Innholdsfortegnelse for 17-Jun-2023 i Amateur Gardening

“Lavender must be the most multi-functional plant in the garden. It is believed to help improve sleep, treat skin blemishes, reduce blood pressure and heart rate, relieve asthma symptoms and promote hair growth! This is not a new discovery: lavender has been a cure-all for centuries, having been used by the Romans as an antiseptic dressing for wounds. There is also its use by aromatherapists as an essential oil and, of course, its popularity as a perfume. I guess the point I am making is that every garden should probably enjoy the benefits of lavender – and this week, Graham Rice details his top ten picks, featuring old and new varieties, on pages 32-35.” Contact us: ■ Subscriptions: 0330 333 1113 ■ Editorial: 0330 3903732 ■ Email: amateurgardening@futurenet.com ■ Advertising:…

THIS week I have been planting up our ‘Tigerella’ tomato plants grown from the free seeds we have away at the end of January. They have gone into growbags supplied by Dalefoot and Melcourt as part of our peat-free experiment. Dalefoot advises that if you use their bags of Wool Compost for Tomatoes as growbags you should plant two tomatoes in each one for the best results. The company says they won’t need feeding throughout the season. Melcourt’s Sylvagrow Peat-Free Planters are larger and can take three plants. The bags contain feed for the first 3-4 weeks of growth, after which gardeners need to start using liquid tomato fertiliser when watering. Although you won’t need to feed for the first few weeks, you will need to water regularly. Failure to…

WE are almost a month on from my last potato update in the May 20 issue of AG and the growth is strong in most of the bags. Some seed potatoes seem to grow stronger than others, at least at the beginning, but it is quite normal and it is the same with the potatoes I grow in my borders. More importantly, it is not necessarily indicative of the volume of your harvest. One thing I have noticed is that unlike the New Horizon peat free I used for container potatoes in the past, the Dalefoot wool compost is moist from top to bottom of the bag. Other peat free compost is often bone dry at the top because it does not have the water-holding qualities of peat and the…

ONE of the greenest things you can do is to grow your own food, because there are no food miles involved. The food is super-fresh and vitamin-rich. It helps the budget as well and this seems especially important at the moment, because the price of food has rocketed. I’m glad that roughly one-third of our garden is put down to fruit and vegetables, although I have to admit I would have liked to fill it all with flowers. The Best Beloved insisted, quite rightly, so we’re able to harvest fresh vegetables and salads, and pick soft fruit. We are fortunate to have an allotment within walking distance as well, although it’s harder pushing the wheelbarrow up the hill than it is on the way back. Not everyone’s so lucky, I…

Mahonia x media ‘Winter Sun’ AGM This evergreen shrub has collars of glossy leaves, and in late autumn and winter it produces wands of yellow flowers that smell of lily of the valley and attract foraging bees. Happy in shade or semi-shade. H: 16ft (5m). Lonicera x purpusii ‘Winter Beauty’ AGM Plant winter honeysuckle and from December to March you’ll be rewarded with little white flowers that perfume your garden with their honeyed fragrance. Sun or semi-shade. H: 6½ft (2m). Sarcococca hookeriana var. digyna ‘Purple Stem’ AGM A useful small evergreen that grows in shade, sweet box is dotted with tiny white flowers in winter – they’ll fill the chilly air with their high-pitched fragrance. H: 32in (80cm). Chimonanthus praecox ‘Grandiflorus’ AGM Purple-centred yellow flowers cling to the bare branches of…

‘Mellow Yellow’ Glowing mottled golden foliage emerges in the spring, and ‘Mellow Yellow’ is worth growing for its foliage alone. There are also single flowers in pure-white. Sow seeds in spring to produce superb all-summer foliage plants for containers. H: 24in (60cm). ‘Silver Edge’ This unusual variety of Aquilegia flabellata var. pumila has rich-blue flowers and the white mottled variegation around the edges of the leaves. The effect is enhanced by the red leaf. Quick growing, so good at the front of the border, or in a window box. H: 12in (30cm). ‘Woodside Gold’ With richly coloured golden-yellow spring foliage, and worth growing for that alone, ‘Woodside Gold’ comes with flowers in blues, pinks and white. But nurseries and seed companies use the names ‘Mellow Yellow’ and ‘Woodside’ for plants…

This week it’s: Tomato tales We look at Britain’s love affair with the humble tom IT’S fair to say we love our tomatoes. Some gardeners with greenhouses are already beginning to crop them, and if we get a warm summer like last year then it promises to be a bumper year for them. In Britain, we eat around 500,000 tonnes of tomatoes every year (shop-bought as well as home-grown). This equates to around 6oz (160g), or the equivalent of two classic-sized tomatoes per person per week. That’s more than 100 tomatoes per person per year. Of course, they come in a range of sizes and varieties, from small cherry to large beefsteak, so let’s take a sideways glance at the humble tom! British tomato growers produce around 100,000 tonnes of…

EVEN here on the south coast I’ve been a little hesitant when it comes to planting out our summer bedding. The weather has been so unpredictable and many plants in the garden are a good couple of weeks behind their usual schedule that I didn’t want to risk planting out and having all my hard work and money wasted. Now, however, June is coming to an end and I am tired of waiting so I have bitten the bullet and planted out my bedding. The days of gardens full of serried ranks of identical plants – known as ‘blanket bedding’ – are mainly in the past now and people are being more imaginative and creative with their border designs. Much of this is because that there are more varieties available…

CULTIVATING plants doesn’t need to be complicated, and if you want some quick colour to give the garden a lift then annuals are the way to go. Sown now, they should grow and flower well before summer turns into autumn, perfect for bare patches of soil or for filling gaps when early summer perennials have gone over. Most annuals grow fast and generally like a sunny spot with free-draining soil that doesn’t sit too wet. They can be sown in straight lines, or ‘drills’, which is a good way to grow plants if you want them for cutting for indoor arrangements, or broadcast free-hand over the soil to create a more natural look. Another way is to mix seeds of different varieties in a pot and sprinkle them together over…

THERE’S nothing like a brilliant blue froth of forget-me-not flowers to show that, at last, the spring is underway. Although some people think they are a nuisance because they do self-seed with alacrity, these little sky-blue flowers bring joy to us and important early nectar for pollinating insects as they emerge to start the year. This week’s free seeds are forget-me-nots with a difference, as they come in three colours, traditional blue as well as pink and white. Hardy biennials, if you sow them now they will start to grow and then burst into tapestry of colours between April and June next year. Start them directly in the soil, somewhere where they are unlikely to be disturbed, then in autumn move them to where you want them to flower. If…

THEY are the epitome of a British summer, and life could be a bowl of them if you are living the dream – so how do you get the very best from must-grow cherry trees? In the early 20th century you would have needed a huge garden in order to grow cherry trees, but with the introduction of self-fertile cherry ‘Stella’ in 1968, this all changed. Until this point, cherry pollination had been a bit of a conundrum, with self-incompatibility compounded further by incompatibility between varieties. Thank goodness for Canada! This is where ‘Stella’ and many other self-fertile varieties (such as ‘Sunburst’ and ‘Lapins’) were bred. “There’s never been a better time to grow cherries” The UK, too, has introduced varieties that are better suited to our inclement climate (such…

When can I chop and split my phlox? Q As my phlox plants have grown quite tall, can I give them a trim and can I divide them for more plants? Also, do foxgloves self-seed? Alan Redfearn (via email) A By all means shorten your phlox plants by half if shoots are tall and wispy, and bending over. This will cause side-shoots to form and they should flower later in the summer. Autumn is the best time to divide your phlox, when leaves are withering and plants are becoming dormant. Reduce them to within 6in (15cm) from the base and split clumps into chunky well-rooted portions. It can be done now if absolutely necessary, but plants would be stressed as they are still growing and flowering and take longer to…

DAHLIAS are one of the joys of the summer garden, their bright, glossy petals giving a shock of colour throughout the borders, especially when they appear above beautiful bronze foliage. I restarted my overwintered tubers in March but they seemed to take an age to get going. I don’t think I’m alone in this as I have read several reports of the same thing happening to other gardeners, and I suspect the cold spring helped delay the appearance of new growth. When the shoots were long enough I took a few to use as cuttings (see next week’s AG for full details) and this week I potted up my ‘Star Wars’ dahlia to go on the patio. This is a compact variety perfect for pots, with bright red and yellow…

UNLESS we garden in the wetter western regions of Britain, we seldom get enough rain when we need it, or far too much. Still, most years, most of us water some of our plants and, of course, those in containers are watered almost non-stop. It’s hard to over-water plants during the summer. Plants are making such strong growth that their demand for water is immense. Most consume at least the equivalent of 1in (2.5cm) of rain each week. With a watering can or hose, we can try to add whatever brings the week’s rainfall up to that. And for the thirstiest – such as sweetcorn, beans, salads, raspberries and many others – more is still not enough. Tomatoes and sweet peas are so thirsty that they even grow with their…

Aquilegia bertolonii AGM A dainty little species that grows naturally in the mountains of Italy and the South of France, the beautifully symmetrical blue flowers are held above the blue-tinted green leaves. Best in full sun, in moist but well-drained soil. Also pretty in pots. H: 12in (30cm). Aquilegia flabellata AGM This elegant alpine species grows wild in the mountains of Japan and usually brings us flowers that are entirely blue, or lavender, sometimes with white tips to the petals. It also has especially pretty grey-green leaves. The dwarf form, A.f. var. pumila, only reaches 12in (30cm). H: 24in (60cm). Aquilegia canadensis From the USA, the bright red-and-yellow flowers of this aquilegia sparkle on shady banks and roadsides. The plants are not long-lived but self-sow and sometimes seem to resist…

THE easiest method of vegetative propagation is to lift plants and split them into a number of portions, which are then replanted. The type of plants that lend themselves to this method are the clump-formers, such as herbaceous plants and other hardy perennials. Plants that creep over the ground forming mats or carpets can often be easily divided – including some alpines or rock plants and ground-cover perennials. Other plants produce suckers, which are growths that arise from the roots or from underground stems and are a natural method of increase. You can remove suckers, which have their own roots, and replant them elsewhere to provide new plants that will be identical in every way to the parent. This is really a form of division. Simple division Hardy perennials MANY…

YOU might think a sprinkler is just a sprinkler, but they actually vary quite a bit. Each different sprinkler head will determine the type of spray produced and the spray pattern, although your local water pressure will be the deciding factor affecting rotation speed and the area covered. For most domestic lawns, sprinklers can be divided into three main groups: ▪ Rotary: these usually deliver water jets through a series of nozzles held on spinning arms. ▪ Impulse: sometimes called ‘impact’ sprinklers, these deliver water in a circular pattern as the delivery head rotates in a series of pulses. ▪ Oscillating: these deliver water through a series of jets arranged along a bar as the bar travels in an arc. Generally, rotary and oscillating sprinklers are most commonly used for…

I WAS listening to a lot of Britpop when the metallic purple spheres of the ornamental alliums burst onto the 1990s gardening scene. And in the same way that Pulp and Oasis are still on my playlist, alliums remain on repeat in my borders to this day. What makes alliums so special is that their look is uniquely architectural, so like living sculptures they stand out from their neighbours and add a whole new layer of interest at the front of (or above) the borders. Not only that, they’re loved by the bees, and if you grow them in the right way and place (see panel below) many will come back year after year. They also come in a myriad of different varieties. If you choose carefully, you can have…