Innholdsfortegnelse for 10-Jun-2023 i Amateur Gardening

“Post-lockdown, and in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis, the trend for growing your own veg is increasing, and rightly so. You may not achieve the size and volume of a commercial grower, but your crop will probably taste better and it can be hugely rewarding, as well as saving a few pounds. However, as seasoned gardeners know, some veg is easier to cultivate than others – and to make it worthwhile, you need a lot of space and the room to rotate your crops. Camilla Phelps selects her best-tasting greens on pages 28-31 and she has focused on easier growers and those that work in containers. So why not give them a go?” Contact us: ■ Subscriptions: 0330 333 1113 ■ Editorial: 0330 3903732 ■ Email: amateurgardening@futurenet.com ■ Advertising:…

IT is almost two months since I started AG’s peat-free experiment using only Dalefoot and Melcourt’s Sylvagrow composts for all my germinating, potting on and growing this summer. The experiment is not a comparison, because the two composts are very different. Dalefoot is made from wool, bracken and comfrey while Sylvagrow contains fine bark, wood chip and coir. So far, I am enjoying and feeling confident with both brands and have only had one mishap – I mistakenly potted some nicotiana seedlings into Dalefoot potting compost. It was too strong for the plants and they succumbed overnight, but since then I have been using Sylvagrow multipurpose, or multipurpose with added John Innes, with excellent results. Germination rates and seedling transplantations have been excellent, my dahlia tubers sprouted well though slowly,…

I KNOW we are all up to our ears in the garden, but there is still time to plan ahead for next year. Wallflowers are one of the joys of spring with their rich, burnished tones and delicious peppery scent. They are biennials, like foxgloves and honesty, which means that if you sow them now they will develop their leaves and roots, fall dormant in winter before growing and flowering next spring. The variety we are giving away this week is ‘Monarch Fair lady’, which has a wonderful fragrance and is perfect for borders and containers. It likes dappled shade and grows to 18in (45cm). You can sow your wallflower seeds directly into the soil, but as our borders are packed with flowers I’ve sown mine in a tray and…

GARDENERS are living in strange times. We’re wrestling with a changing climate that’s altered the established weather patterns we once relied upon. And it has all happened rather quickly. If anyone had told me that I would struggle to grow carrots, a crop I succeeded with for decades, I wouldn’t have believed it. The reason’s clear. Spring is an erratic season these days and often much drier than it used to be. We can no longer rely on February fill dyke, a blustery March and April showers for our May flowers. Attitudes have changed in garden practices, too. This was brought home to me when I was re-reading a section of The Butterfly Gardener written by Miriam Rothschild. It was published in 1983, and it must be more than 25…

Making a bed interesting all year Q I have renovated a bed at the front of the house that gets the sun throughout the morning. I want to add some plants to add a pop of colour at different stages of the year, some low level and some with some height, but definitely nothing that would grow too tall. What would you suggest? Ricky Crymble (via email) A I like your idea of creating a border, ideally of shrubs as most border perennials die back in autumn, for colour throughout the year. Try the following: ■ Spring Daphne odora ‘Aureomarginata’: Scented reddish-purple flowers. Ribes sanguinium White Icicle: Flowering currant with white blooms. Syringa meyeri ‘Palibin’: Dwarf lilac with lavender-pink blossom. ■ Summer Philadelphus ‘Manteau d’Hermine’: Dwarf mock orange; scented white…

This week it’s: Climbing and rambler roses We look at the similarities and differences between these roses I GREW up in a rose garden – literally! My father was in charge of Queen Mary’s Rose Garden, in The Regent’s Park, London, and we lived in a lodge there. This instilled in me a love of roses, and I’ve never been without them. But I was in my 20s when I first became aware of the differences between climbing roses and rambling roses. I assumed that they were all the same: they were roses, and they grew upwards! It was a revelation when the differences between them were eventually pointed out to me! ■ Most climbing roses derive from a group of wild species called the Synstylae, which have lots of small…

I DOUBT there is a garden anywhere in the world that doesn’t have a ‘tricky area’ or two that either needs extra care, thoughtful planting or, indeed, regularly ejects whatever plants the gardener tries to cultivate there. Some gardens are easy to cultivate, blessed with rich, loamy soil that is welcoming to whatever varieties put down roots there, but most of us have to contend with tricky spots that require a little more hard graft to make them pleasingly productive. Our garden is a prime example of this. At the moment it is a riot of alliums, poppies, geums and knapweed, but the soil is terribly thin and chalky so each autumn and spring we have to dig in industrial amounts of compost and well-rotted manure in an effort to…

THIS week I planted a clematis ‘Arabella’ to mask a bare area of wall and provide some shade and shelter for a nest box. It is an attractive variety with deep mauve flowers that appear from June to September. It is said to be easy-going and happy in any aspect and most soils, though it prefers a free-draining, fertile spot so I added lots of well-rotted manure and homemade compost to the soil a couple of weeks before planting. ‘Arabella’ will also grow well in large containers and is a scrambler, rather than a climber, so will need tying in. When it comes to pruning, our new clematis falls into Group 3, so all the stems are cut back to 12in (30cm) above the ground in late winter or early…

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 one of the courses, the bricks are all linked to climbing roses! Answers: RIDLEY (actress) = Lowe(model), May Cooper(actress), Donovan(TV…

SOIL is so much more than just ‘dirt’, and although it tends to be taken for granted unless there is a problem, it is actually complicated stuff. It is a diverse environment of bacteria, fungi and soil organisms that all need to work together if plants are to thrive. Texture and pH Two of the most important characteristics, from the gardener’s perspective, are soil texture and pH. Unfortunately, these often become confused and there is a widely held belief that clay soils are acidic and therefore difficult to plant. Examining the soil’s texture was, originally, the main method of describing a soil depending on how it felt when worked in the hand. This simple field test could give a basic idea of the relative proportions of sand, silt and clay…

SINCE the coronation, my friend Tim has endeavoured to be more ‘King Charles’ in his garden by eschewing chemicals and allowing wildflowers to fill the unmortared joints in his paving. While the carrots and courgettes have been a huge success, the naturalistic paving has been a disaster. Instead of low-growing ribbons of greenery (as in the King’s Highgrove estate), Tim’s paving is a jumble of coarse grass, towering willow herb and prickly thistles that’s more akin to the Serengeti than Charles’s iconic Terrace Garden. I’ve always been a fan of flowers and herbs in paving, but the look takes care to create. Simply replacing mortar with soil and hoping the right type of plants turn up never works – the combination of bare earth and warm stone creates a perfect…

Bedded in: Next week I talk about getting the best from your summer bedding and how to avoid common pitfalls THE best way to improve your soil is to fork in lots of well-rotted compost or farmyard manure (generically known as ‘organic matter’). You are not likely to be able to make enough compost to improve all the soil in your garden but even one compost heap is a good place to start. We have a dual heap, with one bin rotting down while the other is topped up, and we treat our soil in rotation, one bed in spring, another in the autumn and so on. The compost is a mix of green kitchen peelings, woody prunings and grass mowings, forked over regularly and covered with plastic sheeting to…

YOU know that summer is here when gardens and allotments start filling up with teepees of French and runner beans. Half-hardy plants, they are started undercover, then hardened off and planted out when nighttime temperatures are reliably above zero and the weather is more settled. We have grown ‘Lady Di’ runner beans, which crop heavily, and are full of flavour and stringless, and ‘Cobra’ French beans that have mauve flowers that turn into tasty stringless pods. We are growing them in raised beds in a sunny, sheltered area of garden, and I supplemented the beds’ soil and compost with chicken manure pellets before planting. Beans need sun and fertile soil that is free draining yet also moisture retentive. Grow them up tall canes – I find that teepees are the…

CLEMATIS have played a large part in my life for many years. My great-uncle was John Treasure of Burford House Gardens in Worcestershire and his garden was dripping in clematis. At 16, I started my gardening career working in his nursery. John was often described as the ‘Clematis King’ and even has one named after him – Clematis ‘John Treasure’. The clematis in John’s garden were, more often than not, planted through other shrubs. They were rarely pinned up uncomfortably against trellis. As a very novice gardener, I clearly recall the excitement of spotting a clematis flower from among a shrub or climbing rose. For a second you wonder where it’s come from until you see the stems weaving their way up and through the bush. Planting clematis through a…

BULBS (such as daffodils, tulips, hyacinths and lilies) and corms (crocuses and gladioli) are very easily increased by vegetative means. A bulb is composed of ‘scales’, which are modified swollen leaves that hold food and water to sustain the bulb until new roots are produced following planting. Roots are produced at the base of the bulb from a plant-like structure, which is in fact modified stem. If you cut open a bulb you will find an embryo flower inside the scales. The new leaves are also produced from the centre. A corm, on the other hand, is a compact swollen stem that also acts as a food-storage organ. Again, flowers and leaves arise from the centre and roots are produced at the base after planting. Do not lift bulbs and…