Garden Centre

Thursday, September 24, 2009

Autumn Lawn Care

A guest post from Himself about the lawn, as it’s the one subject I know nothing about and don’t choose to educate myself on:

• Autumn is when the grass in your lawn slows down – because it is growing slower you need to raise the cutting height of your mower, and reduce the frequency of mowing.
• You also need to restore nutrients that the summer-growing grass has used up, by applying an autumn lawn fertiliser which has less nitrogen, as this is the element that makes the grass soft and sappy.
• If your lawn is compacted, you could aerate it by making thin holes in the lawn which adds oxygen and helps the grass roots grow. You also need to scarify – which is a form of raking that removes the dead grass and grass clippings that build up over the summer and can strangle the spring growth when it appears.
• If moss is a problem for you, make sure you apply moss killer before you scarify, so that you don't spread the moss around.
• Renting a scarifier, or even a scarifier and operator to save you the hard work, is a great idea as it can get the job done professionally. A hand rake with springy tines can be used to scarify a small lawn, if you push the tines deep into the lawn surface and rake it back hard. It’s extremely hard work.
• Then you can top-dress your lawn with a specialist top dressing that fills the holes you made aerating and lays on top of bald scarified areas to encourage new growth. Top-dress on a dry day and then water the top dressing in.

Labels: autumn grass, autumn lawn, autumn lawn care

The All Seasons Gardener at 6:06 AM 0 Comments

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Monday, September 21, 2009

September garden tasks

The task I hate most at this time of year is rootling out perennial weeds from the lawn – when you see dandelion or dock or thistle leaves (no matter how small) you should get right in there with a sharp pointy tool (but not your OH’s best screwdriver … I speak from experience) and dig them out because not only are they a problem in themselves, but they spend the winter spreading out their roots and their leaves on the surface, killing off the grass on either side, so that if you wait until spring to get rid of them, they will already have caused a nasty bald spot.

My second least favourite task is fishing out the tender pond plants like water hyacinth so that they can be overwintered in the shed. We only have water hyacinth left now, as a tender perennial, and I’m really thinking of giving it to a pond loving neighbour because it is such a hassle to find it, put it in a big container and keep the container topped up with pond water – everything else just gets cut down to near ground level with a couple of plastic containers floating in the water to prevent total freezing over. Perhaps I’ll donate the water hyacinth and save myself a job next year!

Dead-heading is a bit of an issue – I like to leave some flowerheads all winter, because they look so lovely as they fade, but OH is rather inclined to go and chop them all off if I don’t stop him!

Labels: autumn garden tasks, autumn pond, september gardening, water gardening

The All Seasons Gardener at 9:10 AM 0 Comments

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Friday, September 18, 2009

Last rose of the year?

I never know exactly when I’m going to pick the last red rose of the year. Sometimes the plant rewards a particularly clement November with a cluster of buds, but they rarely open to produce full roses, so this may be the last red rose I cut this year.

It’s Ernest H Morse, and it’s one of those roses that one ends up with as a result of something else. I wanted an Iceberg rambler to climb my apple tree and there was a special offer of two roses for the price of one. Most of the others on offer were pretty insipid floribundas but one was this deep red rose, so I grabbed it.

It has a superb tea and sherry type scent, and a single flower can fragrance a whole room. While Sussex isn’t particularly kind to roses, this one has a robust constitution that has kept it in good form over the past seven years. And while I always savour the last red rose of summer, I can look forward to the Iceberg continuing to bloom right through the year …

Labels: autumn roses, Ernest H Morse, red roses

The All Seasons Gardener at 9:00 AM 0 Comments

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Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Dahlia Delirium

My neighbour grows perfect dahlias. I don’t. In fact I don’t grow any dahlias at all because instructions like this just send me into a spin: Plunging the tubers refers to the starting of tubers at the beginning of the new season. As a rough guide tubers may be started from January onwards. Box them up using some compost or a mixture of peat and sand or Perlite and place them on a bed of sand heated by a soil warming cable. Do not cover the crown of the tuber (the junction of old stem and the fatter part of tuber) with compost and do not overwater. If you can maintain a steady temperature of about 50 degrees F your tubers will soon start to throw fresh shoots.

I’m not sure I can maintain a steady temperature in my house, let alone for dahlia tubers!

And that’s not all. How about: Stopping = pinching out the central growing tip from the plant. The term stopping is inaccurate as it actively increases the growth of side shoots and thus the plant into more vigorous growth. Stopping also affects when the plant will eventually flower; different varieties require to be stopped on different dates. The middle of June would be about average.

And that’s where I realise that I am a sub-average gardener and give up on the idea. Because much as I love the idea of being able to produce these perfect blooms, the wise gardener knows his or her own limitations and not only am I not the tidy, house-proud, diary-following gardener that these guidelines require, I am the owner of two small, agile and inquisitive terriers, and there is nothing like a terrier for knocking over, chewing, jumping on or rolling on top of a prized plant. And that’s why everything in my garden tends to be robust, resilient and spiky!

Labels: autumn colour, autumn flowers, dahlias, growing from tubers

The All Seasons Gardener at 7:12 AM 0 Comments

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Friday, September 11, 2009

September garden tasks

I want to say something rather odd here, but it’s a realisation that’s grown on me rather fast in the past few weeks. If you have neighbours, especially elderly ones, whose gardens are looking a bit unkempt, why not offer to give them a hand?

This has struck me because my own garden has completely got away from me since my surgery in June. The picture is of the area around the front porch – in it there is a winter jasmine, a clematis and a holly tree, while the porch itself supports two ivy plants. Normally I prune every quarter, to keep the climbers and creepers in check, but I didn’t prune in March, wasn’t able to in June, and now we’ve reached September, the whole area has turned into a Sleeping Beauty nightmare!

I am getting it back into shape, which isn’t obvious from the picture, but I’m removing about a bag of cuttings a day and that’s as much as I can cope with at present, so it’s going to take a while. I’ve decided to take away one of the ivies and the clematis which has run rampant, and possibly to replace the holly which was here when we arrived, with something like a bay tree. That might give me less need to prune.

I’m shocked at how fast this happened, in six months I lost control of part of my garden completely, so if you have neighbours who are not coping, just an hour of your time might really make a difference to them and allow them to feel that they don’t have to undertake such daunting and demanding tasks. I know it’s a shocking thing to suggest, but if anybody had offered to help me with this mammoth pruning exercise, I’d have been grateful, believe me!

And that’s before I get started on the proper September tasks like pruning my back-garden rambling rose. If you don’t cut them back, the stems tangle which results in poor flowering. According to the BBC you should:

•Use secateurs to remove very thin, dead, diseased or dying stems.
•Next, take out branches that are outgrowing their allotted space or ruining the shape of the plant.
•Continue to improve the shape of the rose by removing about a third of the older stems. Prune flush with the ground.
•Tie in new, vigorous shoots with garden twine for flowering next year and prune back any sappy growth to encourage flowering the following year.
•Finish by shortening side shoots by about a third and tie in.

Hmm. I know this is what I should do, but what I will probably end up doing is hacking away the worst areas, tying nothing in at all and saying I’ll sort it out in spring, and that leads to the kind of problem that I’m contending with in the front garden … it’s a very vicious circle!

Labels: clematis, holly, ivy, pruning rambling roses, september gardening, winter jasmine

The All Seasons Gardener at 5:50 AM 0 Comments

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Monday, September 7, 2009

A downside to gardening in autumn

Need I say more?

My garden is infested with these scary but necessary creatures. I know how valuable they are, how important to the eco-system, how they absolutely cannot harm me (or not seriously – there are more than a dozen species in the UK that can actually give you a bite!) but still, I have to take a bamboo cane and knock down all the webs then go back indoors for a calming cup of tea to settle my nerves before heading back outside to do any gardening.

The worst thing of all, as far as I’m concerned, is that the big angry looking wolf spiders, which are the ones I’m most scared of, seem to like my favourite corners of the garden best too. They congregate around the katsura tree which is always at its best in autumn when its candy-floss fragrance fills the air, and also spin their webs from nerine to nerine, lacing the shocking pink flowers with their filigree traps.

I’m a wimp, I know, but that bamboo cane is my best friend at this time of year!

Labels: autumn garden, garden spiders, gardening pests

The All Seasons Gardener at 1:14 PM 0 Comments

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Thursday, September 3, 2009

Borders and sheds

Well, I’m rethinking the white border idea. What about white and purple?

The problem with two-colour borders, as everybody knows, is that they don’t look like two colour borders, they just look like any ordinary border. Unless you make them stunningly dramatic like green and black, for example, they don’t have nearly the same impact as a single colour border.

Himself actually came up with a very interesting idea. Our shed is dark brown, as are most sheds. He suggested that we change the colour of the shed, which would add light and colour to that area of the garden, and using that as a background, work out how to make the border more impressive. It’s a pretty good wheeze I think … except that we can’t agree on a colour!

He refuses to consider pink but fancies pale blue with a white border like a swiss chalet. I think blue would be too cold in winter, and would like a rich bright green or perhaps a peach. We both ruled out lilac and white.

So we’re still at the drawing board stage, but at least thinking about it is making me weed the border while I’m cogitating.

Labels: garden borders, garden sheds, purple border, white border

The All Seasons Gardener at 5:19 AM 0 Comments

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