Garden Centre

Friday, October 31, 2008

No wine but a great vine

The best of October, for me, is the colours in my grape-vine. There are three vineyards within eight miles of my home, all of them producing British white wine, so there’s no reason that I couldn’t have a proper viticultural vine, if I wanted to, but I’m lazy enough to prefer to buy my wine in a bottle and not have to go through all the hassle of pruning a vine and harvesting and making a few bottles that would probably end up utterly undrinkable.

And yet I do have a vine. It is Vitis vinifera 'Purpurea' which is perhaps the most decorative of all the vines, and has the advantage of being hardy in the south of the UK. Even the young foliage turns from pure green to having blushes and tinges of bronze, which become a mauve colour through the summer and then the traditional (but actually quite rare) deep purple in autumn. Fruiting vines don’t produce such uniform depth of colour.

The burgundy foliage coincides with the ripening of tiny bunches of grapes which have the same rich tone as the leaves, but don’t be fooled, they are bitter and so full of pips that once you’ve spat the pips out there’s nothing but skin and a sour taste left in your mouth! Even the birds, in the depth of winter, won’t eat them.

Labels: ornamental vine, vitis vinifera purpurea

The All Seasons Gardener at 8:14 AM 0 Comments

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Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Having a great autumn garden

There’s a reason that open gardens happen in spring, in the UK, not autumn – it’s that autumn gardens are generally pretty messy affairs.

Here are a few ways to make sure your autumn garden is show-worthy next year:

• A wet summer means autumn mildew and rot – clear away vegetation now, so that you don’t store up problems for next year. Make sure paths are cleaned too, so they don’t harbour spores and infections that you’ll walk all over the garden in spring. Remove yellowing or dead leaves or flowers before rot develops, that also gives you a chance to get rid of weeds hiding under the plant foliage.
• This is the best time to turn your compost heap, aerating it so that it can rot down through the winter, hopefully giving you lovely planting out material in spring.
• Get your spring bulbs, especially daffodils and tulips, in the ground while it is still warm and moisture levels are increasing so plants can settle in before the cold hits.
• You should be mowing less frequently and raising the cut to keep the grass taller. Give your lawn a potassium-rich feed this month to keep it strong through the winter.

Autumn beauty courtesy of davida3

Labels: autumn flowers, autumn garden, autumn lawn

The All Seasons Gardener at 10:39 AM 0 Comments

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Saturday, October 25, 2008

October lawns, butterflies and plants

A few years ago the advice I would have been giving for October would have been very different. For example, I’d have been telling you with complete confidence that in October you should cut the lawn for the last time – and yet, looking back over my notes for 2007 and 2006, I notice that we carried on cutting the lawn until the first week of December!

I’d also be telling you to prune your shrubs, but now, with the increasingly warm and wet autumns we’re having, I’d say you should wait to prune until a period of cold weather and frost is predicted, because you want the pruning cuts to seal swiftly and cold weather promotes sealing of mature wood, while merely cool weather, especially when associated with damp conditions is an invitation to fungal and other infestations to move in. And while October was also the traditional month to sow seeds from trees and shrubs, if these seeds need a period of cold to germinate you may be better waiting until November, because seeds sitting in pots of damp compost are prone to rotting or damping off.

There are tasks that you can complete regardless of the changing weather patterns: split and divide herbaceous plants that are starting to look weak or overcrowded; weed and mulch your herbaceous border; check tree stakes before winter gales arrive.

It’s also a month to take note of the last of the summer wildlife – my garden fills with red admiral butterflies whenever the sun comes out: they feed on fallen apples and pears and take nectar from Michaelmas daisies and sedums to see them through their winter hibernation. Not since 2005 have we seen any painted lady butterflies on their southern migration, but we live in hope.

One reason I only have two little containers with summer bedding plants is that I find it almost impossible to dig the plants out of the soil while they are still looking great, but it’s a necessary task if you want to have spring bedding looking at its best next year. This is because it needs to go in the ground now, to get its root systems well established while there is still some warmth left in the soil – plants such as wallflowers, polyanthus and primroses leap ahead in spring if they can get their roots down reasonably early in the autumn. Equally, winter pansies are much more likely to flower through the winter if they are established before the cold weather comes to slow them down.

Painted Lady courtesy of Ben Matthews

Labels: autumn butterflies, autumn flowers, autumn lawn, autumn pruning, autumn seeds

The All Seasons Gardener at 2:11 PM 0 Comments

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Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Autumn garden colours

It’s always satisfying when the autumn garden has as much colour, if not more, than the summer show, especially when, for all kinds of reasons, the amount of time that we can spend outdoors is becoming shorter.

I like colours that clash. I know it’s not to everybody’s taste, but for me, the vibrancy of colours later in the year is a real antidote to the weather – and this morning we had a heavy frost that tells me winter is truly on the way. Subtle colours can be kept for spring, when the lengthening days compensate for a bit less va-va-voom!

And this combination is one of my favourites, partly because the colours are so glorious and partly because it starts now, in October, and extends well into late November. The orange-berried Pyracantha will keep its berries until December or January, if the birds allow it, and the nerines continue to throw up their hot-pink flower heads until late November.

Nerines naturalise well, if you don’t plant them too deeply, and at this time of year I’m happy to cut great armfuls of them to give to friends who are always amazed at their tropical lushness in an otherwise chilly season.

The All Seasons Gardener at 6:10 AM 0 Comments

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Sunday, October 19, 2008

Major works in the garden

Why is it that just when you get things to a perfect condition in the garden, you decide to go in for some major, disruptive project? I suppose it’s the constant striving after an even more perfect perfection than you already have …

So this weekend has been a busy one: we’ve dug up three currant bushes, a tayberry and some very prickly raspberry canes, a thornless blackberry (hurrah for thornless, so much easier to uproot without donating a fair amount of your life blood to the soil) and my prized and lovely Katsura tree. Now we have a patch of bare earth which looks miserable, and a whole collection of fruit bushes making a miniature pot-jungle on the path.

And next weekend … we shall begin the insanely complicated process of putting together the greenhouse! Yes, over 300 components of aluminium and polycarbonate glazing, bags of sand and bags of gravel, cement, steel posts and all the rest of the paraphernalia are waiting in the garage to become a small Eden (except it’s a standard greenhouse, not a biome) in which I shall grow tender crops and exotic plants.

There’s only one problem. Well, two, really. Problem number one is trying to guess how long it will take us to do the assembly – a weekend, a week, a month? It looks worryingly difficult.

Problem number two is that the list of things I want to grow is already too big for the greenhouse, and I’m adding to it at least three times a day ….

Labels: fruit bushes, greenhouse

The All Seasons Gardener at 4:18 AM 0 Comments

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Monday, October 13, 2008

Edible garden in October

Just when the major work of the garden is winding down, the edible part of it goes into overdrive – the pears and apples all need harvesting, the crab apples are falling to the ground and even the autumn raspberries have gone for a second surge of fruit.

And even if that didn’t force me to spend all day either up a ladder or in the kitchen, there are the nasturtiums.


I love nasturtiums for their no-nonsense colours, their tendency to spill over every path and boundary and their willingness to grow in the poorest soil, but I also love them because you can turn their unripe seeds into poor man’s capers. All you need to do is pick the green nasturtium seed pods after each blossom falls off and store them in the fridge until you have enough to make the capers.

Boil and cool:

1/s litre white wine vinegar
1 teaspoon pickling salt
1 medium onion, thinly sliced
1/4 lemon, thinly sliced
1/2 teaspoon pickling spice
1 clove garlic, crushed
4 to 6 peppercorns
1/2 teaspoon celery seed

Add the green pods and seal. Keep the mixture refrigerated and use the nasturtium pickles in sauces, dips, casseroles, soups and stews.

Labels: apple trees, nasturtium, october fruit, october garden tasks

The All Seasons Gardener at 4:07 AM 0 Comments

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Wednesday, October 8, 2008

Autumn flowers that are guaranteed to please

Looking out on my garden in October, it’s nearly as bright as in July – while there may be less blooms to admire, the colours are actually more intense, in fact, because the flowers that are in bloom are highlighted against the bright autumn foliage of my sumach tree and the katsura tree, both of which become yellow-orange at this time of year.

The nerines shine out with their lollipop pink and against them the salvias make an exciting contrast, especially salvia involucrate 'Bethellii', which is known as the rose leaf salvia and has similarly glowing pink flowers, and the related but utterly dissimilar salvia corrugata which picks up the colour in the garden in a most impressive way – first with deep green heavily corrugated leaves (hence the name) but offering intensely blue flowers, almost gentian like in shade, which look utterly fantastic against the backdrop of an orange berried pyracantha, or simply highlighted by a grey wall or fence. Of course salvias can be tender, and you need a sheltered spot to get them to overwinter. Even in a safe place, you need to cut them down at the end of the flowering season (often late into November) and mulch them, or you can do what I do - take cuttings now – they root like mint and I simply plant them out the following year when they flower abundantly.

Labels: autumn flowers, katsura tree, nerine, pyracantha, salvia, sumach

The All Seasons Gardener at 7:57 AM 0 Comments

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Monday, October 6, 2008

Autumn ponds and how to care for them

That first warning snap of frost reminded me of a hellish task to come in the week ahead. Already the various plants around the pond are looking a little bit jaded and it’s about time to cut them back, paying a lot of attention to removing all the dead, dying and decaying growth because leaving it to pollute the water can cause the water quality to drop and can even affect the health of our fish. I really hate this task, as it requires pulling up the slimy stems of the water lilies and cutting them off so they don’t rot in the water – it’s supposed to be possible to do this in gloves without getting wet, but I lack whatever gene allows you to remain neat and tidy during dirty work, so I end up with green lily slime from my fingertips to my armpits and with my boots filled with nearly as much water as the pond!

The fish are still moving around a lot, partly because of lunatic owners trying to cut through water lily stems, but their activity will cease as the weather becomes colder and they become torpid. We’ll know when they start leaving the food that we throw in for them, although in mild winters they are greedy enough to keep chomping through until early January!

We have to cover a couple of our plants that are not fully hardy, with straw in old tights which we bend around the plant after it’s been cut back and wedge in between the big stones that surround the pond. And the final task before winter strikes is to fit some netting over one end of the pond which is particularly prone to getting filled with drifting leaves from the apple trees.

Labels: autumn pond, autumn tasks, hardy plants, waterlily

The All Seasons Gardener at 6:54 AM 0 Comments

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Sunday, October 5, 2008

The silence of the dahlias

It’s not fair! We can’t have had our first frost already! But when I went out into the garden yesterday morning, there were clear signs of frost damage on the edges of my dahlias! I rang my neighbour, who leaves for work at four in the morning, and he confirmed the dread truth – he’d had to scrape the evidence of Jack Frost’s mischief from his car windscreen earlier in the day. So I’ve spent today trimming any foliage that looked a little dark (difficult if you have planted Bishop of Llandaff, which has conifer green leaves anyway) and cutting any buds that seemed soft and wilted. I can only hope that this one frost was a rogue and there won’t be any more for a couple of weeks, because the dahlias are still in full bloom and I don’t want to have to lift them yet.

You buy dahlias as tubers and plant them in March or April, depending when the soil starts to warm in your area. You can also grow them from cuttings – by placing a tuber in a pot with the old stems just above the surface and putting it in a greenhouse or heated propagator. When green shoots appear, cut them to about two inches and keep them coming on in a cold greenhouse or cold frame, while you plant the original tuber out when the others go into the ground. The third way to increase the numbers it to pot your tubers and raise them as above, but cut each green sprouting tuber into pieces before planting, ensuring each piece has a shoot.

You need to stake many varieties with short but plants with sturdy bamboo canes, being careful not to push the stake through the tuber. The buds appear as threes, usually and if you want really big flowers, pick off the outer two. As flowers fade, cut them off to encourage more to grow.

And here’s the miserable bit - when the first frost arrives you need to trim the stems to a few inches off the ground and dig up the tubers, hanging them upside down in a frost-free place for a few days, to dry out before storing them in trays of dry compost or sand over the winter. In mild areas, it is said you can leave them in the ground, although I never like to risk it.

Labels: autumn colour, autumn flowers, dahlia

The All Seasons Gardener at 10:28 AM 0 Comments

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Thursday, October 2, 2008

Growing for beauty and store cupboards

When I had a real job, I enjoyed several long phone calls with Professor Tim Lang, a man who knows more about food policy, I genuinely believe, than anybody else alive.

And what’s that got to do with gardening, you may ask? Well Tim is a government adviser and his advice, right now, is that one way most of us can fight the ‘credit crunch’ is to turn some of our garden over to vegetable cultivation. What he actually said was, ‘… people have to take more control of their food systems. If you depend on Tesco or Sainsbury's or Waitrose, you are a consumer. In other words your food supply is under their control. But if you garden and can grow at least some food to eat, however little, then you are injecting a little food democracy into your food supplies and asserting your food citizenship.’

Brilliant concept, not least because I’m way ahead of him. If you grow beautiful fruits and vegetables you get the best of both worlds. On my list of favourite garden plants for consumption are:

• Fennel – lovely foliage, lovely aniseed taste
• Fig tree – great plant to cover an ugly wall and in a good summer produces premium price fruit in massive abundance
• Nasturtiums – cost pennies for a packet of seeds, self seed from then on forever, and both leaves and flowers taste great in salads while you can pickle the unripe seedpods to make capers
• Lavender – harvest the flowers to make lavender cakes and cookies
• Angelica – looks like the most expensive structural plant in the world, something like a tree fern in miniature, but can be used to make wonderful cakes and preserves
• Strawberries – look pretty, smell divine and taste so much better than supermarket berries when you pick them fresh and warm from your own borders

And if that doesn’t influence you, think about this. At present, Britain produces only 50% of the vegetables it consumes and less than 6% of the fruit!

Labels: angelica, fennel, fig, lavender, nasturtium, strawberry, Tim Lang

The All Seasons Gardener at 12:33 PM 0 Comments

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