Garden Centre

Saturday, July 28, 2007

Going, going ...

The sweet peas are nearly gone. These are about the last of them, beaded with rain (what isn't?), and on very short stems, but still scenting the house gloriously. August is almost upon us, and despite the wettest summer since records began, most of the standard tasks for the 'hottest' month are still on my list of things to do:

Autumn crocus need be planted this month, to get an extra week or two of flowers after the main garden plants have finished for the year - and this year I'm going to dip my bulbs in turpentine before planting to try and beat the squirrels; last year I didn't get a SINGLE flower!

Spring flowering perennials need to be divided and transplanted in August, this is a lovely job for the long warm summer evenings, if we get any …

My summer flowering shrubs like ceonothus and weigela will be pruned back into shape after they have finished flowering.

Autumn and winter vegetables will need to be organised, we're growing all year round onions, carrots, lettuce, spinach, black radish, and winter cauliflower and for all of them we'll be sowing seed directly into the garden in the next week or so.

Labels: august, autumn crocus, garden flowers, garden tasks, summer pruning

The All Seasons Gardener at 12:43 AM 3 Comments

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Wednesday, July 11, 2007

The grass is always greener ...

And if it's not, you might get arrested!

Only in America could this happen. According to the BBC, an American woman in her seventies has been left bruised and bloody after an unexpected clash with the police who came to caution her for not watering her lawn, which comes as a fascinating contrast to all the Brits who got cautions last year for watering their lawns during the hosepipe ban!

It seems that Utah pensioner Betty Perry refused to give her name after being upbraided because her garden breached local regulations. However, Ms Perry says the officer hit her with handcuffs, cutting her on the nose, although the police department spokesman insists she slipped and fell.

Ms Perry says she was not resisting arrest, only turning away to enter her house and call her son to help her resolve the confusing dispute. "I tried to sit down and get away from him [the police officer]," she told Utah newspaper the Daily Herald. "I don't know what he's doing. I said: 'What are you doing?' And he hit me with those handcuffs in my face."

The officer in question had judged that Ms Perry's "sadly neglected and dying landscape" breached an Orem city guideline and was attempting to issue a formal caution when the incident occurred. Ms Perry was treated in a local hospital for the cut to her nose and for other bruises before being taken to jail, but she was released after police decided there were "other ways" of finding out her identity without jailing her, a police spokesman said, adding that the arresting officer would not be named but had been placed on administrative leave.

Ms Perry, who says she has never had a run-in with police in the past, has been offered help by local church leaders to clean up her garden.

Labels: garden news, garden tasks, lawn care

The All Seasons Gardener at 7:02 AM 0 Comments

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Monday, July 9, 2007

How is your garden growing? The All Seasons garden is much as it was in June – green, green, green. Everything is sappy and verdant, putting out masses of green growth, but the floriforousness (to coin a word) that I’d usually be seeing by now is not there. The lilies have begun to open, a week later than this time last year, and the roses are at their best, although they are almost lost in the green leaves of everything else. My bay tree has gone insane, putting on about eight inches of growth in the three weeks since I last trimmed it, and that’s eight inches in all directions, up down and sideways, so it looks like a haystack rather than a cone. And my laurel and fig have also sprung up a couple of feet on the warm and rainy weather we’ve been having.

The big shock is the wisteria. We pruned it back so hard that it didn’t flower this year (we had to, it was so rampant on the garage roof it was lifting off the tiles and chucking them onto the paving, like a delinquent child!) but that hasn’t stopped it roaring into new summer growth, and it is now only about two feet short of its height in November when we took the machetes to it. The problem with wisteria is that it throws out long whippy new growth like a cowboy’s lasso and if you don’t get on its case immediately, it will have travelled six or seven feet in a weekend, hooking its clever little tendrils onto anything in range.

Three of the four kinds of lavender I grow are in full growth: Lavandula augustifolia, the classic lavender, Lavandula intermedia with white flowers, and Lavandula latifolia which has no flowers to speak of but has very wide leaves that can be hung up and dried and used to scent cushions, wardrobes and so on, but the fourth, Lavandula stoechas, which has fatter purpler heads, really isn’t thriving – it seems to need more sun than this year has given it to perform well.

My broad beans developed rust overnight and my pea pods aren’t fattening as fast as I’d like – and the forecast is for yet more rain …

Labels: garden news, garden tasks, lavender, wisteria

The All Seasons Gardener at 10:14 AM 2 Comments

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Friday, July 6, 2007

Dealing with perennial weeds

Let me share with you one of the unfairest facts about wet summers. It’s not the horrible weather; the need to pull on boots and waterproofs when we should be gardening in shorts and sandals; the rust and blight that strike favourite flowers and crops – it’s this: perennial weeds grow faster in wet weather than cultivated plants. This means that horrors like convolvulus arvensis (bindweed) as shown above, take over and romp across the borders like nasty invading aliens for whom we haven’t yet found the answer (and the common cold, the convenient alien destroyer in 'War of the Worlds', is more likely to strike us in a wet garden than our weeds).

And bindweed is a monster because the roots can extend down fifteen feet or more and the plants can grow from even the smallest bit of left behind root. It is said that by persistent digging and hoeing (and digging and hoeing and digging and hoeing) you can eradicate bindweed and its even nastier relative, bellweed, in a couple of years – but so what? New colonies can establish from seed or from roots on neighbouring land and hover on your boundaries just waiting to invade.

So what can you do?

Fork up and remove as much of the root as possible when carrying out autumn and winter digging. In spring as new growth appears, dig out new shoots. Where you can’t dig without disturbing plant roots, sever the weed at ground level with a hoe. It’s a satisfying sort of guillotine process and it’s a good thing it is satisfying as it needs to be repeated throughout the growing season as new growth reappears – in my garden, about every second day, in fact! If you’re not organic, you can try using glyphosate, which is a non-selective total weedkiller applied to the foliage, where it is transmitted throughout the plant’s system, disrupting cellular processes until the plant dies. Now, apart from being a chemical control, which is not permitted to organic gardeners, the fact that it’s non-selective means that neighbouring plants will die just as fast as your weeds if they are touched by the spray. In addition, it’s important to have good leaf coverage so that as much chemical is absorbed as possible by the plant. I'll stick with my hoe, thank you!

Labels: bindweed, garden tasks, garden weeds, perennial weeds, weeds

The All Seasons Gardener at 6:23 AM 0 Comments

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Wednesday, July 4, 2007

Off on your holidays …?

It is that time of year, I suppose, when gardeners across the UK leave their glowing plots and acres and travel abroad, returning to find that bindweed and ground elder have taken root, the person who was going to water hasn’t, and slugs have eaten the hostas. That’s why I go on holiday in November …

Anyway – when you’re off on your travels, you’re bound to take in a garden or two, aren’t you? The bulbfields of Holland, Versailles and the Parc Andre Citroen in Paris, the Bauhaus garden Dessau in Germany – further afield, Cape Town has its Garden Route tours and New Zealand has wine and garden visits … almost wherever you go, there’s something to be seen.

But be careful – look all you like, but check the rules before buying plants (or even worse, taking seeds or cuttings from other people’s plants, which I’m sure you’d never do, dear reader) to bring home. Within the EU, you can bring in almost anything apart from rhododendrons, azaleas, camellias, and viburnums, which are excluded under complex quarantine regulations owing to problems with disease. From America, a much wider range is prohibited, and from many countries there are plants that either shouldn’t be exported due to rareness or due to their invasive nature once they hit our shores. The simplest way to check is on the DEFRA website, to see what you can and can’t do.

And another point is that many airlines don’t allow cabin plants. Arriving at check-in with a rare oleander or tree fern only to find it has to travel in the hold (or not at all if you’ve tried to evade plant rules) can be a disaster, because for any plant not securely wrapped the low temperatures in unpressurised holds can be like the same number of hours in a winter storm.

Travelling by car makes bringing in larger sizes and quantities of plants much easier and trips to Holland and Belgium in particular are perfect opportunities to top up your bulb and perennial stocks, but watch out for customs – whole vehicles full of plants can sometimes make them think you’re in the horticulture business, and for that you are supposed to have a licence ….

Labels: garden holidays, garden tasks, importing plants, travel

The All Seasons Gardener at 7:56 AM 0 Comments

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Thursday, June 14, 2007

Basic Biology for Gardeners - Dead-heading

The plants in your garden really have only one interest, much like young men in too much aftershave on a Saturday night – which is to produce seed during a relatively short life! If you let them do this, their task is over.

However, you can trick your plants easily into continuing to blossom, simply by removing flower blooms that have passed their prime, which encourages the plant to produce more flower blooms, all with the intent of producing seed. This results, quite obviously, in a ready show of new flowers. You can extend the bloom life of some flowering plants by three or four weeks by nipping off spent flowers every day. These mesembryanthemums, being guarded by Rebus the blond Cairn Terrier, would have stopped flowering by now if I hadn’t been an assiduous dead-header.

But there are other reasons to dead-head – as I’ve already said in this blog many times, annuals reproduce by seed, and if given the opportunity, you may end up with far more plants next year than you ever wanted – Californian Poppies are the worst culprit for this, in my opinion, and they can take over a lawn in two summers, if you give them half a chance. So removing the flowerheads before they can set seed means you have less work to do in getting rid of unwanted plants next year.

Additionally dead-heading diverts the plant's focus from producing seed, to putting on new growth above and below ground. This means that new shoots will often appear and strong roots systems will develop. For perennials, this can extend the life of the plant as well as improving its appearance.

Finally, dead-heading reduces the scope given to pests and diseases to creep into your garden and take hold of your favourite plants.

Labels: garden flowers, garden secrets, garden tasks, garden tips

The All Seasons Gardener at 5:48 AM 2 Comments

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Tuesday, June 12, 2007

Hot stuff and colour issues

Blazing June? Not where I live! The past week has been gifted with intermittent sunshine and torrential showers, with muggy heat but grey skies that have stopped the garden showing its full June glory. However, plants with hot colours grouped together make little bonfires of brilliance in the garden, and here you can see a fig tree that's trained to grow along the fence, fronted by an outdoor dracaena (the red palm in the background) fronted by kniphofia – better known as red hot pokers – fronted in turn by the fiery beauty of a papavar orientale or oriental poppy.

In other parts of the garden we have cooler collections; like white arum lilies and pale violet iris near the pond, flanked by variegated pond grasses and with lower growing clear blue forget-me-nots in front. And in other parts still, powerful contrasts give drama – purple iris and bright orange Californian poppies or clear yellow St. John’s Wort sitting alongside a blue ceanothus that shines like its common name – Californian lilac.

Using colour to create effects is useful, particularly in Britain’s changeable climate when we can’t rely on endless blue skies to provide the backdrop for our plants and structures. Plants aren’t the only way, however, you can use paint to change the effect of light and warmth in the garden or even use planters and pots to provide a focus of colour: black is dramatic and somehow rather oriental, silver is modern, adds light and supports the use of highly structural plants like topiary, while terracotta is warming and traditional and leads to an impression of Greek, Roman or even Egyptian influences.

Using colour requires us to be ruthless though – there’s very little point having a paisley swing set, floral cushions, tangerine coloured loungers, blue picnic-ware and a tartan rug if we want to create a coherent impression! Thinking ahead to keep our accessories either neutral (British Racing Green, for example, goes with everything!) or in line with our major design themes is essential. For an oriental garden, think of red wood, black as a good colour for fabrics and lots of green. For a modernist garden, link silver and aluminium to clear blue or purple and think about square designs and lots of light. For that traditional Mediterranean impression aim for rustic furniture styles, neutral fabrics with a lot of texture or those with bright ethnic patterns and chunky irregular glassware and blue and white glazed plates and pots to remind us of those wonderful old-fashioned urns and ewers hand-made by potters in ancient days.

Labels: garden flowers, garden tasks, garden tips, kniphofia, papavar orientale

The All Seasons Gardener at 3:43 AM 0 Comments

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Wednesday, May 30, 2007

Knowing what you're doing

If you plan to garden outdoors and grow anything more than grass, you need to have a basic understanding of the conditions of your plot. This understanding includes:

1 The condition of the soil
2 The light, wind force and direction and temperature throughout the year
3 What grows well locally.

And ideally should also encompass what’s grown in the soil before you arrived. This last can be a tough one to find out and isn’t essential, but the other three are.

Let’s assume you want to grow potatoes, calla lilies and heathers. Well, you’re in trouble for a start because potatoes like loose, well-drained soil high in organic matter, as do callas, but your heathers will demand light, slightly acid soil and a cool, moist climate, so something has to give way! Trying to grow too many plants with varying and competing demands is one way to wear yourself out and achieve nothing – I’d either put those heathers in pots, where you can give them special ericaceous compost, or find something else that will harmonise with your overall garden planting.

To know your soil you have to look at it in more than one part of the garden, at more than one depth, and at different times of year. For example, at the bottom of my plot, the original owner had glasshouses and I’m forever digging up bits of her footings and foundations. Laying a lawn over that kind of rubble would result in bare patches, so I’ve chosen to pave it and put in perennial shrubs whose roots will cope with the occasional half-brick or bit of concrete. Once you know where your soil is rich and poor, waterlogged or free draining, you need to turn it. Turning the soil reveals what’s underneath, aerates it so that bacteria and worms can do their job of enriching it and breaks up clods that are anaerobic which means they don’t allow water or nutrients to penetrate easily and so are an inert on non-growing medium. I’m very fond of kit like this, which allows lightweight gardeners like myself to turn the soil without killing ourselves. And once the soil is turned, allow the weather a chance to break up those clods and lumps before you begin planting.

Labels: garden tasks, garden tips, garden vegetables, garden-tools

The All Seasons Gardener at 1:11 AM 2 Comments

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Thursday, May 24, 2007

When Size Matters

Those are supposed to be miniature summer Savoys. In other words, you should be looking at some small, tightly-packed cabbages, a bit bigger than a cricket ball, but not much. As you can see, that’s not what we’ve got! They are still nice cabbages, but they haven’t formed hearts and they seem likely to continue growing until they come up to my knees and are as big as footballs.

Because of this unexpected growth, we’ve had to lift the mesh lid, because the snails were just using it as a convenient browsing system, crawling out onto it to munch on the leaves as they pushed the mesh up. They actually have less chance to eat the cabbages without the lid, because they have to crawl up the outside of the plant and traverse the tough outer leaves to get to the tender inner ones, instead of picking the best leaves to eat by zooming across the mesh as they were until a couple of days ago.

Here’s what we did wrong:

Germinated the seed too early
Put the plants in a soil that was too rich.

But at least they haven’t bolted, which would have been rather sad.

It’s a good problem to have, in a way, better too big than too small, as long as there is still a real flavour to the crop, but it’s something to remember for next year. We haven’t grown cabbages here before, and next year I think we’ll start with the full size plants anyway and firm them in much harder in poorer quality soil.

The mesh wasn’t to keep snails out (obviously) but a Falco preventative. That’s Falco in the bottom left corner: the Cairn who eats everything. Actually, not absolutely everything. He can’t be bothered with cabbage for example, and lettuce without salad dressing is not worth the effort, but he’s got his eye on the carrots next to the cabbages now that I've had to lift the mesh, and as soon as they are big enough, he’ll dig them up and eat them! We have a tayberry at the bottom of the garden, and every year he eats every berry he can, and I find the bush is denuded of fruit, even to the point of his being able to reach the bottom half of some fruit but not the top, so he nibbles them and leaves the top half of each fruit hanging just out of reach!

Labels: garden tasks, garden tips, garden vegetables

The All Seasons Gardener at 1:13 AM 0 Comments

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Friday, May 4, 2007

What a difference a month makes ...

In the four weeks since I started this blog, my garden has changed considerably. Everything has grown, despite much of it being cut back in the interim, and most of it has become very much greener – and these are the hallmarks of the late spring garden – growth and greenery. Comparing this to the April photograph, the really noticeable thing is that the blaze of yellow from my neighbour's Forsythia has gone and the whole picture is basically a landscape of greens. Of course it looks lovely, and if you’re keen on words, as I am, then ‘verdant’ is the one that comes to mind, but don’t be fooled, there’s nasty stuff going on under the surface that the canny gardener will be aware of.

To begin with, there are the weeds – it’s not just the plants that are racing into new growth now; the green tips on the bay tree and the laurel are matched by horrible new rosettes of dandelions and fresh ground elder leaves. The only way to deal with these monsters is to get in there and dig them out, taproots, suckers and all. While weed-killers remove the evidence of pernicious perennial weeds, they often fail to eradicate the root, which means in a few weeks the thing is racing away again, and if you don’t notice, it’s got dozens of offspring all over the garden before you can say ‘rake, hoe and dibber’.

Then there’s all that sappy green growth. It needs to be staked up or tied in now, before the flowering season is in full sway. My broad beans are doing their best to become sunflowers, and several of my climbers have grown eight to nine inches in the past week, with the perfect weather, which is great, but taller plants overshadow those that don’t get away so fast, and can make lower or slower growing neighbours into weak and sickly specimens, so keep an eye on them.

Making more of the green bits

And all that green can be a bit boring, to be honest. As the spring bulbs go over, and the early summer flowers aren’t even in bud, it’s all rather monotonous – this is the time to look at the role of water and statuary in your garden to add some interest to the leafy green period.

Labels: garden ponds, garden tasks, garden tips, weeds

The All Seasons Gardener at 10:03 AM 0 Comments

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Wednesday, April 18, 2007

What’s your biggest garden fault?

Labels: garden flowers, garden tasks, weeds

The All Seasons Gardener at 11:48 PM 0 Comments

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