Innholdsfortegnelse for 16-Dec-2023 i Amateur Gardening

I continue to be absolutely delighted by your response to Amateur Gardening’s re-launch. The excitable, heartfelt messages via letter, email and on social media continue and it brings a smile to my face to hear how thrilled so many of you have been to see this iconic gem of a magazine valiantly return to newsstands across the land. Amateur Gardening magazine is for the people, for keen gardeners everywhere, and this is why we feel it is important to get you involved as much as we can. So in this special Christmas issue (featuring three packets of free seeds on the cover) we are asking for your feedback. We’d like your thoughts, suggestions and ideas for the magazine as we head into 2024. Do you like the new look and…

Dig over plots or make no-dig It’s at this time of year when thoughts turn to bedding down our plots for winter. Faced with some bare patches, what should we do with them? The days of no-dig being a fringe topic are long gone – it’s now mainstream. So, if you’ve switched, what should you be doing now, or if you prefer to dig, what’s the best way to cultivate your soil? And what’s all the fuss about, anyway!! Digging used to be deemed essential to break up a compacted patch of earth, or improve a heavy one (e.g. adding grit to clay soil), but it’s now commonly known that turning over the soil can temporarily disrupt soil life (including beneficial worms, fungi and bacteria) and make it more vulnerable…

It seems like a matter of just a few weeks since British Summer Time ended, and the clocks were put back an hour. I confess to an initial relish of the darker evenings and the excuse to sit down, relax and recover from a season of rushing around in our green spaces. But now I’m beginning to get a bit twitchy. I’m tired of ‘Strictly I’m a Celebrity Dancing on Ice’, or whatever is offered up for our televisual delectation these days. And, I’m sure, like me, you miss the warm, balmy evenings, watering, feeding, weeding and gardening like an Olympian. I long for my glorious summer garden, filled with fabulous blooms, intoxicating scent, swaying grasses, and pollinators buzzing lazily through the borders. Yet, in the midst of the coldest,…

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Your lovely letters have begun flowing in and there has been a fantastic amount of comment and content across social media. This issue I’d like to share more of the heartfelt letters we have received which have made the team here feel positively warm inside. Also, till we get the social media accounts for the magazine fired up again for 2024 please feel free to reach out to me on instagram kim_stoddart and via X (formerly twitter) @badlybehavedone. Dear Kim First, I would like to express my relief - and - delight that your magazine has been revived. From the evidence of the first two issues of its reincarnation, the quality seems to be even higher than before – a significant achievement. I wonder if Toby Buckland is part of…

As the season is upon us there’s the thorny question of what’s the ideal gift for a gardener? Immediately we can eliminate almost anything with the label ‘Ideal gift for a gardener’ as invariably these are not at all suitable for almost anyone. Well unless you are trying to be insulting or ironic. There are now worrying toes you might tread on if you don’t know them really well; maybe they’re organic gardeners and wouldn’t appreciate tubs of ‘chemical’ fertiliser, or vegan gardeners who definitely won’t appreciate tubs of animal-related fertiliser, and let’s not even get into the peat discussion. It’s a minefield nowadays as some can take offence with this or that, even plant names may carry risks of misunderstanding. Likewise others might take completely the wrong message if…

Imagine plucking a lemon off a tree and popping a fresh-as-you-like slice in a gin and tonic. Growing my own lemons wasn’t something I had thought about until I stumbled upon a blog post by the head gardener at the Black Swan, Tommy Banks’ award-winning restaurant in Yorkshire, describing how they grow ‘Four Season’ lemon trees to supply the restaurant. I thought if they could grow lemons in Yorkshire, so could I in Somerset. As the climate warms up and plant breeders produce hardier citrus varieties, we will be able to grow oranges and lemons. While we won’t be seeing citrus groves in England any time soon, growing citrus in containers is a good and reliable option. Citrus fruits are long associated with warm Mediterranean climates of Spain, Italy and…

We all have a relationship with plants, members of a vast kingdom of organisms, consisting of 390,900 species at the last count. That relationship varies from person to person, according to knowledge and experience, but everyone shares a reliance on plants to make food using the light of the sun and now, more essential than ever, to save us from the terrible dangers posed by climate change. Given how important plants are to us, it’s always surprising to see how little attention they receive. There’s a lack of curiosity that’s been termed ‘plant blindness’. Plants are rarely in the news, recognised in culture or even studied much in their own right, often being treated as just part of ‘biology’. IDEA 1. Make a hot drink Making a tasty hot drink…

What do you get the gardener that has everything already? You may be pondering still what to buy your green-fingered pals for the fast-approaching festive season. To help you on your way, in my first monthly Tried and Tested page, I’ve pulled together some savvy suggestions. Enjoy! • Stihl are the front runners when it comes to tools that won’t necessarily break the bank but will do a perfect job. If the inside of your car is anything like mine after a trip recycling your garden waste, then the SEA 20 (Stihl’s first cordless vacuum) is the answer! For those bigger clean-up jobs in the garden, then the SHA 56 will have you blowing, vacuuming, and shredding leaves and hedge clippings to then use as a lovely free mulch over…

Making pressed flower candles is a creative project that preserves blossoms from the garden in a beautiful and useful way. After drying the flowers, the project takes about an hour, and you can begin using the candles immediately after they’ve cooled. They burn softly, and as the wax melts and becomes translucent, the dried flowers stand out even more. Choose colorful and thin-petaled blossoms for visual impact, quickness in drying, and safety. Woody stems and thicker pieces are not suitable for this project. Pick flowers late in the morning, when they’re dry yet still perky. Materials for two candles ✓ Colorful, thin-petaled flowers✓ 4½ cups (560 g) soy or rapeseed candle wax✓ 2 (16-ounce [475 ml]) glass jam jars✓ 2 tabbed candle wicks, suitable for the wax and the jars’…

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I hope that you all continue to embrace the opportunity to get outside, enjoy the fresh air and forage for natural materials to bring indoors. There’s something magical about collecting a few sprigs-even a simple arrangement of evergreen leaves adorned with berries, or a small vase of early snowdrops brings scent and colour into the house. I’m sure that this is where the joy of Christmas trees comes from – having a connection with the outside on the short, cold, days and long, winter nights. So, what to do on those winter nights? Why not reflect on what has done well in your garden and let your mind dream about what you might like to try next. Beth would write in winter (well actually all year round, but for longer…

I love the hustle and bustle and hurly-burly of Christmas and the extended holiday season, but amongst it all I also need to get out into the garden and take deep breaths of cold fresh air - even if it’s raining! I also need to step away, even for a short while, from the food and drink and socialising and take myself outside to do some gentle gardening. Because while the festivities make some sort of a break in routine for most of us, to the garden and its inhabitants (floral, feathered and furred) they are much the same as any other day during the coldest, wettest months of the year. There is nothing in the rules to say you have to ignore the garden and stay by the fire…

My daughter Fran has a mad cockapoo called Amber and she is having a problem with dog fleas. Well that’s Amber not Fran. The treatment Fran’s been using for three or four years doesn’t appear to be working anymore. This set me thinking, because the dog fleas have almost certainly built up a resistance to the over-the-counter chemical that’s been routinely applied to Amber’s neck. Similar things happen in horticulture and agriculture, because living things evolve through natural selection, as Charles Darwin realised. Chemicals that used to be effective get less effective as time moves on. Rothamsted Research Station published an interesting paper about this in 2018. You can look up The evolutionary origins of pesticide resistance, written by Hawkins, Bass, Dixon and Neve online. The four scientists concluded that target…

With Christmas approaching, it’s a great time to make something special to drink using perhaps the last pickings from herbs until they start growing properly next year. You can use regular thyme for the switchel or lemon thyme if you have it, and after this mild autumn, there should still be lemon verbena leaves in the garden if you grow it. If not, this is the excuse to give yourself a gift voucher for Christmas to buy a plant or two in late spring to make this drink as an early summer treat. Ginger and lemon thyme switchel ■ Switchels are fine comings-together of sugar/honey and vinegar - ready to drink with little wait, and very adaptable to what’s in season. The classic switchel of honey, lemon and ginger in…

No matter how hard you try to avoid it, Christmas always seems to leave us with mounds of packaging to dispose of. Cardboard, bubblewrap, wrapping paper, polystyrene, cards and envelopes, food cartons, plastic drinks bottles, the list goes on and on before we even get to mentioning the Christmas tree, door wreath and optimistically hung mistletoe. When I was young my parents used to get their turkey from a local farmer and it arrived well wrapped up in a sturdy cardboard box with handles. We still use these boxes, several decades later, to store our Christmas decorations - but what can we do with the rest of the debris? The good news is a lot of the rubbish can be used constructively to save money in the garden and in…

The holly and the ivy Both holly and ivy were important to the Romans. The holly was said to represent the masculine elements of nature, while the ivy was feminine. Together they were introduced to homes in order to create harmony and balance. Early Christians also thought of holly as being symbolic of Christ. The spiky-edged leaves represented his Crown of Thorns, and the red berries as his shed blood. Reindeer myth Don’t leave a carrot out for Santa’s reindeer this Christmas Eve. In its natural home – the tundra – the lovely, lumbering reindeer just eats the leaves of birch and willow, along with a side order of grasses and sedges, lichens and mushrooms. They might also go for birds’ eggs and lemmings (truly)! But not carrots! This fortnight…

What can help a waterlogged lawn? Q Every winter our lawn gets waterlogged, with patches of mud which then get taken over by weeds. What can I do to stop this? A Bad luck! Your soil is probably clayey and needs draining, so we suggest that you aerate it. There are several ways. The simplest is to use a garden fork and spike it. Work fork tines into the soil to a depth of 4in/10cm and wiggle them around. Continue by prodding the turf at 6in/15cm intervals. Alternatively, use a hollow-tine aerator, which removes cores of soil. Or make holes with a solid-tine tool, which consists of rows of spikes which are pushed into the turf. Fill holes with grit. If none of the above methods are effective, dig a…

With the festive season well underway, I know many of you will be buying a traditional tree of some sort, there are now so many real and faux options out there. As for me, I’m more than a little fond of the Christmas houseplant instead! There are so many options, from the Christmas Cactus, cyclamen, a bowl of hyacinths to the slightly crazy Alocasia. So in typical plant geek-style, I have a few unique recommendations to bring festive warmth and cheer to your home over the weeks ahead. Poinsettia ‘Autumn Leaves’ Why not remix your Christmas colour palette with the achingly trendy colour tones of Poinsettia ‘Autumn Leaves’. At first glance it’s almost unrecognisable- and could be the ideal Poinsettia gift for someone who professes to dislike Poinsettia. Created by…

Known as Swiss cheese plant or split-leaf philodendron, Monstera deliciosa has a name as impressive as the plant itself. The deeply indented and holed leaves of mature specimens are supposedly monstrous and fruits (though rarely produced in our homes) are delicious if you know how to eat them. This popular, easy-care houseplant has its origins in the humid, tropical forests of that narrow strip of land stretching from Southern Mexico to Guatemala, Costa Rica and Panama that links North and South America. Having germinated, young plants mooch about on the forest floor until they find a tree to climb. Clinging with aerial roots, they head for the canopy. Some twenty years ago, I was handed a cheese plant that had belonged to my husband’s late mother. I started it again…