Innholdsfortegnelse for 17-Aug-2024 i Amateur Gardening

All over the country parents and carers will be coming up with ways to entertain children. Possibly, at this point halfway through the summer holidays, they are feeling slightly exhausted and scrambling for ideas. Entertainment nowadays is often complicated and equates to the spending of money or screen time, yet gardens and green spaces offer so much in the way of education and skill building, along with awe, wonder and enjoyment which is priceless in every sense of the word, the natural world leading the way. Nice weather undoubtedly helps when it comes to encouraging activity in the great outdoors, away from smartphones, chatter and all the demands of the day. But there are always ideas and opportunities for fun projects that can often be simple yet meaningful. Going for…

Early in the summer I planted a couple of patio containers of bedding, with nicotiana, petunia, nemesia and marigold. They look fantastic, a riot of colour despite the indifferent weather (or maybe because of all the rain) but with autumn lurking in the wings and the bank holiday on the horizon, I’ve decided to create a late summer pot to add colour for the next few months. I don’t go to the garden centres all that often because I usually buy plants from the market, where they are generally cheaper, or propagate my own, so the increase in prices since I’d last popped in gave me quite a shock. With this in mind, I spent most of my money on perennials because they can be reused and added to a…

One of the sheer joys of summer has to be the picking of lovely fresh blooms with which to decorate the home. It’s also nice to know that these heart-warming, home-grown displays can be cost, plastic, pesticide and air mile-free. There are also more unusual choices to be harvested from the wider garden if you allow your vegetable patch to grow on a little. Growing on a bit more leads to the appearance of blooms either this year or next. As well as furthering the reach of your cut flower opportunities, such an approach will also help boost biodiversity in your garden and provide valuable habitats for wildlife, creating an outside space that is truly alive and bountiful in every sense. Blooms to harvest this year Mint This cheeky but…

Psychologies is the biggest mental and emotional wellbeing magazine in the UK. Our aim is to make each day better by providing you with inspiration and advice from experts in the field, to lower stress and anxiety, and boost happiness. SUBSCRIBE TODAY GREAT REASONS TO SUBSCRIBE ❤ Save up to £48* ❤ Delivery directly to your door in 100% plastic-free packaging ❤ Never miss an issue ❤ Complete control – manage your account online ❤ Free weekly e-newsletters VISIT SHOP.KELSEY.CO.UK/PYHA OR CALL 01959 543747 and quote code PYHA Scan our QR code – the easiest & quickest way! HOTLINE OPEN: MONDAY-FRIDAY, 8.30AM-5.30PM. CALLS ARE CHARGED AT YOUR STANDARD NETWORK RATE SCAN HERE Terms & Conditions: UK Direct Debit offer only. You will pay £51.90 every 12 months. *Savings based on…

15-18 Aug: Southport Flower Show, Southport Flower Show, Victoria Park, Southport, Merseyside, PR8 1RX. 15 Aug: Special Plants Garden Opening & Plant Stall, Special Plants, Greenway Lane, Cold Ashton, South Gloucestershire, SN14 8LA. 10.30am-5pm. 16-18 Aug: RHS Garden Rosemoor Flower Show, RHS Garden Rosemoor Flower Show, RHS Garden Rosemoor, Great Torrington, Devon, EX38 8PH. 16-17 Aug: Ayr & District Flower Show, Ayr Racecourse, 2-6 Whitletts Road, Ayr, Scotland, KA8 0JE. 10am-5pm. 17-18 Aug: British Cactus and Succulent Society Event at RHS Bridgewater, RHS Bridgewater, Occupation Road, Off Leigh Road, Worsley, Salford, Greater Manchester, M28 2LJ. 17 Aug: Cupar Flower Show, The Corn Exchange, St. Catherine Street, Cupar, Fife, Scotland, KY15 4BT. 17-18 Aug: The Isle of Wight Garlic Festival, Fighting Cocks Crossroads, Bathingbourne Lane, Sandown, Isle of Wight, PO36 0LU. 18…

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. Thrifty saucer idea for pots Good afternoon Kim, I’d like to share this tip with other ‘AG’ readers if that’s okay. I save the coloured lids from the well-known brands of tubs of chocolates as they make excellent saucers to go under some of my pots. Mrs Tina Vowles Kim says; thank you Tina for writing in, it’s so nice to see household items being put to good use in this way. Super spud to savour Dear…

We mainly use our home-made compost to mulch the garden in autumn and spring, so in summer our main ‘decomposition task’ is to keep the heap on track and breaking down well. Making sure the heap is forked over regularly to ensure it is well mixed, and remembering not to add the ripe seed heads of weeds are two important jobs. Either take the weeds to your local authority green waste site, or leave them in the sun to wither and die before composting. This summer has been a tricky mix of torrential rain and hot dry spells, so we’ve alternated between adding harvested rainwater to the compost after a week or so of dry, then covering it with an old tarpaulin when prolonged heavy rain is forecast to stop…

Some of you will be storing plump bulbs of garlic and onions about now and I will try not to be jealous. We had only been here a few years when I peered over the fence and noticed sickly-looking onions in the garden next door. Well before their leaves should have been drying off and dying back above healthy bulbs they appeared wilted and stunted. Sure enough a couple of years later our onions and garlic began to falter and on inspection, were suffering from onion white rot. This miserable fungal disease attacks the base of the bulb, roots die, bulbs topple and a fluff of white fungal growth shows at the base. It is best to dispose of them quickly, because the fungus’s next trick is to produce tiny…

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Raised beds are not a new thing. Just over 4,000 years ago the Mayans were using them to grow food on swampy land. The raised bed came to these shores in the mediaeval period, when serfs made beds of woven branches to contain their medicinal and culinary herb gardens. It is often thought that these beds, arranged in symmetrical patterns for ease of cultivation, gave rise to the Tudor knot garden in which the woven beds were replaced by the green of box hedging. The raised bed came to prominence once more for vegetable growers in the 1800s when Parisians used the readily available horse manure scattered across the city streets to build hotbeds to grow vegetables to sell at market. In the 1970s, the off-the-ground concrete bed became a…

If you are looking for a no-fuss, ‘just get on with it’ perennial, then you need look no further than Scabiosa caucasia. This variety of scabious is a pretty addition to any border or wildflower meadow, growing to 30-60cm (1-2ft) in height and flowering through the late summer and well into the autumn when many other plants have already flowered and finished. ‘Perfection Blue’ is a charming variety with mid-azure flowers on strong yet delicate stems, making it a perfect plant for the garden and also the vase. They like a sunny site and will thrive in most soils, though you may need to add some lime if your ground is very acidic. If growing from seed, one method is to sow the seeds in late summer or early autumn…

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Your plant recommendations from expert plantsman, Michael. One date I can never miss in my horticultural calendar is a visit to the plant trials at Ball Colegrave in Oxfordshire, where hundreds of new and existing plant lines are grown out, in the very best quality. Visitors are trade only, a mixture of buyers and product developers, who basically have a lot of fun plant shopping on your behalf. These trial grounds are where the plants for garden centres in 2025 are chosen, so on this page I’m giving you a sneak peek inside the greenhouse. These are the plants you’ll be buying in years to come. But a few of them are still a bit secret, so mum’s the word! Begonia with experimental ball shape This is not only a…

Time was when an uncut, weed-filled lawn would have the neighbours talking, concerned that you had lost your mower and marbles. Spool forward 30 years and it’s the close-mowers and striped lawn-lovers that are in the minority as ‘weeds’ have become ‘wildflowers’ and unkempt lawns rebranded as ‘wildlife enhancing meadows’. Shaggy grass is now so ‘middle-of-the-road’, even the councils let it grow there… and on the verges too, and what’s not to love? The softer, naturalistic aesthetic is easy on the eye while the succession of flowers, from dandelions in spring to knapweed and swathes of summer ox-eye daisies, is of real benefit to the bees. I also enjoy freedom from the early-summer tyranny of regular mowing, though in truth it’s more accurate to think of the cutting job as…

Variegated plants are undoubtedly attractive but they can have a downside. After a time, some of their new shoots start producing solid green leaves, a phenomenon known as reversion. It usually affects trees and shrubs, and happens in spring or summer, triggered by dramatic temperature fluctuations. So I wasn’t terribly surprised to see some of the new growth on a young potted variegated forsythia emerging as completely green. The problem arises because variegation is bred from a sport, or genetic mutation, where the variegated material is used as cuttings, or grafts, to produce new plants. However, these mutations are not always stable, so the stronger ‘green gene’ wins out and the plants start to revert to their original colour. We have an old variegated euonymus that has never shown any…

I believe everybody should be ambitious when creating their garden. Gone are the days when our outside space just meant a long-as-your-arm list of chores to be completed. More and more of us are transforming our gardens, giving them the love, care and attention they deserve in the way that we like, not that we feel we have to. These precious green spaces are extensions of our home, places we can flee from the city to unwind and de-stress and use to welcome in valuable habitats for wildlife. I am lucky, I grew up with a mum who loved to garden. She would convince me to watch Ground Force with her, and persuade me into the garden to dig ponds and create exciting zones within our back garden. Although I…

Over the years, dianthus species have been extensively bred, and there are actually now thousands of cultivars for garden use and the cut flower trade – although you won’t find as many as that available to buy! They come in a huge variety of flower shapes and markings, and in all shades of white, cream, pink, yellow and red, and verging into purple. The summer-flowering types are giving their all right now, but how did their various names arise? ■ Dianthus: This is from the Greek words Dios (meaning ‘of Zeus’) and anthos (‘flower’). ■ Carnation: This formerly meant ‘flesh colour’, from the Latin carnatio, meaning ‘fleshiness’. So, the flower (Dianthus caryophyllus) almost certainly got its name from its pink colour. ■ Pink: It is thought that the colour pink…

The last few weeks of summer are upon us and after the slow, cold start, we are hopeful for good weather well into autumn. It’s been an interesting growing season to say the least, but most plants have relished the extra rain and are still flowering well. One such plant is origanum in all its forms, flowering all summer long with much still to give. The humble origanum packs a punch in the garden and is always on our list for those dry, sunny spots. Coming mainly from the Mediterranean area, these sun-loving perennials are very suited to the drought-tolerant garden, or equally at home in containers. Those producing more upright flowers, such as Origanum laevigatum ‘Herrenhausen’, are a great filler in floral arrangements, or preserved for dried displays. Provide…

Leeks are one of my very favourite vegetables, whether in soup, steamed with a Sunday roast or roasted in the oven. A Christmas Day dinner staple, many varieties are hardy enough to withstand winter weather and can be left in the ground and harvested as and when needed. They are sown in spring and early summer and the young plants added to the garden in June or July, but for various reasons this year I never got round to sowing any. I was cursing the fact when my husband phoned during a trip into town and said that the little garden shop on the high street was selling modules of 12 leeks for less than £2 and should he get some? I didn’t need asking twice and by the end…

How do I grow sweet peppers? Q I have been given a sweet pepper plant to have a go at getting it to grow and hopefully fruit, which is a new challenge for me. I don’t have a greenhouse, but I do have a grow bed in a sunny part of the garden. Please can you advise me how best to grow/feed and nurture my red pepper plant. Carol Barrett (via email) A I am delighted to hear about your pepper, which you are growing in the garden. This variety is also known as bell pepper or pointed pepper, depending on their shape, and although they do best in a greenhouse they will also grow in a sunny, sheltered spot.Ideally, as it will grow to about 60cm (2ft) cover it…

Now we’re in the depths of summer, I hope that your gardens are flourishing and throwing out an abundance of flowers all over the place. Truth be told, mine still feels a little bit behind, but there are still sufficient blooms to enjoy. The dahlias are getting into their stride (slowly!), the salvias are stunning and the geum, after being given the Chelsea chop in May, have bounced back! All of this means that there are plenty of blooms with which to fill vases around the home. So in this issue, I thought I’d come up with a project that combines the opportunity to showcase our lovely cut flowers with an activity that’s ideal for children and grandchildren to get involved in, perfect for the school summer holidays. More often…

August is a busy time. There are so many crops that need harvesting that we may forget there’s also still time to sow more vegetable seed for later season edibles. In the past, the first frosts often arrived at the back end of September, but for some time now we’ve had longer, milder autumns. These have meant many more ‘bonus’ crop growing opportunities could be up for grabs. Of course there’s always the risk, as the weather is uncertain nowadays, but extra seed sowing is well worth a punt. After all, space is available as crops such as the last onions, garlic and new potatoes have been lifted. Naturally you will need to water exceptionally well if the weather is hot and dry but the warm soil usually ensures rapid…