Innholdsfortegnelse for 13-Apr-2024 i Amateur Gardening

It’s been a good few months now since this important gem of a magazine was saved and relaunched in a flurry of excitable activity last November. We now have more content, more free seeds and a refreshed look and feel in this new fortnightly format. The AG team and I continue to be delighted by the positive response, and it is such a privilege to hear from so many what this magazine means to you. To still receive word from readers expressing their sheer joy at discovering their favourite magazine unexpectedly back on newsstands again is such a pleasure. Long may it continue. From the outset it has been incredibly important for us to know what you would like to see in the magazine looking forwards; to hear your ideas…

A pub and a prison are the first of their kind to be awarded National Plant Collection status by horticultural conservation charity Plant Heritage. The White Hart, a popular village pub in Bitton, Gloucestershire, and HMP Eastwood Park, a prison and young offender institution for women located north of Bristol, hold prize collections of Crocosmia cvs. and Tulbaghia respectively. They are two of more than 700 National Plant Collections, usually found in gardens, greenhouses, allotments, arboretums, plant nurseries, botanic gardens, historic houses, zoos, and public parks across the UK and Ireland. Their aim is to ensure that different plant groups remain in cultivation for future generations to enjoy. The White Hart’s Crocosmia collection boasts nearly 200 varieties, from rare cultivars such as ‘Zeal Remembrance’ to more common forms found in…

Growing from seed is a cost-effective method of raising plants, and doing so, you can nurture an entire veg patch on a windowsill or in a small cold frame. You can use your own home-saved seed, or order from organic suppliers, and recycle tubs and trays to use as growing containers. I sow in three waves between March, April and early May. First come the half-hardy/hardy annuals and tender edibles such as chillies, peppers and tomatoes. Then I’ll move on to the salads, chard and radish and, finally, heavy croppers like runner beans and courgette. Spacing sowing in this way stops me being overrun with seedlings, which is particularly important if you’re growing on a windowsill with limited space. All of these crops can be grown-on in containers on a…

I’ve been a fan of magnolias for pretty much all my adult life. They have arguably the largest flowers and largest individual leaves of any trees and shrubs hardy to the UK. If you want something to fill a corner of the garden with colour, in most spectacular fashion, then magnolias are a perfect choice. However, you will have to choose carefully if your garden is very small, as many magnolias grow large. And if the spot you have in mind is in shade, then you’d be better off going for a rhododendron or camellia. Magnolias are not for everyone, but if you have the space and the right conditions, they are not difficult to care for, and even one tree in full glory will turn the heads of visitors,…

Mending a raised bed What to do when running repairs run out of steam For the past few months we’ve been carrying out a series of running repairs on one of our raised beds that was slowly rotting away. The inevitable happened last week, when one of the side panels came completely away from the framework, spilling soil and compost everywhere. On closer inspection, all the wood was slowly disintegrating so we decided to replace the whole lot. But what to do with all the soil? In the end we removed two barrowloads and piled the rest to whichever side of the bed we weren’t working on. The key to long-lasting raised beds is to make sure they have good drainage and to build them somewhere that is sheltered but…

It’s hard to believe, but there was a time when shrubs were looked upon as being a little bit, well, dull. They were the type of plants you would turn to if you really weren’t inspired to do anything else with your garden. However, in the last 10 years, breeders across Europe have been selecting all manner of new and interesting shrubs, and many with the most decorative foliage. From orange to yellow, purple to crimson red, and sometimes with up to five colours in one leaf too. It’s all very exciting! So let me ask you, are you ready to graffiti your garden with shrubs and other colourful gems? Ceanothus ‘Lemon and Lime’ Okay, let’s start off with something quite racy. How do you like this combination of green…

There’s a new buzz about bee research - and you could play your part in it. Scientists at the University of Sussex have launched The Big Bee Hotel Experiment, and are asking anyone who has a bee hotel or can make or buy one, to get involved and help improve our understanding of solitary bees. Between now and September, volunteers can sign up and send a monthly photograph of their bee hotel entrance. The Sussex scientists will then be able to record how many holes have been occupied, and by which type of bee, based on the substance that the bees use to block the holes. For example, red mason bees use clay, whereas blue mason bees use plant resin. The findings will help to make bee hotels more effective.…

This February lived up to the name ‘February Fill Dyke’, and more, as I’m sure you noticed! It was the wettest February for 258 years and, personally, I hope that it will be another 258 years before we see the like again. Areas of the country have seen up to three times as much rain as usual and there’s been very little sunshine. Last February was very different, almost spring-like, and there were plenty of fine days. This year my early crocuses, the ones the voles missed, and my snowdrops were blown to bits, for my exposed garden is almost 800 feet above sea level. Lots of early gardening openings and plant sales were cancelled in my neck of the woods. Most embarrassingly, my car got stuck in the mud…

For a stand of beautiful leeks, now is the time to sow maincrop varieties. Throughout winter, they’ll be ready to lift and use for soups, stews, pies, flans or delicious leeks in cheese sauce. I’ve never been fussy about food and even as a child, ate pretty much everything I was given. Looking back, the veg I disliked all contained some degree of oxalic acid. When I was a baby, Mum was spoon-feeding me spinach puree and thought it was going down pretty well until she found herself covered in an explosion of green gunk. I didn’t eat spinach, beetroot or rhubarb until I was about 40 and even now prefer forced rhubarb, presumably as the stems contain fewer oxalates. The reason we consider rhubarb leaves poisonous is because they…

The arrival of the spud! We’re slap bang in the middle of the potato planting season, and of any single crop we can grow in our gardens and allotments, it is the humble spud that has more history and folklore surrounding it than any other. It seems odd to reflect that no one in England knew about ‘potatoes’ until the time of Queen Elizabeth I. Sir Walter Raleigh is thought by some to have brought them back from one of his trips to Virginia about the year 1585. But there is mystery surrounding the truth. The true potato (Solanum tuberosum) was probably brought to Europe from Colombia, by the Spanish, somewhere around 1580. They arrived in Britain around 1585/6, Belgium and Germany by 1587, Austria by 1588, and in France…

Gardening for some can be a bit ‘icky’, all that ‘mud’ and those ‘squishy things.’ Eurggh! Then there is an area of gardening that makes even the hardiest gardeners cross their legs. Yes, I am talking about wee. In polite society there would now be multiple scraping of chair legs on parquet flooring, a few dozen mumbled excuses about feeding the neighbour’s cat, then the slamming of doors and the screech of tyres. A few weeks later and you will get those knowing looks from people you don’t know who whisper about you having potentially exposed yourself in the garden. We are all happy to talk about comfrey, even though when added to water it smells like rampaging flatulence. We are full of facts about the nutritional benefits of nettles,…

How can I create a rockery? Q We want to create a rockery on a slope in our front garden. Could we use a mix of soil and compost… and what are some all-year, low-maintenance plants we could use? Stephen Parker, Somerset A Well done! After terracing the slope, starting at the bottom and edging terraces with artistically arranged backward-sloping rocks, fill horizontal beds with a fertile and well-drained planting medium by mixing soil with a generous quantity of coarse grit laced with composted manure. Then plant the following easy and colourful alpines to colour the year. Though I have mentioned botanical names, all have easy-to-remember common titles: Spring Pink-flowered Aethionema ‘Warley Rose’, double-yellow Alyssum saxatile ‘Plenum’, pink or red Pulsatilla vernalis. Summer Crimson Geranium subcaulescens, orange-yellow Geum montanum, silvery-…

Over the years that I’ve been gardening, I’ve learned so much from so many people, but it’s also places that enthuse us gardeners. Locations and countries might give us inspiration in the form of the plants we grow and the way we grow them, and create lasting memories and connections in the process. Japan is one country, which while I’ve never been there, has given me pause for thought in my garden. So this issue I shall be sharing my pick of tools that are also inspired by Japan - along with a very special plant. The hori-hori knife This is a tool that seems to have taken the gardening world by storm and is arguably, I think, the single most useful garden tool you could ever have. ‘Hori’ means…

It’s getting a little too late to sow tomatoes, as like most tender crops they are best started earlier so there is a longer opportunity for them to mature and fully crop before autumn. So, if you haven’t yet started, it’s better to buy plug plants to help you play catch-up. That said, if you have a warm and sunny window, and the potential to house plants undercover later in the season, then why not give it a go. Seedlings will grow rapidly, so water regularly and pot up again, until your plants are ready to harden off and go outside in about six weeks’ time (at the end of May). Well, I now say end of May, it’s getting difficult to judge. I used to plant tomatoes out early…

Adults will have to make three important pledges before they can enter the first ever children’s garden at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show this year. The young organisers of the RHS No Adults Allowed Garden have stipulated that grown-ups will have to agree to a trio of commitments before they can set foot in the plot. They are: ■ Plant a tree ■ Donate to the RHS Campaign for School Gardening ■ And, find a flower that starts with the first letter of their name. They will then be given a sticker designed by the children to allow access to their show plot. A spokesperson for the children, who are pupils at Sulivan School in Fulham, said: “Originally, we only wanted children in the garden. But the class also wanted…

One of the most frequent pruning-related questions we are asked is ‘when should I cut back my hydrangea?’ And the answer is ‘now, in spring, when the temperature is rising and the weather is improving.’ This is because the stems left standing from the previous year, often with attractive papery seedcases, help to protect the crown of the plant from the worst of winter’s cold. Now that risk is reduced you can remove them - though it may pay to wait a couple of weeks longer in north-facing, exposed gardens, or if a cold spell is forecast. Our mophead hydrangeas are in pots, but the method of pruning is the same for those in the soil. They were left standing all winter and can be cut back to the first…

With many parts of the country experiencing a very wet 2023/24 winter, and April traditionally being a notably wet month, let’s turn our eyes to the skies and work out how best to deal with rain on our plots. Weather extremes seem set to become more commonplace, so I’m drawing up a plan to cope with gluts and dearths of water. Did you know that the average house roof can capture 50,000 litres of water, annually? That’s a staggering amount! I’m ashamed to say that at present, I have no water butts connected to my house roof, so that absolutely has to change. I have two galvanised water tanks at the back of my greenhouse – collectively they hold around 400 litres. But my 10 x 8 greenhouse can collect…

As you can probably imagine, I don’t have that much time to actually garden! Yet I live on a smallholding with a total of 2.3 acres of land, a third of an acre of which is dedicated to the gardens themselves. Over the 14 years I’ve been here, through trial, error and practice I’ve learnt to step back and work more closely with the natural world in lots of hugely beneficial ways. Initially, I felt I was being somewhat naughty by not being so hands-on with the pruning, feeding and weeding that much of the traditional advice at the time insisted was so important. Yet the more I read and researched (books such as Masanobu Fukuoka’s book One-Straw Revolution about natural farming), the more I realised that plants don’t always…

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Your lovely letters, emails and social media posts continue to flow in beautifully. Every message, poem, idea and comment matters. Please keep them coming. We will send out a thank you gift for every item published in the magazine so do please send your address and contact details when you get in touch. The Facebook account for Amateur Gardening magazine is now up and running again and we have also started a new Instagram account @amateurgardeningofficial. We hope to see you there. Reaching out to others Dear Kim Your editorial (30/3/24) comments about the social side of gardening touched a chord with me. “Whether it is gardening at home or at the allotment, there is so much opportunity to connect and share with others that contributes to mutual wellbeing. Smile…

The children are back at school (phew!) and the garden returns to tranquillity. How on earth have we arrived in mid-April so quickly? As spring progresses, we are gearing up for a season of plant fairs and are even getting ready for a weekend away in Manchester. As a business, we have normally not attended shows further away than a couple of hours’ drive from here. However, being based near Colchester in Essex, that gets us to Cambridge, Suffolk, Norfolk, Kent, East Sussex and London, which means that staff can go for the day and then come home at night. While we are a hardy bunch, we are quite rooted to our creature comforts of home. But when we were given the opportunity to attend the new RHS Urban Show…