Garden Centre

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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Tuesday, May 8, 2007

Flowers from the garden

Okay, this week’s flowers are not scented, so I’m falling down on my claim that most of the year I can fill a vase from the garden with things that look good, and smell good. But be honest – do they have to smell nice when they look this fantastic?

Arum Lily - Zantedeschia aethiopica

Arum Lilies are one of the most dramatic garden flowers and they are astonishingly easy to grow. They enjoy moist to wet conditions, and shaded areas. If you grow them in pots, don’t ever let them dry out, and plant them in something like manure or compost, or even good old garden clay (like mine) but never peat, because if it dries out it's a bugger to get it wet again! They can get nipped by late frosts, or even chill winds, but if that happens, just cut of the browned flowers and the plant will throw up loads more very swiftly. They are great in water, but if you grow them in or near a pond, as I do, make sure their roots are deep in soil or well underwater to save them from frosts. And buy some of these - really special gloves - to help you pick your blooms!

Believe it or not, this beauty is considered dangerous in other parts of the world

“Sales and trades of the popular arum lily are to be banned throughout Western Australia from September 2006 under changes to the State's Declared Plants list. The ban extends an existing ban on the invasive and poisonous plant already in place in parts of the South West including Albany, Bunbury, Busselton and Jarrahdale. The ban includes the trading or selling of arum lilies at weekend markets and other casual outlets such as fetes and means movement of the plants or their seeds are prohibited throughout Western Australia. The declaration will not require home gardeners to remove their arum lilies, but they will no longer be allowed to plant more.”

Why? Because in this part of Australia, the arum lily has invaded thousands of hectares of pasture paddocks, forest and wetlands, requiring massive efforts by property owners and communities to clear it.

Labels: garden flowers, garden ponds, weeds

The All Seasons Gardener at 3:07 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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