The idle gardener

We are getting some good meals from the runner bean plants. In fact the plants got so top-heavy that the frame began to look like the leaning tower of Pizza. I fixed it by knocking in some extra wooden stakes and tying the bean poles to them. I also tied some string from the fence to the beanpoles to take some of the strain.

Earlier in the year the leaves of the runner bean plants started to turn yellow. I looked at various remedies on the Internet but in the end I just let nature take its course. They grew through it and the plants greened up again.

There are still lots of flowers on the plants so with the current wet spell we are going through I am hopeful of some more good pickings.

August 13th, 2010 | Tags: beans, vegetables | Category: My Garden | Leave a comment

At long last someone has written a book on propagation in plain English that you don’t need a degree in horticulture to comprehend. Carol Klein is obsessive about propagation. Her own garden, Glebe Cottage in Devon, as seen on Gardeners’ World, is almost grown entirely from cuttings and seeds and in this book she’s on a assignment to share her enjoyment in working with nature to cultivate the plants she loves.

The illustrations really help to see what the words are saying and follow through from start to finish. Carol’s style of writing is infectious and makes you want to get out there and actually do it rather than thinking you might get around to it one day. I’ve got several pots of fledgling cuttings within a week of getting the book as evidence.

Too often gardeners are intimidated by propagation, assume it’s not for them and go for ready-grown plants from the garden centre. But Carol, a gifted communicator with her infectious enthusiasm, boundless horticultural expertise and easy practical explanations, shows just how simple and satisfying it is to grow your own plants, not to mention sustainable and cheap.

She demonstrates, step-by-step, how to divide herbaceous perennials, nurture seedlings or grow new stock from root cuttings, stems or leaves, showing how there is no mystique involved and anybody can do it. Unlike many books that tell you how to take a cutting etc but they don’t tell you what to do with them afterwards, in “Grow Your Own Garden Carol” offers a refreshing new approach to propagation, and, just as she did with “Grow Your Own Veg”, she brings her own unique style to an inspirational, accessible and practical guide that will have great appeal to novices and more experienced gardeners alike.

Grow Your Own Garden is a well designed and illustrated, clear, practical manual, which is also beautiful and readable enough just to browse. It is useful for both novices and experienced gardeners.

A brilliant book, full of detail and all the information you need to get you up and running with all things concerned with propagation. It is a must buy book for the enthusiastic gardener.

Grow Your Own Garden: How to Propagate All Your Own Plants by Carol Klein is available from the Amazon UK book shop.

July 24th, 2010 | Tags: book review, propagation | Category: Books | Leave a comment

Two more plants seen on my wildflower meadow walk were the wild rose and the wild sweetpea.

The wild rose.

Wild sweetpea close view.

Wild sweetpea.

June 5th, 2010 | Tags: wildflowers | Category: wildflowers | Comments Off

In my earlier posts about my wildflower meadow walk I posted my pictures of buttercups, daisies, dandelion clocks and the may tree. I took pictures of other plants that I don’t know the names of. If you recognise any of them perhaps you could help me out by telling me in a comment to this post.

Picture 1. A drift of tiny blue flowers.

Picture 2. A closer view of the tiny blue flowers.

Picture 3. As kids we used to call this milk maids knee.

Picture 4. Tiny blue flowers on a nettle.

June 3rd, 2010 | Category: wildflowers | Leave a comment

I have two varieties of iris growing by my garden pond. One that has blue/mauve flowers grows in the water and the other that has yellow flowers grows in the soil just behind the pond. The iris strikes me as the most regal of flowers. They are just coming into flower. Unfortunately the lifespan of each bloom is very short and the display is soon over.

Water iris.

Yellow iris.

June 1st, 2010 | Tags: pond | Category: My Garden | Comments Off

The rhododendron is a wonderful plant for the idle gardener. Once it is established it does not need any special attention and produces an abundant show of flowers each year. My rhododendrons are in full bloom at the moment and are a wonderful sight. The huge flowers are magnificent, especially when viewed close up. Here are some pictures I took in my garden recently.

Rhododendron.

Rhododendron flower.

Insects like rhododendron flowers.

The name rhododendron comes from the Greek with rodi meaning “rose”, and dendron, meaning “tree”. It is a genus of flowering plants in the family Ericaceae and there are over 1000 species. The Ericaceae family includes the plants known to gardeners as azaleas. It is the national flower of Nepal, the State flower of Uttrakhand, India and the State Flower of both West Virginia and Washington in the USA.

May 30th, 2010 | Tags: shrubs | Category: My Garden | Comments Off

This will be the fourth year we have grown runner beans in our garden. It is great to eat vegetables you have grown yourself and runner beans are a great choice for the idle gardener. Once they are established they produce a crop of beans over a long period of time. Last year we were picking beans until the first frost stopped the plants in their tracks.

Newly planted runner bean plants.

Last year we tried Suttons Best of All runner bean and it produced delicious beans. There are still some left in last year’s packet so that is what I am using this year. I started them off in pots on the kitchen windowsill. They take about a week to germinate. Once the first shoot appears it seems to grow while you watch. They go from nothing to 2 inches in a day. Within a few days they have large leaves.

I planted mine in the garden this morning and now I have my fingers crossed that the slugs do not eat them. I like to be a green gardener and avoid pesticides wherever possible. Over the years I have tried various remedies to keep the slugs a bay including spraying the leaves with a garlic solution, putting broken eggshells and grit around the plant and surrounding the plants with copper pipe. All this has been to no avail. My theory is that tiny baby slugs come out of the soil next to the bean plant stems. It was heartbreaking to find the young plants stripped of their leaves and most of their roots. So last year I invested in some slug pellets. There is a warning on the packet that they can be harmful to pets if eaten in quantity and to scatter them thinly. They are blue in colour so hopefully birds will not mistake them for food but I wonder what happens if a bird eats a slug that has eaten a pellet? If anyone has a proven slug remedy that is not harmful to other wildlife I would be please to hear about it. Let me know in a comment to this post.

I have left the bean plants in their pots long enough to develop an extensive root system. Hopefully this will withstand a bit of nibbling from the wildlife for long enough for the bean plants to get established. The thing I can’t understand is that there are lots of plants with fresh green leaves that the slugs ignore. What is it about a young runner bean plant that attracts slugs?

May 28th, 2010 | Tags: beans, vegetables | Category: My Garden | Comments Off

Azalea

1. Have flowering shrubs as the main feature of your planting. Choose an evergreen variety where possible so that your garden looks green in the winter months. Azaleas and rhododendrons are my favourites.

2. Use bark chippings to cover all exposed soil. The deeper the better, say 3 or 4 inches, to discourage weeds.

3. Use ground cover plants in areas between the shrubs. If these grow thickly enough you will not be troubled with weeds. My favourite is heather. There are varieties that flower at different times so with a careful choice you can have a display of colour through much of the year.

4. Have a paved area for sitting out and enjoying your garden. Well laid paving stones are very low maintenance.

5. Have as little amount of lawn as possible. My wife insists on having a lawn but it is quite small, just big enough to take a rotary washing line.

6. Use a hover mower to cut the lawn. This can be swung from side to side whilst mowing so it gets the job done quickly. Do not use a grass box; just let the clippings settle back on the lawn. The clippings will put energy back into the soil. Clumps of grass clippings can be brushed out to disperse them.

7. Plant the right plants in the right place. If the plants are happy they will thrive and you will have less work looking after them them. For example put sun loving plants in the sun and shade loving plants in the shade. If you have acid soil then choose acid loving plants. If you have dry soil then choose plants that will thrive in those conditions.

8. Plant up tubs with flowers that will give a colourful display throughout the summer. Busy Lizzie, begonias and geraniums are my particular favourites. Buy potting compost that has water-retaining granules to cut down on the frequency of watering. If the flower tubs are placed near the house the view from the windows will be enhanced.

9. Use beech as a hedging plant. It is slow growing so only needs trimming a couple of times a year. The leaves turn brown in the winter but stay in place so still form a screen. They drop off in the spring as the new leaves are appearing.

10. If you enjoy a garden barbeque choose one powered by electricity. Just plug it in and you are ready to go. No charcoal or gas bottles to purchase. No ashes to dispose of afterwards. My barbeque is on a trolley that I keep in the garage. I wheel it out at barbeque time, then I sit back with a glass of wine while the sausages sizzle.

May 27th, 2010 | Tags: idle gardening | Category: My Garden | Comments Off

The Hawthorn, otherwise known as the May Tree, is the subject of today’s photographs. This is a continuation of my Sunday walk in the local wildflower meadows. The may blossom was at its peak of perfection and with the clear blue sky it was a photographers dream come true.

I did a search for information on may blossom and found the following:

May blossom appears on the tree at the beginning of May in the south of England, at the time of the Beltane or May Day celebrations, when people and houses were decked with may blossoms (“bringing home the May”). The popular rhyme “Here we go gathering nuts in May” is thought to have been sung by the young men, gathering not “nuts” (which do not grow in May) but “knots” of may blossoms for the May Day Celebrations. These celebrations included a May Queen, representing the Goddess, and a Green May, representing the God and the spirit of the new vegetation. It was known as the “Merry Month” and folk went about “wearing the green”, decking themselves in greenery and may blossom. Everywhere, everything is bursting with life and fertility at this time, and Beltane is a celebration of this potential. The cutting of the may blossom had great significance and symbolised the beginning of new life and the onset of the growing season.

The Hawthorn or May Tree.

The Hawthorn or May Tree.

The may blossom.

May 26th, 2010 | Tags: blossom, wildflowers | Category: wildflowers | Comments Off