Innholdsfortegnelse for 29-Jul-2023 i Amateur Gardening

“I’m sure most of you who read AG regularly enjoy the weekly fix of garden knowledge through the medium of the printed page. There really is nothing to equal it. However, every now and then, I get asked, “Does AG have a website?” Well, not in name, but the AG team and many of your favourite contributors are regulars on the website of our sister magazine, Homes & Gardens. This is the Rolls Royce of home interest magazines and has lots of good practical garden ideas and tips. So if you fancy surfing the net, try homesandgardens.com/gardens. There’s some great content there.” Contact us: ■ Subscriptions: 0330 333 1113 ■ Editorial: 0330 3903732 ■ Email: amateurgardening@futurenet.com ■ Advertising: 07939406029…

HOT dry summers are good for almost all the garden except the compost heap, because too much heat and not enough rain stops the material breaking down. It doesn’t help if there’s a water shortage or you are only using harvested rainwater and grey water to irrigate your garden – it is too precious to dump on the compost heap. Good compost is made of a well-mixed combination of soft and woody, green and brown ingredients. These include grass clippings, raw green kitchen waste, prunings and cardboard. Good compost will take between six months and two years to break down completely, depending on the size of your compost bin. Moisture and air are vital components in making good compost, so add a couple of cans of water if the heap…

THIS week’s free seeds are for that perennial autumn and spring favourite, pansies. ‘Early Mixed’ is a vibrant, colourful variety with large flowers that is ideal for the front of garden borders, as part of a bedding scheme or as part of your basket and container planting scheme. Sown now, these fast-growing plants will be ready to add to the garden this autumn where you might get a small flush of flowers if you are lucky. Even if they don’t flower, they are hardy enough to withstand winter and will bloom next spring, though you may need to cover them with fleece and mulch around them if very harsh, cold conditions are forecast in winter. Gardeners in the north may wish to keep them in the greenhouse until the weather…

YESTERDAY was my birthday, and the Best Beloved and I have a tradition. We take a home-made cheese and pickle sandwich, plus a flask of tea, and set off on our annual chalk hill blue butterfly hunt. We know how to live! Sometimes the weather is perfect, being sunny and warm, and on occasion we have seen a veritable snowstorm of chalk hill blue butterflies floating above the colourful limestone flora. In other years it’s been wet, cold or grey, and sometimes all three at once. After all, this is England. Butterflies only fly in clement, warm weather, due to their delicate wings. They hunker down in bad weather, so some years we’ll only spot one or two. Nevertheless, we always spend a couple of hours on that hill close…

Exochorda is an easy-going beauty Q We have been given a shrub, but aren’t sure what it is. Can you give us any ideas, plus tips on looking after it? Sophie Taylor (via email) A I suspect that the mystery shrub is a form of exochorda, commonly called pearl bush. There are several species and hybrids – E. racemosa, E. x macrantha and E. giraldii among them. Most hail from China and delight us with their spring display of copious snow-white flowers. Hopefully, yours is E. x macrantha ‘The Bride’, a weeping variety whose arching branches are thickly sleeved with alluring blossom. This shrub is happiest in acid soil – they develop pale yellow patches in alkaline conditions – and are easy to grow and care for. Plant it in a…

This week it’s: The avocado conundrums! We look at one of the most nutritious fruits in the world IT was in the early 1980s when I first tasted avocado (Persea americana) – and I instantly fell in love. I know it is a ‘Marmite’ fruit that people either love or hate: detractors consider avocados tasteless, slimy and unpleasant. Sadly, these fruits will not grow with much success in the UK, otherwise I would have given over an allotment to them! Anyway, love them or loathe them, they are here to stay. However, the avocado has certain issues that, as both gardeners and consumers, we should be aware of! In the US, this Sunday (31 July) is National Avocado Day. These creamy, vitamin-heavy fruits are actually very good for us, so…

PLANTING patio containers and hanging baskets with bright summer bedding is usually one of the high points of the summer, but this year it has been more of a challenge than usual. The exceptionally dry start to summer meant that watering was even more important than usual and needed to be done with more frequency. This year has been slightly different as I have been using two peatfree composts in my pots. Dalefoot Wool Compost for Potting and Sylvagrow Tub and Basket Compost are both designed to sustain plants through summer without using peat, which is renowned for its ability to hang onto moisture and release it as plants need it. I have found that both of these peat-free brands have been working well, and I have definitely needed to…

OUR pond has suffered this summer, the water levels dropping faster than anticipated – too fast even for such a hot dry start to the season. I suspect there is a leak in the lining that will need fixing this autumn – a job I’m looking forward to as it will be lovely to have a functional water feature in the garden once again. Summer is a bad time of year to start messing with your pond’s infrastructure because it should be alive with invertebrates and amphibians, as well as growing plants, which won’t take kindly to being disturbed. Summer is a busy time for ponds. Vegetation will be growing well, with summer varieties entering their prime as earlier-flowering plants die back until next year. If you have frogs, toads…

IT’S the ultimate no-brainer: pay £3 per punnet for currants, or buy a bush for less than a tenner to give you 20 punnets per year for 15 years? Let’s think about that for a millisecond… Why anyone buys currants by the punnet is beyond me. Established bushes yield roughly 4kg (9lb) of fruit per year, plus the plants are self-fertile, easy to maintain and trouble-free. Modern breeding gives us big bud mite resistance in blackcurrants such as ‘Foxendown’, extra-long strigs in redcurrants like ‘Redpoll’, and many attributes in between – mildew resistance and frost-resistant flowers being two more to look for. Let’s not forget that you can buy white currants and pink currants, too; Ribes is a really diverse genus! “Ribes is a really diverse genus” Grow better fruits…

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 avocados! Answers: FLOUR (flower) = Droop(drupe), Conquer(conker), Bury(berry) (homonyms with…

HOES tend to be massively under-used as a means of weed control. The main objective of hoeing is to slice off weeds at, or just below, the soil surface to separate the stem and root system and prevent re-growth. This minimises soil disturbance and reduces the chance of other weed seeds being exposed to light so they can germinate. In order to do this, it is important to angle the blade of the hoe so you make shallow, but effective, strokes that cause maximum damage to the target weeds. Ideally, you need to work backwards when hoeing, as walking over the area that has just been hoed can press weeds back into the soil and increase their chances of survival. Different types of hoe There are many types of garden…

IN 1947, when my uncles Bob and Jim were demobbed from the armed forces, they were given builders’ trowels and told to learn how to lay bricks. This they duly did until the 1990s, when they packed up their cement mixer and retired. I’ve had the trowels ever since. Although a little worn on the handles, they’re still fit for purpose and a pleasure to use – especially as they conjure happy childhood memories of helping Bob and Jim on building sites. One of those sites is the house I live in now. I only found out they’d worked on it after we’d put in an offer, and although Jim said he ‘wouldn’t touch the place with a barge pole’ we bought it anyway, and added an extension. It’s because…

ALL plants are vulnerable to changing weather and pests but those growing in containers have even more to battle against. Packed close together they are more likely to run out of the pot’s finite amounts of food and water and are also more at risk from pests and diseases that can jump from plant to plant. I have found that one of the most pernicious and common pests that can devastate an entire container of plants while your back is turned is the vine weevil. The adults are small brown bugs that eat the edges of leaves, causing minimal damage. But their larvae, which live among the plants’ roots in the compost, are the real problem for gardeners. They eat roots and are capable of demolishing an entire root system,…

WE have reached peak growing time, with crops ripening and ready for harvest, while flowers are a mass of colour in their prime. A summer of hot dry spells has made it a challenge to get this far, and consistent watering has been a major consideration, especially for those who garden on thin soils that aren’t good at retaining moisture and nutrients. Feeding is also important, especially for hungry flowering plants and crops that are starting to ripen. The most necessary component of fertiliser at this time of year is potassium, which aids the production of flowers and fruits. The easiest way to apply potassium is through liquid tomato food that is watered onto the plants. You can also use cold ash from the fire, by forking it into the…

THE whirr of a lawn mower, the gentle drone of a bumblebee and house martins performing acrobatics in the sky overhead are some of the sights and sounds of summer in the garden. Yet for me, nothing sums up this season more than watching butterflies flitting gracefully between flowers in search of nectar. In the past, my garden has welcomed common blues, peacocks, red admirals and small tortoiseshells in fairly large numbers – I once counted 20 or so commas on a clump of Verbena bonariensis. However, in recent years I’ve noticed that the variety of species and numbers have fallen significantly. According to a report by Butterfly Conservation ( butterfly-conservation.org), close to three-quarters of our native species are in decline and several are in danger of extinction. The slump…

This word search comprises words associated with avocados. 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 eight letters remaining; arrange these to make this week’s KEYWORD. AVOCADOS ALLIGATOR CALIFORNIA CARBON DRUPE FLOWERS FRUIT HARD HASS HOUSEPLANT MALE MEXICO PEAR SOFT STONE TOAST VEGAN WORLD HOW TO ENTER: Enter this week’s keyword on the entry form, and send it to AG Word Search No 682, Amateur Gardening, Future Publishing Limited, Unit 415, Winnersh Triangle, Eskdale Road, Winnersh, RG41 5TP, to arrive by Wednesday 9 August 2023. The first correct entry chosen at…