Innholdsfortegnelse for 22-Jul-2023 i Amateur Gardening

“Do plants have personalities? This may seem an odd question, but according to entomology professor Richard Karban of the University of Davis, California, they certainly do. I found this fascinating, when I was considering why we like certain plants over others, aside from reasons of practicality or aesthetics. Plants have been around for thousands of years before humans, and so throughout our evolution we have had a relationship with them for food, shelter, medicine and much more. It is accepted that gardening helps your mental health, and aside from being outdoors and active, I think there is also an element of beneficial communication with plants that you choose because of their personalities What do you think?” Contact us: ◼ Subscriptions: 0330 333 1113 ◼ Editorial: 0330 3903732 ◼ Email: amateurgardening@futurenet.com…

IF you haven’t already planted your autumn-flowering bulbs and tubers it’s a good idea to get a move on and get them in now. There are bulbs for every situation and soil. Autumn crocuses and Sternbergia, plus cheerful yellow winter aconites look stunning naturalised in lawns and under trees. Borders can easily be brightened by brilliant dahlias, cheery echinaceas and tall nerines with their clusters of trumpetshaped blooms in shades of pink and hardy Cyclamen coum that take over flowering duties in the New Year. For sheer showbiz glamour, flamboyant alstroemerias and elegantly drooping hesperantha will keep the colour coming until the first frosts and even later if you’re lucky. Bulbs do best in free-draining soil, so if you garden on clay dig in plenty of well rotted manure or…

FOR the past few years it has been impossible to go to any major RHS flower show and ignore the foxgloves on display. They are the ‘plant du jour’ of many garden designers – but don’t let that put you off, because they are worthy of a space in any garden. Their name originates from various myths, my favourite being that foxes wear them to keep their paws dry on dewey mornings, and they are a hardy wild plant that will thrive in full sun and dappled shade. This week’s free seeds are for a variety called ‘Excelsior Mixed’ that flowers in a rage of pastel shades. Standing at 5ft (150cm) tall, they are perfect for the back and centre of borders and will attract pollinators. Sown now, they will…

SPRING may be the major sowing season, but don’t put away those seed tins just yet – by starting off certain crops now, you’ll ensure harvests keep rolling in for months to come! The secret to running a productive vegetable garden is to never take your eye off the ball – always anticipate gaps emerging on the plot, and take steps to fill them as quickly as possible. Early sowings made undercover in February allow us to hit the ground running. But with many quick-growing veg maturing in six-ten weeks, summer can find you looking at an increasing number of bare patches. Depending on where you live, we have another eight-ten weeks where night-time temperatures remain in double figures. That’s a lot of cropping potential! After this time, the growth…

What could fill areas of dead conifer? Q My garden is surrounded by conifer hedges. Sadly, there are a number of areas where the base of the hedge has died. What could be planted at the hedge base to fill in the gaps that have appeared? Stuart Turnock (via email) A Dieback could be due to honey fungus, aphids or pestalotiopsis disease. Check for honey fungus by exposing a large root and removing a sliver of bark. If white mould is visible, blame this disease. Regrettably, there is no cure. If sap-feeding aphids are responsible they should be visible with a hand lens. If you discover them, halt their spread by spraying with Bug Clear Ultra, repeating treatment at three-weekly intervals. If aphids aren’t present, pestalotiopsis fungus may be the…

DAME Edna Everage, the alter ego of Australian comedian Barry Humphries, who died earlier this year, was famous for brandishing armfuls of cut gladiolus. With gusto, she/he would throw them into the audience. This did much to bring the flower to the attention of the wider public. As a student at RHS Wisley, I spent three months working with trials of gladioli – new varieties assessed both for garden and exhibition quality. When you spend such a concentrated amount of time with one type of plant, you come to either love it or hate it – and for me, it was the former. The long spires of vibrant colour from these South African plants have always pleased and intrigued me, in equal measure. Let’s take a closer look. Gladiolus by…

I LOVE the summer, I love our garden in the summer and I love gardening in summer but sometimes it can feel like fighting fires all over the place. Weeds here, pests there, a few ailing plants dotted around the place – and that’s even before we get anywhere near the ongoing (at the time of writing) worries about drought and water use. I have been watering our raised beds, containers and growbags most days, giving everything a good soak, but the water either slides off the surface (see panel, below) or barely sinks in. Dig into the soil and it’s as dry as the desert a few inches below the surface. The one silver lining of the drought is the absence of slugs and snails, which means that while…

WE don’t have an enormous amount of room for fruit and veg so we concentrate on the crops we know we will use the most. In summer we grow beans (runner and French), garlic, onions and shallots, squash and the inevitable tomatoes in the greenhouse and on the patio. This year I’m also growing potatoes in containers with great success so far. In winter we grow leafy crops, and this week I have been sowing some chard d watering our curly kale seedlings, moving them from a windowsill to the mini greenhouse to harden off. I have also spent time tackling an outbreak of aphids on a globe artichoke. I don’t want to use chemicals because the flowers are loved by bees and other pollinators so I have been squishing…

WE have a small native tree that will succeed almost anywhere. It is fast and willing to grow from seed or cuttings. It produces huge panicles of perfumed creamy blooms, followed by edible berries that are full of nutrients and antioxidants. Yet elderberry (Sambucus nigra) is often seen more as a large weed than a useful cropping plant. Perhaps this disdain comes from the many associations between elder trees and witchcraft. Even today, many are reluctant to cut an elder down, as it is deemed to bring misfortune. Then there’s the distinct smell to the foliage. Also, a warning: the foliage is inedible. Indeed, in the past, leaves were boiled in soapy water for drenches to kill aphids, carrot root fly maggots and other woes. This is now illegal in…

MANY gardens have a dry sunny bank or wall that makes gardening there anything but a pleasure. While ‘rubbish’ appears to thrive in spite of a lack of moisture, any attempt to get flowering plants established seems fraught with failure – unless the right plants are used. Obviously it is these raised sites that dry out first in summer and consequently annuals are virtually doomed to failure at the beginning unless one is prepared to use gallons of water each day to keep them going. The real answer lies in planting perennials that are accustomed to dry conditions, such as the rock roses, aubrietas and brooms. Unless the area to be covered is very small, one cannot do better than plant one or two brooms for a background. During the…

IT has been a very dry summer, with May 2023 being one of the driest on record, and even a few days of hefty rain will have little impact on the aridity of the soil. At the time of writing, another summer of drought is very much on the cards, and if this becomes a trend then we will need to rethink how we garden and what plants we grow. Where I live we have thin chalky soil that drains quickly even in the wettest weather and so far, this summer has turned the garden into a dust bowl. Clay soil won’t fare any better, become cracked and solid The easiest way to garden in extreme conditions is to choose plants that thrive in those situations. Drought resistant plants include…

MAKING sure your garden is a tapestry of colour right through the summer is no easy matter, especially when conditions are very dry. By the middle of June we had seen no rain for over a month, making it a challenge to keep everything irrigated, while also managing water supplies. While some new annuals have fallen by the wayside, our mid-to-late summer perennials are still going strong, thriving on minimal watering. Feeding, watering, deadheading while monitoring and combating pests and disease are all important jobs at this time of year. Cutting back is also a continuing task and you can still just about get away with the Chelsea chop – removing a third of stems on certain perennials including catmint, sedum, helenium and Echinacea to encourage a second burst of…

WE made a change to our bird-feeding regime last autumn and decided not to provide food for the birds. For one thing, we had too many pigeons picking up the crumbs and I got fed with my box balls and box chickens wearing pigeon hats. The bulbs around the box topiary were getting flattened by the pigeons’ enormous feet and we had rats and squirrels. And, let’s face it, they’re not good additions to the garden. My wonderful ginger tomcat, Frank, was catching the odd rat and booby-trapping the garden path with them. This was ruining our street cred with our much posher neighbours, who are probably immune to anything of the sort. The squirrels, which regularly performed a flying trapeze act in an attempt to get peanuts, were also…

Echinacea purpurea ‘Green Jewel’ AGM This has huge pale, short-petalled flowers tinged with green. Good for repeat flowering if you deadhead or pick regularly. Plant with taller ornamental grasses such as miscanthus and to get it through the winter, apply a heavy mulch after cutting back. HxS: 30x18in (76x46cm). Echinacea purpurea ‘White Swan’ A classic white form of echinacea, this blooms from July through to October. It is reliably winter hardy and is good for containers, too. Team it with pale-green echinacea cultivars such as ‘Green Jewel’ for a cooler late-summer colour scheme. HxS: 3x2ft (91x60cm). Echinacea purpurea ‘Green Edge’ A sturdy and topperforming whiteflowering variety with a green tinged edge to the flowers. Partner this with Calamagrostis x acutiflora ‘Overdam’ or Miscanthus sinensis ‘Morning Light’ for their subtle white variegation.…

Butterfly Series More informal, more natural, more delicate in style than most, and shorter, the flowers resemble small butterflies and are usually seen in blue or pink. Type: Half-hardy annual, raised from seed. Good for: Containers, the front of the border, cutting for posies. Height: 18in (45cm). ‘Giant Hyacinth Flowered’ A blend of purples, blues, pink and white with intermediate shades on tall plants. An economical blend when mixed colours are what you need. Sow in autumn for the most impressive plants. Type: Hardy annual, raised from seed. Good for: Mixed borders, cutting. Height: 3-4ft (90cm-1.2m). ‘Frosted Skies’ A very pretty single-colour larkspur, the white flowers are tinted in paleblue creating a cool summer look. Many other pretty single colours are also available. Type: Hardy annual, raised from seed. Good…

THE most outstanding gardener of his day was Thomas Andrew Knight, who led horticulture from the age of superstition, when custom was handed on unquestioned from generation to generation, to the more scientific approach, critical and reasoned, of the 19th century. Gifted with a remarkable memory and a capacity for acute observation, Knight had a logical mind that saw to the very root of a problem. Born at Wormesley Grange, near Ludlow, he was brought up among the orchards of Herefordshire. His father, a clergyman, had inherited an ample fortune and died when Thomas was only five. Knight went to Balliol College, Oxford, but we know little of his immediate post-university years. He apparently started experiments with apples in 1786 and applied to fruit and vegetables for the first time…

INTEGRATED pest management (IPM) is the term used to describe an overall balanced approach to plant pest control, rather than a ‘firefighting’ one. It involves a combination of all the various measures available to the gardener to control pests, and requires a planned and coordinated philosophy to the whole garden environment, rather than treating symptoms as they occur. It starts with pre-empting problems with cultural measures, including selecting resistant cultivars and employing good hygiene and cultural practices. Pre-emptive moves include the use of traps and barriers to monitor or prevent the pest establishing on your plants or stopping it reaching plants. An understanding of a pest’s life cycle is helpful, as each pest (particularly insects) has one stage of their life cycle when they are most vulnerable and therefore much…

BEING a good gardener isn’t just about how you garden, but when. Get the timing right, and success comes easy. Time things badly, and you’ll find yourself on the wrong side of Mother Nature – or worse, your other half… I know this because of the pair of potted box pyramids on either side of our steps. They’ve long been a point – or rather, two points – of contention as I’ve never liked them, and Lisa has. To my eye, they look like topiary road cones – and who would want those? Well, Lisa does, and that’s why they have to stay. Over the years, I’ve tried to sell the benefits of reshaping them. Trimmed as domes, they’d echo the rounded crowns of trees in the distance, as opposed…