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Now's the time for Semi-Ripe cuttings...

8/23/2016

Plants for free time

Now is the time to starting taking cuttings (or as we call them here ‘Slips’) from many of our favourite garden shrubs. These cuttings at this time of year go by the name ‘Semi-ripe’, this simply refers to the age of the growth on the plant - Softwood being the very fresh new growth, semi-ripe being this same growth as it ripens and then hardwood is this growth in the middle of the winter (or when it fully ripens).

Garden plants which should be the focus of your attention is shrubs like Lavender, Hebe, Rosemary and other plants which you might regard as being a bit ‘soft’, by this I mean plants which may not survive a cold winter. By building stocks of these plants now you can overwinter these small rooted cuttings in a coldframe of a protected area and hey presto you have ready made replacements if needed - or just loads of extra plants to add to your garden! - either way it’s a win win!

It’s not just these ‘soft plants’ you need to be thinking about, as this time of year is a great time to be taking slips from the vast majority of your garden shrubs, so plants such as Cotinus, Sambucus and the likes are ideal for propagating now too.

I’ve found great results when taking cuttings in just pure Vermiculite, not any compost or anything else just pots full of Vermiculite (Vermiculite is a natural volcanic rock finely ground and available in all good garden centres), just fill the pots you’re taking the cuttings in with just Vermiculite, these cuttings will root faster and have better root systems than cuttings taken in compost, in all the trials I’ve done.

In addition to the Vermiculite you’ll need some Rooting Powder or some home-made willow water to aid in the rooting process.

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Its always rains in August!

8/23/2016

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August here in Donegal is a wet month. It’s never a ‘month long oasis of heat and sunshine’...I’m sorry for being so gloomy! But there’s a reason we keep records, diaries and statistics from year to year - it’s so we can plan for the future and every August we’ll get 22 days where it’ll be wet...and this has been consistent for the past 5 years. Yes, July is very changeable - the July of 2013 was dry but the July of 2015 was very wet.

With this August forecast in mind it’s important we’re efficient in the garden - seizing good days and carrying out key jobs when weather allows but also we take the time to sit down and enjoy our good work. This month is a key battle against weeds, preventing the ripening masses from setting seed and giving us years of future weed growth. Whenever you see a weed coming into flower - swirl the cutter and ‘Off with its head’ should be the cry!

Many weeds now are entering their reproductive stage so you need to keep an eye out for everything from Docks to Redshank to Himalayan Balsam setting seeds, after August the weed battle reduces in intensity.

For me I’m not upset with weeds in a garden, indeed weeding is an immensely enjoyable job - as the great Bob Flowerdew would say “Weeds are just compost I’ve not made yet”. I meet few gardeners that share the same enthusiasm for weeding as me, most look upon it as a chore, but when I’m weeding I get a sense of achievement when I look back over a piece of ground that I’ve just cleared.

Remember weeds grow where the soil is good, rubbish soil won’t attract weeds! - so soil higher in fertilty, higher in organic matter will have more weeds in it, but you don’t have to clear 100% of the weeds, you just have to manage them, keeping the weed pressure down around the plants. A healthy soil should have a ‘seed weed bank’. From a kitchen garden perspective weeds are important to be controlled within the first 20% of a plants lifespan, this is when they’ll have the greatest effect on the yield of your crop. In the ornamental garden is a case of having enough desireable plants growing as to hopefully crowd out the weeds, so pack plants in, layer your plants….have tall plants underplanted with ground covers..better to have too many plants that a garden full of weeding to do!!

Remember you’ve 9 dry days in August….make the most of them!

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Whats in a Name??

8/23/2016

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There are a number of fruits and vegetables we buy based on their name, at this time of year the Queens new season potato variety is much sought after, of course later in the year Pinks will be in demand but can you think of another variety of fruit or vegetable that you would seek out? I think Apples supercede potatoes in our knowledge of varieties, here again there’s examples of varieties which many can ring off Bramley Apple, Golden Delicious, Cox’s Orange Pippin...or the phenomenon of the past 25 years the Pink Lady apple.

Originally sold through the Marks and Spencer stores in the 90’s the brand Pink Lady has established itself as the third best selling variety of apple in the UK market, however Pink Lady isn’t a variety of apple, it’s actually a brand which the variety Cripps Pink is sold under. The marketing of the Pink Lady brand has been tremendous, with the distinctive pink sticker on apples (and the pink boxes) a common sight in homes and shops. What Pink Lady do is they set standards for the quality of Cripps Pinks- and when these meet these standards for sweetness, thickness of skin, sugar content they are then sold under the Pink Lady brand. If you’re a fan of Pink Lady you’ll notice that it’s not uncommon to get sprouted seeds inside the fruits, you can take these and plant them, but it’ll be a long time before you have a fruiting tree- and the fruits will be different than the fruit from which the seeds are harvested from!

PInk Lady source Cripps Pink from orchards through the world, in Europe they’re grown in Italy, Spain, France, Serbia and Israel….but not here in Ireland. We simply don’t have the required amount of sun days to get these through to harvest - you need 200 days of good sunshine for a Cripps Pink, something that we are way short of here! Cripps Pink also flower very early and are one of the last apples to be harvested - so our frosts would damage these flowers. Here in Ireland around 51% of our commercial orchard space is just for growing Bramleys, the rest if split with around 29% in Cider apples and 20% in Dessert apples. In our home gardens we tend to have around 10 eaters for 2 cookers. To put into context how many Pink Ladys are grown in Europe, in Ireland we have around 615 hectares of orchards, in France alone there is 2000 hectares of Pink Ladys grown, that’s around twice as much as there is land planted in Potatoes here in Donegal!

My own two girls know the brand name, and will happily ask for a Pink Lady rather than just an apple - and with over 53 million kilos being sold in the UK market….that’s a whole pile of apples!!

These Cripps Pink are not a result of some mad GM experiment but were bred by Englishman John Cripps in Australia in the mid 70’s, and has been developed and improved since, although hard to find you can get organic Pink Ladys (GM technology is prohibited in organic production).

As mentioned above you’ll not normally be able to grow a Cripps Pink in your garden here, its as difficult to grow as a Granny Smith - but you may have some luck growing them espallier against a south facing wall in a walled garden - but don’t try to sell them under the Pink Lady brand...you’ll be breaking the law! A similar in taste variety which grows happily here in my own back garden is the Katy apple - a nice small sweet apple.

Indeed in our own gardens we should all try to grow more fruit, whether it’s raspberries, strawberries, blueberries or the afore mentioned apples. We import far too much soft fruit - and in turn throw too much of it away. We should all try to plant more fruit in our gardens, remember Its Your Duty to be Fruity!!

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Chocolate scented Cosmos

8/23/2016

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Chocolate and Gardening….the two best things combined!!

No, we’re not just talking about sitting and eating chocolate in the garden, although this is a great thing to do….especially Toblerones….I love Toblerones, especially the big white chocolate one (going off track here!). No, we’re talking about a wonderful Cosmos which has chocolate scented flowers!

The chocolate cosmos or Cosmos atrosanguineus to give it its botanical name is a sensational plant, native to Mexico, for around containers in the garden, not strong enough to fill the garden with perfume but strong enough that when you sniff the flowers you get a real smell of farm chocolate - but don’t try to eat them, all parts of the plant are poisonous.

The flowers are deep maroon in colour, a real rich maroon and stand out well when combined with bright coloured foliages of other plants such as golds and silvers, or play with the dark colours of these flowers and plant them with black grasses - you’ll see this combination in the gardens of Cluain na tdor in Falcarragh, home to renowned plantsman Seamus O’Donnel and open as part of the Donegal Garden Trail.

In my own garden we have these chocolate cosmos planted into pots, and use the around the back garden, ideally suited to a site in dappled shade and frequent watering. Flowering each year you can easily propagate more from division to build your stock in the garden. In my own garden I grow these in the pots as they are easier to protect from very cold winters, simply placing the containers into the polytunnel in the early winter, but these plants are relatively hardy and in all but the coldest of gardens will happily exist for many years. When you think about ‘hardiness’ of these just think about Dahlias, which come from the same part of the world.

Cosmos are actually quite famous in the plant world, having been brought into cultivation by William Thompson in the mid 1800’s (a founder of Thompson & Morgan seed house) from Mexico and commonly reported as being extinct in the wild, with the famous Kew Gardens having the only sizeable collection from which all modern plants are clones!

So this weekend keep an eye out at the gardens for a plant which will not only flower for months in the garden, but will also be a real talking point in the garden.

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No One likes a Soggy Bottom!!

8/23/2016

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The perils of a soggy bottom

It’s not just on Bake Off where soggy bottoms can be a problem, anyone trying to grow Courgettes can suffer from the same problem. Indeed it's not just specific to Courgettes, any plant which is a member of the Cucumber family (Marrows, Pumpkins, Courgettes) suffer from this infliction.

Caused by the flowers getting wet at the time of pollination the fruit which forms develops a rotten base, which spreads up the fruit ruining that specific piece of fruit. More of an issue on outdoor grown Courgettes and Pumpkins than on polytunnel grown - due to rain dampening flowers.

There is little we can do to prevent this ailment as gardens, the best course of action is to regularly inspect your crop, and with a sharp knife just cut off any fruit showing signs of a soggy bottom as early in their formation as possible - this stops the plant wasting energy on making this afflicted fruit any larger, and instead can concentrate on producing more female flowers - which in turn may have better luck with the weather. Regular feeding is also important, giving your plants a weekly shot of Comfrey fertiliser or tomato food will help the flower production.

In Polytunnel production keeping the water of the flowers is easier, as you mainly have to focus on watering soil and not plants when you're irrigating, but from time to time you can still get the odd soggy bottom fruit, this is caused by the condensation within the tunnel. Just do the same as outside, cut off and feed the plant.

In general Courgettes are a really productive crop, and a real seasonal summer crop, however a big courgettes is not a marrow, indeed a marrow is a different botanical vegetable. Courgettes are best harvested when 5-7” in length, at this stage they are easier to work with and have better flavour - 15” courgettes are tough to cut, hollow on the inside and you have the awkward seeds to remove too! One plant grown in a Polytunnel can produce more than 50 of these small courgettes, outside you should get around 20 per plant, so weekly harvesting should be part of your garden plan. Cucumbers are the same, regular harvesting of small fruits is advisable.

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Geraniums, Perfect for the Lazy Gardener!

8/23/2016

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Geraniums to flower in the garden year after year are Geraniums. Geraniums which are for the pots, hanging baskets and for 1 year displays in the garden are Perlagoniums….confused??

This week we’re talking about the easy-to-grow garden perennials called Geraniums, not the ‘Geraniums’ you buy for the pots! These two plants are easily confused as they are both the member of the same plant family, but modern botany separates them out into 2 different Genera of plants - where many garden centres still confuse us by calling them the same thing!

The hardy Geranium for the garden is a joyful plant for the lazy/busy gardener (delete where applicable), as it flowers for months and will happily grow with diddly squat of care - spreading and colonising more space each year via its fleshy roots and its promiscuous seed dispersal. Ideally suited to a site which doesn’t waterlogg, and from full sun to partial shade these Geraniums will flower from June through to September, throwing out a second flush of flowers if you do chop them half down after the first flush of flowers is fading.

Ideal for slopes and banks which may have good soil in them, but are awkward to cut as a lawn or for filling gaps in existing borders and shrub bed Geraniums will set about this mission with gusto, doubling in size each year. Once established they can be happily dug up, split into 2 or 3 smaller plants are re spaced out or used to fill other gaps. As mentioned above the also spread via their distinctive seeds, spreading out into new gaps in the borders, preventing weed growth.

I’ve used Geraniums in many gardens to fill awkward spaces below larger shrubs and difficult spots at the back of deep flower beds, filling these gaps with ground cover shrubs like Geraniums not only gives extra depth to the bed, but it also covers bare ground which weeds may fill, or fertility lost through exposure to rain.

The flowers of Geraniums are much loved by beneficial insects, so are well worth including in perennial planting in a fruit or vegetable garden, or beside roses and other more ‘bug prone’ plants.

Available in a range of colours from white, pink, blues and purples (and even new varieties such as Jolly Jewel Salmon, which as the name suggests is a salmon colour, they have a good potential to add a cooling blue colour to the back garden, especially if you’re looking to create a calm, relaxing back garden.

Visit your local garden today and you’re sure to see a good selection of hardy geraniums available, recently I picked up a few in Cooneys Garden Centre in Letterkenny, Vincent in the Plant Centre was showing me a new delivery they had in and I knew just the spot on my garden for a few - under a Japanese Maple….hopefully give me one less place to weed!

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Now's the time for Semi-Ripe cuttings...

Its always rains in August!

Whats in a Name??

Chocolate scented Cosmos

No One likes a Soggy Bottom!!

Geraniums, Perfect for the Lazy Gardener!

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