Innholdsfortegnelse for 28-Sep-2024 i Amateur Gardening

Get two gardeners talking together and a common bond is instantly formed. I’m sure we could beat, say, football supporters for excitable chatter any day. There’s simply so much to love and so much to say, even if it’s moaning about slugs or the weather this year. When you get the gardening bug, the enthusiasm is infectious in a really positive and upbeat way. We are part of a wider community of amateur gardeners who delight in the opportunity to tend an outside space of some kind, and we are all connected in some way as a result. When I’m out and about, be it at shows or running courses, shopping or community gardening, it’s those real down-to-earth conversations that I enjoy most. To hear what people are finding most…

The ground is still warm from summer and dampened by showers, so this is the perfect time to plant next year’s new additions to the garden. Spring bulbs will have been available in the shops and online for several weeks now, and if you haven’t already bought yours, I’d look sharp because the most popular varieties will be snapped up before you can say ’Iris reticulata’. Bulbs are one of the easiest ways of bringing your garden alive in spring, whether you grow them in pots, in your borders or even naturalise them in areas of your lawn. Whether you are looking for fiery tulips or more calming hues of narcissus, chionodoxa or sweet blue camassias, there is something or every taste and position. Once they are planted, they should…

Harvest dessert apples For the past week I’ve been walking past this ‘Kidd’s Orange Red’ apple, picking any fruits that easily part from their spurs. I’ve had some windfalls, too, and all these harvests have been absolutely delicious. That’s how to tell if your eating apples are ready for picking: look for windfalls and see if the fruits detach from the tree readily. Oh, and an additional test is to eat them! If they’re tasty, they’re ready. It’s surprising to think that there’s a real skill in picking apples for fresh consumption – surely you just pick and eat them? But looking for these subtle indicators allows you to harvest the fruits in their prime, to set your eating experience apart from mediocre, to incredible. Unripe apples are sour and…

When it comes to spotting and being able to identify birds in your garden, the blackbird is one that most people would confidently recognise – but did you know your visiting blackbirds this winter might just be Swedish? Blackbirds are one of our most common garden birds and a UK favourite. Although some are partial migrants, moving short distances around the UK, in the main our UK birds stay quite close to home. They are territorial and when they find a spot that suits them, they tend to stay. But blackbirds in mainland Europe are migratory and later in the year our resident bird numbers are boosted by an influx from Scandinavia and Finland. As temperatures fall in these more northerly countries, the blackbirds move south, looking for more dependable…

Now is the time for grasses, gently shimmering and moving among late comers such as hylotelephium (sedum), aster and rudbeckia. In the garden we grow a huge range of grasses suited to wet, dry and general soils, all adding something different. Perfect for a general soil, pennisetum is a widespread genus of roughly 80 species native to tropical and warm temperate regions around the world. Known commonly as fountain grass, they produce masses of flowers flowing from arching clumps of mounded foliage in mid to late summer. Considering their origins, they do require full sun, or very light shade, and a soil which is neither too wet nor too dry. Alternatively, suitable conditions can be achieved by growing in containers. The flower spikes can be coloured, white-cream to red, with…

It’s time to give your lawn some love before we head into the wetter days of winter. You may be wanting to get rid of moss, fertilise the grass so it’s in a healthy state, or re-seed bare patches. You can also lay turf now, though reseeding a large area of grass is best left until the spring when the warmer weather will encourage the seed to germinate. I always start my autumn lawn regime by scarifying the grass with a rake. This helps ‘brush’ out dead grasses, moss and other unwanted debris that can hamper drainage and airflow around the grass roots. We often get moss building up in shaded areas where the soil has become compacted, and I like to use Mo Bacter to get rid of it.…

Is my ‘Victoria’ dying? Q Please could you tell me why a branch on my otherwise healthy Victoria plum tree is suddenly dying? Martin Hadlington (via email) A I am sorry that your ‘Victoria’ plum is suffering from a disease or nutrient disorder that’s causing it to look unhealthy. If shoots are dying back, cankers are forming and oozing sap and leaves are developing small circular brown patches which are falling out and leaving the foliage perforated, your tree could be suffering from bacterial canker. There is no cure for this disease and your plum will eventually die if that’s the case. Although pruning should be done mid-summer, ideally, try removing the branch entirely ASAP and seeing if that helps isolate the issue for next year. It might not be…

It might have been a good year for the roses, but it’s been a brilliant one for hydrangeas. Mine have been flowering since May - a full month before they normally do and they haven’t stopped since. One of my best is a pink ‘hortensis’ or mophead hybrid called ‘King George’ that has pompoms so big, they’d make a cheerleader jealous. It was a resident in the garden when we moved here some 20 years ago, at a time when ‘cool’ gardeners were ripping out hydrangeas to make space for ‘sophisticated’ grasses. If you visited the RHS Chelsea Flower Show back in the noughties, you’ll know that flowers were considered twee while grasses and foliage were as trendy as Ugg Boots worn with a velour tracksuit. Hydrangeas with their generous…

Part of the fun, and economy, of gardening is saving our own seeds. A slight obstacle though is that not all seeds give the same results as their parents. Most will, but we have to be careful of some, especially F1s (where two different varieties were crossed to give a much improved hybrid). F1 seed will be marked as such on the packet so you can look back and check. Sweetcorn is a fine example. It’s very easy to save the seed, and if it’s kept cool and dry it usually germinates. However as almost all modern sweetcorn varieties are highly bred F1s, their seed then seldom gives plants or crops anywhere near as good as ‘new’ seed. So do check before you go to home-save. All cucurbits; squashes, marrows,…

While I was working in Japan in the mid-1990s, I was fortunate to visit many private and public temple gardens. These Eastern gardens often reflected the wider landscape in miniature form, and were created to be areas of meditation and contemplation. In short, a place to switch off from the hustle and bustle of daily life. They are very different from Western gardens, which tend to be highly individual and high-maintenance. Whole parks are dedicated to mimicking huge swathes of landscape. In Kumamoto, in Southern Japan, there’s a space that has been created to reflect the journey of the Shoguns from the South to Tokyo. It even has its own mini Mount Fuji. The point being that scale is of no relevance when it comes to these meaningful Eastern gardens.…

Along one side of our kitchen garden lies an unruly boundary hedge of bamboo, beech, hazel and elder. While perfect for harvesting canes and twiggy sticks to use as plant supports, it often runs amok if not pruned thoroughly enough in winter. To my horror, stems, nettles and brambles had encroached into beds along the hedge and in the midst of this chaos was a longforgotten ‘Gloire de Sablons’ pinkcurrant, grown for its dangling clusters of tasty, translucent pink berries. I’ll clear, treat it to a mulch and also take hardwood cuttings for plants to give away. Other fruits to keep in mind are apples. If, like us, you inherited several trees and found room for a few more trained as cordons, you will need to keep an eye on…

Turning Japanese-y! Unlike in Western gardens, traditional Japanese gardens do not go for colour and impact. Instead, they promote the aesthetic and philosophical ideas of Japanese culture. Plants and old materials are used to suggest an ancient and ‘faraway’ natural look, and to express the fragility of existence, as well as the forward march of time. Japanese Zen gardening, originally inspired by 13th century monks, uses extreme simplicity and moderation. ■ Any Latin plant name that ends in ‘japonicus’ or ‘japonica’ is likely to have either come from Japan, or has some other connection with the country. But there are also two other species names that relate to Japan: ‘nipponicus’ and 'yakushimanum' (the latter specifically to Yakushima Island, off the southern tip of Japan). Smaller and smaller bonsai! The word…

My passion for gardening began when I was eight years old, when Dad was a grocer. We lived on an estate and he delivered tins of beans and everything else in cardboard boxes to residents in an old Austin Ruby saloon. When Dad retired and we moved to my granny’s house, I was given a small patch of ground for a garden. From an early age I was absolutely enthralled by plants and keen to name the wildflowers around us. I can remember how thrilled I was to discover a henbit deadnettle. A few years later when at secondary school, I rented an allotment. When lessons were over I would cycle to my plot, one hand on the bike, the other clutching my hoe. When I left school at 15,…

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. John Negus support Hello, After failing to flower for two seasons, I overwintered my hydrangea, in a tub, in the garage last year. It has flowered this year but became very ‘leggy’. You have already advised me to move it to a sunnier spot. I did so and was pleased with the result. definitely more upright flowers. Kindest regards, Eileen Central Scotland Kim says: thank you Eileen. That’s great to hear that John Negus’s advice outlined for…

Why put your bare soil on display when you can easily - and beautifully - fill in gaps with planting? These low-growing varieties, wider than they are tall and often overlooked (no pun intended), blanket the soil, keeping it moist and cool. They also help prevent weeds from sneaking through and spoiling your carefully crafted landscape in the process. Bare soil can be a little ugly and vulnerable to the elements, but with the right low-to-the-ground planting you can level up any bed or border with minimal effort. What’s more, if your chosen addition has good spreading power, you will only need a trolley’s worth to completely transform your garden. Whether you’re looking to fill gaps between plants, cover a rockery, or add a pop of colour to your borders,…

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In early 2023, I created a long border at the far end of the garden planted with shrubs and bushes that provide fragrance. I carefully selected several plants that will fill the air with their sweet scent during the winter months. The aim was to encourage us to walk all the way through the garden to enjoy their colour and fragrance at a time when we aren’t particularly keen on venturing outside for too long. I have a high tolerance for wildflowers (some call weeds) in the garden, so the border never looks terribly tidy in the conventional sense, but I love it anyway. Autumn is the ideal time to plant shrubs for winter fragrance. Plants will have time to settle into the soil before they start flowering and you…

As the days grow shorter and the garden starts to slowly draw back into itself, it’s time to take stock of what grew well this year, what didn’t and where there is potential room for new exciting plants to plug any gaps. One of my favourite plants for creating a colourful, scented show that lasts from late spring right through to late summer is Nepeta, commonly known as catmint. It is called catmint for a reason - when I came to prune our Nepeta our two cats (who sadly left us last year, both aged 19) used to go absolutely potty over the trimmings, rolling around on them like drunkards before falling into a woozy doze in a patch of shade. Nepeta is a marvellous perennial to grow because it…

What’s the best way to perk up my hydrangea? Q I bought this hydrangea four years ago in full bloom. It was damaged by frost in the following two years and did not flower. Last year it was protected from frost in the garage over winter and early spring and now there are certainly more blooms but the plant is very leggy. What winter/spring care does it need and how can I avoid ‘legginess’?. Eileen MacLeod, central Scotland The best thing about your hydrangea is that it’s healthy and is showing no signs of pests or diseases. The fact that it flowered sparsely for two years and has only this summer produced more blooms could be due to where you’ve positioned it. Hydrangeas are happiest in full sun or light…

Do you garden alone, or do you find yourselves with little garden helpers at your ankles? No, I’m not talking about man’s best friend, I’m talking about children or grandchildren! When I’m out there, so are my two daughters and they love to get stuck into whatever tasks I’ve got to hand, so in this roundup of recommendations, my daughters have tried and tested their favourite kits for you. Sowing the seeds of a love of gardening Who doesn’t get excited watching a seed slowly but surely germinate into life? And with this Indoor Cress Garden Growing Kit from Johnsons Seeds, you’ll help to show your little ones just how quickly that tiny speck can become something really cool, and edible too. Complete with over 3,000 seeds, a growing mat…

Sparkling frosty mornings ease the homestead garden from the last vestiges of summer into autumn. It is time for the brassicas, leeks and other wintery crops, dwarfed for much of the summer by beans, sweetcorn and sunflowers, to shine. It’s a lovely time of gathering in and making the last plantings of the year. I plant garlic both inside the polytunnel and also in the garden. Undercover garlic grows larger, crops a little earlier, and does not get rust. Popped in between overwintering salads, greens, herbs and kales, the garlic grows slowly throughout the winter and, next year, when the winter veg has all been harvested, it is easy to plant tomatoes and other summer-cropping edibles between in the gaps. Growing garlic Outside, I plant the garlic in rows about…