Garden Centre

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Spring bulbs and London’s new vegetable gardens

My hellebores are doing wonderfully, again, and this year I have the best display of snowdrops I’ve ever had in the garden, but once again the crocus are rubbishy: small clumps of purple crocus, one or two white and mauve striped ones sitting in miserable isolation and no yellow ones at all.

I’m certain the squirrels dig them up and eat them and that they prefer the yellow ones. I’ve tried dipping the bulbs in paraffin and that doesn’t deter them, and I’ve tried planting the bulbs under wire mesh and the pesky rats-with-attitude simply dig up the whole mesh and steal all the bulbs in one fell swoop. And while I’m all for live and let live, I’m not in the business of providing expensive crocus bulbs every year just to feed squirrels!

Speaking of which, London Mayor Boris Johnson has had a good idea (I suspect Boris would call it a ‘wheeze’) which could change the face of London, and the health of some Londoners, and I’ve been following it since it was announced just a few days after he was voted into office. Along with Rosie Boycott, chair of London Food, he’s pledged to find 2012 new places to grow food in London by 2012 – get it?

Anyway, it all went quiet for a while, apart from the rumbles about allotments being concreted over to make space for stadiums, and then, this week, good news! British Waterways has come on board with the scheme – they manage canals and other waterways throughout the UK and will be looking to build community gardens and allotments beside their watery responsibilities – which is great news all round. Apparently 14 groups have signed up to the Capital Growth scheme, including a very big and privately owned residential garden in Morden which is going to have volunteers working on it and sharing in the harvest.

Wonderful. As long as they don’t have too many squirrels helping themselves too!

Labels: Boris Johnson, hellebores, snowdrops, spring crocus, squirrels

The All Seasons Gardener at 8:59 AM 0 Comments

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Friday, February 20, 2009

February Greenhouse Gardening

I’m starting to watch the calendar, wondering when our last frost date will be this year. It’s reckoned to be around late April, but often those last frosts in Sussex, or at least in my bit of it, are only air frosts, not ground frosts.

It doesn’t matter so much this year, because I’ve got my greenhouse! I’m just starting to realise how valuable it is going to be. Instead of having to guess the latest possible frost date and count back in weeks to work out when seeds can be planted indoors so as to avoid frost when they begin hardening off, I can relax, knowing that the seeds will be frost-safe, in their polycarbonate home.

So this weekend I’m starting off some more sweet peas, as the ones I planted under glass in October didn’t germinate as well as I’d hoped (the seed was donated by a friend who obviously hadn’t kept it in the best conditions). I’ve also got viola nauticalia, which are F1 hybrids that I got free with a magazine – it says they are cool ‘watery’ colours, which doesn’t sound too appetizing, but hey, they were free!. And there are marigolds to be started as companion plants for my tomatoes as the marigolds are said to save the tomato plants from whitefly attacks and I’ve got some new nasturtiums, because our self-seeding ones have all reverted to mustardy-orange, and I like the dark orange and red ones too.

I’ve also got some cucumber seeds to start off. We’ve never grown cucumbers from seed before, so that will be exciting.

But I’m starting to wonder if there’s enough room in the greenhouse for all this, and the alpine strawberries I’m growing from seed, and the peas that are already shooting up from their toilet rolls, and the hardy trees I’m growing from seed …

Labels: greenhouse sowing, nasturtium, peas, sweet pea, trees, violas

The All Seasons Gardener at 12:52 PM 0 Comments

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Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Roses for my Valentine

Did you know that the flower sellers at New Covent Garden were quaking in their boots last week? Oh yes they were!
Their fear was that the current economic problems, the weakness of sterling against the euro and the number of people being laid off would all hit their Valentine’s Day sales, which might have been down as much as 35% as lovers invested in more durable expressions of desire such as cushions (?) or CDs.
Well maybe so, but I can’t see the appeal of a cushion personally, and if you don’t want to give cut flowers (I, for one, always feel sorry for cut flowers for some reason) what’s wrong with giving a plant? Okay, a rose bush may not be as romantic as a single red rose – especially if given in February, when it looks like a dead twig with spines, but by June it will be covered with gloriously scented flowers that you can take to your loved one every morning. And a nice floribunda costs – believe it or not – about the same price as a single Valentine's red rose.
My favourite Valentine’s rose, however, is this one. It’s a miniature, or patio rose, that we found about to chucked into a skip one July. The garden centre manager (no horticulturalist, he!) said it had been bought in for Valentine’s day, specially forced, but somehow the few that hadn’t sold had been forgotten about and were now dead of neglect. On my way out of the store I fished this one and its brother from the skip. That was at least seven years ago and every year, come May, they reward me with masses of flat-faced bright red flowers. And they didn’t cost me a penny!

Labels: floribunda rose, patio rose, shrubs, valentine's flowers

The All Seasons Gardener at 8:21 AM 0 Comments

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Friday, February 13, 2009

Sowing garden plants from seed – February

Now I’ve got my unheated greenhouse, I don’t have to limit myself so much in terms of summer annuals. So one seed I’m sowing now is the old fashioned snapdragon, properly known as antirrhinum. It’s actually a perennial, before anybody shouts, but usually grown in the UK as a half-hardy annual. The common name comes from the little ‘mouth’ that the lower petal makes, and by squeezing the sides of the flower you can actually make it ‘snap’ open and closed.

To be honest, it can be a bit of a swine to grow – the seeds are tiny and need light to germinate, so you put them on the soil surface, not under it. It can take up to 18 days for germination and most will respond better to some bottom heat. Until this year I’ve bought my snapdragons as bedding plants, but this year I’m starting them in the greenhouse, on a shelf with a little greenhouse heater underneath, and with a propagator lid on top of the tray – it will be interesting to see if I succeed.

Snapdragon seedlings hate to be crowded, and damp off very fast, so sprinkle them well apart and as soon as they start to show, remove both the lid and the heat so that they don’t exhaust the energy in the seed and become leggy, which will make them fall over and die. If you’re growing them indoors, start them between six and eight weeks before the last frost in your area. They like a lot of light, so don’t expect them to germinate in a shady corner.

Once they are established, give them water from underneath to avoid them developing rust, to which they can be prone. In addition, water seedlings in the morning, as spending a night with wet roots is guaranteed to send them to the big nursery in the sky.

They are such a complex looking plant, and children love them so much, that a little extra effort in getting them to germinate is well worthwhile, and you can save seed from year to year to keep your plants renewed.

Yellow snapdragon courtesy of echoforsberg

Labels: antirrhinums, bedding plants, garden plants from seed, greenhouse sowing, snapdragons

The All Seasons Gardener at 8:25 AM 2 Comments

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Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Storms, snow, thaws, rain and plants

The bad news isn’t over yet. Lovely light fluffy snow is one thing. Heavy sledgeable snow is something else, but even that’s not a disaster. But heavy or light, snow that doesn’t melt and is followed by sleety rain and periods of below-freezing temperatures can really damage our plants, most notably our trees and shrubs because what happens to them is that snow builds up on the side of the plant that is protected from the prevailing wind and then it gets coated with water, and that water becomes ice.

Normally snow just acts as a pretty good insulator, protecting plants from zero and below temperatures, but once you add the weight of rain to the snow, it can cause the branches, and even trunks, to split.

The best way to deal with heavy snow/ice build-up on plants is to try knocking snow from the branches and limbs of plants before it becomes too deep. A plastic rake with a long handle can be ideal for this as it’s long enough to reach quite high but lightweight enough not to damage the plant.

You need to tap the branches gently from below, even if you are taller than the branch. This is because adding any downward force to the weight already on the plant, could be enough to break the limb you’re trying to clear from snow.

At the same time, use your rake to clear the snow cover away from prized perennial plants which may be prone frost heaving which is when dampness in the soil makes it expand around the roots of a plant, pushing them upwards. If you see any signs of roots lifting, press the plant down and cover the root area with lots of mulch – if you can’t manage anything else, sheets of newspaper will help protect the roots from winter damage.

Labels: garden in snow, perennial plants, winter garden tasks

The All Seasons Gardener at 8:52 AM 0 Comments

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Friday, February 6, 2009

February - perennial plants

February is the time to get your perennials sorted! Where there isn’t a threat of snow or frost (which is absolutely nowhere in the UK, right now) you can be planting vegetables such as artichokes, asparagus and rhubarb, which live for several or many years in the same place. If, on the other hand, you’re expecting snow or heavy frost (like everywhere in the UK, right now) you can keep these plants in a light but frost free place for at least a further 3-4 weeks, if they are not bare-rooted. If they are bare-rooted, it’s probably better to get them into some compost in a tub now, so that the roots, which will want to start swelling as day-length increases, aren’t starved of nourishment.

If you have summer-flowering perennials that you have brought indoors for winter, and they start to grow now, find a cooler spot in which to store them or they won't flower well at the correct time.

If, like me, you’re fed up with the weather and want to be planting, then there are things you can do.

• You can buy a greenhouse. Mine is filling up worryingly fast, given that I can’t get anything into the ground.
• You can build raised beds – because they are better insulated and because you can control their soil content, filling them with warming compost, for example, and because you can cover them with horticultural fleece, you can plant in them earlier than in the cold bare ground.

But mainly this February seems to be about thawing the pond and preserving my patience – and I’m not good at either!

Labels: artichokes, asparagus, greenhouse, raised beds, rhubarb, tender perennials

The All Seasons Gardener at 9:40 AM 0 Comments

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Tuesday, February 3, 2009

February garden tasks - pruning

Looking at the snow that is still garlanding my garden, I can’t believe that on my calendar for yesterday it read ‘prune clematis’ But it did. As it is, I can’t even see the clematis, under the snow, let alone prune them, but as soon as the weather clears, I shall have to get out there and do them.

February is the best month for hard-pruning a lot of clematis, in fact all the ones that flower in summer (not the spring flowering ones, which only need all the dead growth taking off and cutting back to a suitable height) and above all, any clematis planted the previous year needs a really good reduction.

What you should do for a relatively newly planted summer-flowering clematis is cut it back to the first pair of buds on every stem – that can actually mean taking it shorter than it was when you bought it, but don’t panic. Those cuts will branch into two stems each, giving you a lovely vigorous plant, and if you pinch out the growing shoots on those stems again in about April, you’ll have a wonderful bushy foundation to the plant which will stop it going leggy and single stemmed in future.

Of course, you have to be able to see the plant to do all this, but the weatherman promises the snow won’t last …

Labels: clematis, february garden tasks, pruning clematis

The All Seasons Gardener at 9:26 AM 0 Comments

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