Innholdsfortegnelse for 15-Jul-2023 i Amateur Gardening

“AG reader Doreen had a day out at RHS Bridgewater recently (see Letters page 55). When she went to buy plants from the RHS shop, she was suprised to find they were grown in 40% peat compost. Intrigued, I checked the RHS website, which stated: “By 2025 we want, with confidence, to say the plants we sell are peat-free.” They are not saying that they will do this – just that they ‘want’ to do it. So AG readers can’t buy peat after 2024, but the RHS will continue to sell peat-based plants until plant producers find a workable alternative. Interestingly, the producers have recently asked for their peat compliancy to be put back to 2030! Perhaps the RHS should stop selling plants until then to help the environment –…

BIENNIALS are some of the best plants to grow and midsummer is the perfect time to start sowing them. Wallflowers, honesty, sweet rocket, foxgloves – they are all biennials and worth growing. They are easy to grow and a brilliant way of filling the ‘colour gap’ we sometimes get between spring bulbs and summer’s flamboyance. Biennials are plants that produce foliage and strong roots one year, go dormant through winter, then start to grow again the following spring before flowering, setting seed and dying back. Sown now, they will be large enough to be planted in the garden this autumn for next year’s display. Alternatively, they can be kept in pots over winter and planted out in spring. This week I have been potting up the biennial wallflower ‘Monarch Fair…

SAY hello to one of the best plants you can grow: sweet rocket. This hardy perennial is a low-maintenance delight, long flowering and easy to grow. Sweet rocket produces tall spires of loosely frothing small flowers in shades of pink or white – or, in this case, both. It is at its best in July and August, and because it releases a sweet delicate perfume from dusk until dawn, is a lovely addition to a patio border, or grown around a seating area. Sweet rocket, also known as dame’s violet and damask flower, is a great plant for pollinators and is an excellent caterpillar food plant. It likes a well-drained, fertile spot in light shade or full sun, and can be sown directly in spring and early summer, in soil…

Thank you for all your entries – £20 goes to the writer of each poem published. Lesely Hough says: ‘We have recently moved to Norfolk and our new house has a lovely long garden, with a sunny aspect, which is what we have always wanted. We are slowly nurturing back to life what was once a beautiful garden and taking time to enjoy it’. A garden is a joy, a treat to savour,After all our hard work and daysof labour,We can sit down and survey ourplot,We can think to ourselves; lookwhat we’ve got. A beautiful border scene of colourand form,A feast for the eyes, when theyall perform,Plants grown from seed are amiracle to behold,They often hold memories dearand old. Trees and shrubs adding structureand height,Annuals, perennials and climbersto delight,A vegetable…

DAHLIAS and roses are two of our best loved summer plants, and for good reason. Both offer us an innumerable number of colour palettes and varieties and create some of the most iconic and dazzling looks in horticulture, combined with a longevity that sees them flowering from midsummer right through until well into autumn. There literally are dahlias and roses for every garden and outdoor space. Be it in a container on a sunny patio or on a balcony, creating visual ‘wow’ moments in a border, or climbing up a trellis, arbour or house front. They should be just about to arrive at their peak now, filling the garden with colour and fragrance, and with the right care and attention will keep on going until well into the autumn. Last…

THIS week I have been spending time with herbs, harvesting, planting and cutting back. We have several large rosemary bushes and they need a trim after flowering to keep them in shape and encourage them to produce fresh new growth each year. Simply remove the tips without chopping into the old wood, which won’t regenerate. If left unpruned, rosemary becomes woody and unsightly, but it is easy to take cuttings using the trimmings to make new plants. According to folklore, if a house has a large rosemary bush out the front, the woman of the household wears the trousers. I shall say no more! Sage is another woody herb that can become unruly. Shear off the dead flowers and, again, use shoot tips as cuttings if you need more plants.…

Growing snapdragons year after year Q I love snapdragons and ours are amazing this year. I like where they are growing, so can I grow more in the same place next year? Yvonne Wilkinson (via email) A Though your plants have flourished this year it is not wise to grow the same plant in the same place year after year. Root infections can build up and performance suffers. Next, and in subsequent years, please, if feasible, grow your antirrhinums where you have not grown them for at least three years. If that is not possible, I urge you to create an equally beautiful display with dahlias. There’s a wide range of varieties to choose from and all, in a warm, sunny spot, will bloom from July to November. Alternatively, plant…

MINT is the earliest of the culinary herbs of which I have any sort of recollection, when Mum would put a sprig of it in the saucepan when boiling potatoes. It grew in a bed just outside the back door, and it was always there. But it wasn’t until I became a student of gardening, in my teens, that I realised there are hundreds – certainly 600 or more – of types of mint. And, it has to be said, dropping some leaves in a pan of spuds is probably the least inventive way of using them! Many of these woody herbs are now looking their absolute best, full of freshness, moisture and essence. As the summer progresses, the stems become woody, and the leaves lose their strongest flavours. Let’s…

YEARS ago, I was driving through Massachusetts and popped into a Dairy Queen for a snack. A rotund young boy was at the counter and had ordered the largest ice cream on the menu. The cone was the size of a builder’s bucket and it had enough candy on top to make a witch’s house. Even so, as he gathered up the giant ice cream, he was disappointed and hollered, “Call that a large?” Everything is bigger in America; cars, ice creams, the obesity problem. But this summer, there’s one thing here in Blighty that’s bigger and better, and that’s the roses. Roses are fantastic, both in terms of the number of flowers and the size of their blooms, even on varieties that bear small but numerous flowers. In parts…

ONE of the best shrubs in our garden is a Coronilla glauca ‘Citrina’, a compact evergreen shrub with soft, dense leaves and lots of brilliant yellow flowers. It blooms in winter and the flowers fill the garden with the sweetest scent, a reminder that spring is just around the corner. Ours are several years old and starting to sprawl and get rather woody in its centre, so as they are relatively short-lived plants I decided to propagate it by taking some greenwood cuttings. These come between the new, sappy growth of softwood cuttings taken in spring and early summer, and the mature semi-ripe and hardwood cuttings of late summer and autumn/winter. Taken now, relatively soft stems should have rooted well by autumn when they can be potted up individually and…

WE don’t seem to get normal seasons any more, as recent springs have shown. It’s either too hot, too dry or too wet. On balance, I prefer the weather to be too wet, rather than dry and hot, because my high-altitude garden doesn’t have much of a water table. My soil is friable, but there’s no clay content so it doesn’t hold water or nutrients very well. That slows down growth and makes for a lot of work, because I have to water in spring if it’s dry. I prefer to use watering cans, not a hose, because my soil takes a long time to warm up as it is. This year everyone had a late spring, not just me, and it was unseasonably cold. The first swallow didn’t fly…

BROCCOLI and calabrese – are they different or the same? Over the years, the two names have become muddled, so what exactly are we talking about? For most of the centuries that we’ve been growing these plants, we had broccoli, sometimes called ‘sprouting broccoli’. These are tall, tough, winter-hardy brassicas, grown for their small, prolific flowering spears – like mini-cauliflowers that sprout from the tops of the plants and from the leaf joints below. They were invaluable as some of the few fresh vegetables that could be cropped outside in winter and spring. Then along came calabrese. Originating in Calabria, at the foot of Italy’s boot, calabrese produces a single, much larger, head – rather like a green cauliflower – at the top of shorter, unbranched plants. Although the plants…

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 mint! Answers: QUINCE = Plum, Pear, Apricot (all fruiting plants…