CAYNHAM AND DISTRICT GARDENING
SOCIETY GARDENING HINTS AND TIPS
How to deter cats
- Place a plastic
snake in amongst your plants or on your seed bed. Cats do not like snakes!
Chris King
-
Brush your hands gently over young seedlings
each day – it helps them grow stronger and thicker.
(Country Living Magazine)
-
If mulching newly planted perennials, up-end
their pots as temporary covers to avoid smothering them.
-
Take care when you dismantle a compost heap,
especially in winter as they may contain a sleeping hedgehog.
Cath Corfield
-
Coffee grounds are a good slug barrier as they
are abrasive and acidic, plus the caffeine in the coffee dries up the slimy
slugs. It is also good for the soil,
containing 1.45% nitrogen as well as magnesium, calcium and potassium. It makes a good mulch.
Gill Tanner
-
When a
plant in a pot has got over dry immerse the plant in its pot in a bucket of
water and hold it below the water surface until bubbles have stopped
coming out of it - that mean the water has replaced all of the air in the
compost and then you can lift the plant out of the water and leave it to stand
to drain knowing that it has been watered fully.
Elizabeth
Hatchell
1. If
designing or re-designing a garden, start with the views from the house. You’ll spend far more time looking out at the
garden than actually in it. A pleasant
view every time you glance out of the window will be very satisfying whereas
the alternative will annoy you every time.
3. Every
plant that flowers between September and March is worth a lot more than those
that flower in the summer months when there is so much colour and so many
different textures available. Evergreen
climbers and shrubs which form a background in the summer months are the
highlights in the winter, providing structure and form – and often flowers as
well. Even old-fashioned common plants
such as viburnum tinus is currently
covered in flowers, providing nectar and pollen for insects – and something to
cut for the house.
4. One tree that provides two or more seasons of interest is worth a lot more than a single interest tree. For example hamamalis mollis Arnold Promise is of little value during the summer months but in late September its leaves are stunning colours from red to orange, yellow and green, all at the same time. When the leaves drop it is dormant, only to burst into brilliant yellow flowers that can last 5-6 weeks from January to March. Incidentally, my favourite tree.
Jean Faulkner
Propagation
·
To increase bedding plants, when pinching out
growing tips to encourage bushiness, let them get a bit longer than normal
& use them as cuttings. Just insert into compost. Very successful with
marigolds, cosmos, dahlias, but try with anything – most annuals just want to
root & grow in spring.
·
To increase hardy cyclamen from seed is very
easy. Fresh seed is best but soak it or older seed in water for 24 hours to
help break dormancy. Sow thinly in well drained compost – add sharp grit or
perlite – and cover with a layer of fairly fine grit – ‘chick grit’ is very
good. Keep pots indoors until spring. Germination will take anything from a few
weeks to several months. Pot the seedlings on when the foliage dies back in
their 2nd year, when they will have developed a small corm. The grit
helps to discourage the moss & liverwort that would otherwise develop over
that time.
If for some reason seed fails to
germinate, usually older seed, be patient. Seed may take 2-3 years to
germinate.
Plants should flower in their 3rd
year.
·
Other ‘bulbs’ which flower best from fresh seed,
that is as soon as collected, include snowdrops (almost essential), irises,
crocus, erythroniums (common name Dog’s Tooth Violet – but not the viola
that is also called that), fritillaries, crocus, some alliums.
·
Hellebores also need to be sown from fresh seed.
·
If you tend to forget to water seed pots or
trays try self-watering trays. These are available commercially but tend to be
expensive. To make your own, take a gravel tray of any size, cut a sheet of
something rigid & impervious to water so that it fits inside the tray.
Support the sheet on something like very small pots, small blocks of wood or
anything that doesn’t take up much room, & preferably doesn’t float, so
that it is level with or just above the top of the tray. Cover the sheet with
capillary matting so that an end overhangs to the bottom of the tray and fill
the tray with water. You will need to remember to fill the tray from time to
time!
Vegetables – what varieties should I sow?
It can be
useful to sow at least 2 different varieties of things:
·
They will probably have different tolerances to
weather & growing conditions & as we know these are now totally
unpredictable. When going through the seed catalogues look for things like
‘tolerates dry conditions’ or ‘tolerates adverse weather’.
·
As our growing season is a bit later that the
south’s, early cropping varieties are useful. If the weather’s been unkind
& things have been held back they will also have a chance of producing
before the end of the season.
·
Look for varieties with different harvest times
to extend crop availability.
·
Flavour is clearly important, but can you
believe what you read in the seed catalogues? None of them are going to admit
to poor flavour & it tends to be a personal thing anyway. Flavour will also
depend on your growing conditions. So growing more than one variety allows you
to begin to select the ones you like & that like you.
Julie Alviti
-
Weed and mulch all borders in spring. This is the best tip I can give as it saves
so much work later on. Take out all
perennial weeds and cover all borders in a thick layer of sterile mulch.
-
Cleaning up used plant labels. This is 2 tips in one. Cover the bottom of a dirty and stained vase
with bleach and then fill to the top with water. Put a handful of plant labels in the solution
and leave overnight. Pour away the
solution and wash out the vase and swill the labels. Everything will be clean. Always take care when using bleach.
-
Killing individual ground elder and bindweed. Wear protective gloves whilst doing
this. Paint the ground elder with the
gel. Place a cane by the base of the
bindweed and let it grow up the cane.
Paint it with the roundup gel.
-
Don’t be afraid to plant annuals. Annuals such as Cosmos, Zinnia, Cerinthe,
Salvia Blue and pink Clary, and Snap Dragons are lovely additions to the garden
and flower until the frosts. They are
good for filling gaps and very easy to grow.
-
Showa gardening gloves. These gardening gloves are wonderful. They allow your hands to breath and they are
thin enough for you to plant and do other gardening tasks. You can get a very thin pair for pricking
out, a standard pair for everyday gardening, a thermal pair for the winter and
a pair for pruning roses. There are also
many other types. Buy from gardening
shows, Amazon or their website www.showagloves.com.
Tesco Club Card Boost
If you have
Tesco Club card points go online and use Club
Card Boost
There are
lots of garden related offers.
Thompson and Morgan give 3 times the value of your
points. In one transaction when ordering
from Thompson and Morgan online you can use £15.00 worth of points for £45.00
worth of shopping. This does not include
postage.
12 months
Gardeners World magazine substription can be bought for £15.50 worth of club
card points. There are also other
gardening publications.
RHS Membership for one year can be bought for
£18.00 worth of club card points.
Interlocking plastic garden tiles
These are cheap to buy and wonderful for putting on top of
wet soil to wheel your barrow across or stand on to plant between rows.
Other tips
1.
Always wash seed trays to avoid ‘damping off’ - spray with bleach and leave for half an hour
and then wash off with a stiff brush.
2.
A ball left in a pond before an overnight freeze
will help to stop the pond from completely freezing over. If the ball is removed in the morning it
leaves and air hole for fish and a water hole for other animals.
3.
To ripen green tomatoes place a ripe banana with
them. The skins give off ethylene which
will ripen the tomatoes.
4.
Support heavily loaded fruit tree branches with
an old clothes line prop. This reduces
the risk of the weight of fruit tearing the branch off the tree.
5.
Take regular photographs of your garden to form
a record of your gardens development over the years.
-
Keep a garden journal. It is so useful to look back on for when you
planted your seeds or where you planted a certain plant.
-
When visiting other gardens take a notebook to
jot down names of plants that you would like to have in your own garden.
-
Clean tools such as spades in a bucket of oily
sand. This will clean off the dirt and
oil the spade at the same time.
-
It always
easier to pull weeds from wet soil.
If it is dry soak the area you would like to weed with a hosepipe an
hour before you weed.
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