix in order to facilitate flight. The sugar content of most nectar averages out at 40%, but content varies. Insects and Flowers by Friedrich G. Barth lists the two extremes. The crown imperial (Fritillaria imperialis) has only 8% sugar, but marjoram (Origanum vulgare) contains 76% sugar. Its close relative, Origanum laevigatum ‘Herrenhausen’,…

IF you’re looking for height to add to your borders, verbascum is one of the best plant choices to take you from early summer through to its last throes. It combines cottage-garden prettiness with architectural drama and, with timely flowers arriving in late May, it’s not surprising that this stylish plant often graces Chelsea Flower Show gardens. Yet verbascums will happily find a home in everyday garden borders, too. Whether you’re cultivating an exuberant cottage-garden look, or a sparser, drought-tolerant, gravel garden style, these plants will provide long-lasting summer colour. Cutting back flowering spikes Verbascums can be short-lived hardy perennial plants, biennials that give you great foliage interest in the first season followed by colourful blooms the next summer or slightly fussy cultivars that might not go past one season…

This word search comprises words associated with garden pests! 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 ten letters remaining; arrange these to make this week’s KEYWORD. WORLD PEST DAY APHID ATTACK BIRDS CONTROL DEER DISEASE DUST EARWIG JUNE MITE RABBIT RAPID SLUG SNAIL TRAP VIRUS WASP WEEVILS HOW TO ENTER: Enter this week’s keyword on the entry form, and send it to AG Word Search No 674, Amateur Gardening, Future Publishing Limited, Unit 415, Winnersh Triangle, Eskdale Road, Winnersh, RG41 5TP, to arrive by Wednesday 14 June 2023. The first…

THE container and basket I planted last month have been in the greenhouse while the weather remained seasonally unreliable. The plants grew well, protected from the worst of the elements, but they have been outside for the past few weeks and are filling out pleasingly. Helping them to thrive through summer and into autumn will take consistent care and attention because wherever you have lots of plants growing in close proximity there will be issues. Pests and diseases can spread fast among densely packed plants, which also use up food and water at an alarming rate once they have worked their way through the original nutrients contained in the compost, and we get into the hottest days of summer. The cost of living is affecting us all and gardening is…

DESPITE mixed weather and a cold start, our spring flowers have put on a glorious display this year. Now many of them have gone over, leaving the borders with several clumps of browning leaves, left alone to die back to return goodness to the bulbs for next year. I have been feeding them with liquid fertiliser to give the bulbs an extra boost and will remove the foliage when it has died back completely. Primroses have always done well on our chalky free-draining soil and some of the plants have grown rather unwieldy and sprawling, the leaves losing their lustre and flowering declining. The easiest thing to do when this happens is split them, keeping the healthy divisions and composting the old woody portions. Dividing also gives you the chance…

This week it’s: World Pest Day We look at some of the lesser known facts about garden pests EVERY year, on 6 June, countries around the world observe World Pest Day, which was started by the Chinese Pest Control Association. The idea is to raise awareness of effective pest-management practices, particularly in relation to how they affect the environment, and any benefits to human and plant life. As gardeners, we know that pests are creatures that destroy, spoil or cause a nuisance to our plants. However, they also spread viral diseases, and these can be even more deadly. Let’s look at some of the aspects of garden pests you rarely see written about! ■ Experts say that humans have been carrying out some form of pest control since around 3000BC. The…

I’M always grateful when I see ‘Caution! May contain hot liquid,’ on the side of a paper coffee cup. Who knew? To some, such warnings can seem a bit ‘nanny state gone mad,’ but that doesn’t mean all cautionary advice should be ignored… As regular readers will know, I have a penchant for climbing roses and was about to buy a venerable variety called ‘Cecile Brunner.’ It’s a rose that has everything: cottage-garden charm, disease-resistant foliage and sweetly fragrant flowers that repeat in flushes all summer. It also has a warning written on the label – ‘Caution: exceptionally tall.’ Now, I know what you’re thinking… not more musings, from that anxious soul who catastrophises on coffee cups, but think again! ‘Cecil Brunner’ holds the Guinness World Record for being the…

1 Poor drainage: Waterlogging kills plants by driving the oxygen from the soil so they drown. It can be caused by over-enthusiastic watering, common with many peat free composts that look dry on the surface while sitting wet beneath. Raise containers off the ground so excess water can run through, and stick a finger into the compost before you water. If it is dry, fetch your watering can, if wet, leave it for a day or so. 2 Different plants: The best planters and baskets are made up of different plants working together to produce a richness of colour and height with a contrast of interesting leaves and grasses. However, don’t combine plants that have contrasting needs, such as placing succulents that need little water and feed alongside hungry, thirsty summer…

HELLEBORUS niger, Christmas rose, Lenten rose – call them what you will, hellebores are one of my top spring plants. Early to flower and incredibly long-lasting, they bring colour and joy to the garden when the rest of our spring plants are only really starting to think about getting going. Now they are past their prime and need tidying up, though you may wish to leave them to their own devices a little longer to see if they self-seed. Hellebores are promiscuous and scatter their seeds widely and easily so you may find that your mature plants have colonies of seedlings springing up around their base. If you are very lucky, the new plants may be hybrids of different varieties in the garden, or they may come true to their parent,…

Please suggest some evergreen interest Q I have a southwest-facing front garden that I’d like to add some evergreen plants to, for interest from autumn and over winter. What would the best options be for planting in containers please? Mel West (via email) A I suggest that you plant the following evergreen shrubs in containers to colour autumn and winter: Euonymus fortunei ‘Blondy’: Bright silver-mottled foliage. Sarcococca hookeriana var. humilis: Dense thickets of shining green leaves and scented white flowers. Cotoneaster conspicuus ‘Decorus’: Dark-green leaves and scarlet berries. Nandina domestica ‘Fire Power’: Foliage suffused with vibrant cream, orange, red and pink tints. Choisya ternata ‘Sundance’: Golden trefoil leaves. Aucuba japonica ‘Crotonifolia’: Leaves speckled with gold. Lonicera nitida ‘Baggesen’s Gold’: Vivid golden foliage. Mahonia x media ‘Charity’: Cones of scented bright-yellow…

It’s time for our just-for-fun puzzle – AG’s Garden Wall. This wall comprises 12 bricks in three courses. Each brick has a different word, or phrase on it. The first brick in each course, with BLOCK capitals, is cemented in place and cannot be moved. Just rearrange all the other bricks, so that the four words in each course of bricks are linked. There are three different connections to look for, one for each course. You may find that some words have more than one connection to other courses, but there is just one correct answer. You’ll either find this puzzle fiendishly difficult, or incredibly easy! Answers below. Hint: In at least one of the courses, the bricks are all linked to garden pests! Answers: BLACK = White, Green, Cabbage…

ONCE again, we set out to test some readily available peat-free composts to see how they perform. This time, we chose a specific purpose and sampled ‘seed and cuttings’ composts. What was on trial It always seems strange to lump seed and cuttings together, when seeds often have different requirements for germination when compared with those of cuttings to form roots, but it is the usual term for such composts. This trial consisted of six brands of compost: five peat-free and the sixth a traditional John Innes seed compost, containing the tried-and-tested mixture of one part peat, one part sand and two parts sterilised loam. Understanding new compost As gardeners, we are still trying to adapt to these new compost formulations with varying degrees of success. Many of the major…