Garden News August 29

BANK HOLIDAY

August 29, 2015

SPECIAL!

B rit a in'sed st m o st t ru in vo ice g a rd e n in g

4

Vibrant thunbergia for quick, climbing cover

✔ Bedding that's made to go together! ✔ Plants with evening scent ✔ Late flowers to add now

2 x FREE SEEDS!

3.98

Worth

£

Show off your

ALPINES

Make a trough AND plant it up!

ENJOY YOUR GARDEN

AFTER DARK! Easy solar lights & home-made lanterns

" My tricks for planting in shady spots" says Chris Beardshaw

3 steps to help ripen tomatoes

Ideas for the

! d n e k e e w Try Carol's favourite daylilies for months of colour Get your patio BBQ-ready!

Grow your own

AunCusKua!l Et R SPpeIC rimen with

Ex herbs, fiery chillies & more

AboutNOW

Manchester goes green

New range will be available 2016

M New herb range for 2016

J

ekka McVicar, the UK’s leading herb expert, is launching a new range of herb seeds this season with seed company Johnsons.

The brand-new range is comprised of 47 varieties of classic and unusual herbs, selected by Jekka. Each packet comes with advice on how best to grow and use the herbs. “‘I am very pleased to be working in partnership with Johnsons Seeds. It is great to have a really good range of culinary herb seeds available that will inspire people to grow them in their

gardens or containers, and then use them in the kitchen to transform a simple meal into a feast,” Jekka said.

Author, broadcaster and herb-fanatic, Jekka has published several works on her passion including her Complete Herb Book which has sold over 1 million copies worldwide. Jekka founded the first UK-based Herbetum, located on her Gloucestershire nursery. It boasts the largest collection of culinary herbs in the UK. The new herb range will be available in garden centres for the 2016 season.

anchester’s festival of gardening, Dig the City, has cemented its launch two years ago with a successful third season. Now a fixture of the city’s’s summer, the seven-day festival held at the start of August saw increased footfall, up by five per cent on the previous year. On average over 100,000 people visited the festival area over the week.

The event was launched by Diarmuid Gavin, who said it was: “Full of creativity and energy, different from the po-faced garden festivals elsewhere, but full of personal passions.”

The city centre was host to 22 show gardens, as well as concerts and events for children in association with the BBC and the National Trust. Retailers joined in by creating garden-party inspired window displays and, on the final day of the festival, a city-wide children’s treasure hunt ended in an enormous water fight in Greengate Square.

Kniphofia galpinii VIP

Words: Michael Locke, Photo: RHS Image Library

B

ut for the life of a man obsessed with nature in all its forms, this striking orange flower of a plant family once believed by South African tribespeople to act as a charm against lightning, would never have graced British gardens.

The year is 1892 and a young Collingwood Ingram stares from the window of his study, fascinated by nature.

An enigma of a man, poor health kept him inside through most of his childhood years.

A fascination with birds had shaped the first half of his life, yet after World War I it was horticulture that defined him after a family move to Benenden in Kent.

It was the flowering cherry tree in the garden of his new home that inspired him to become an expert of Japanese cherries and resulted in him becoming widely known as ‘Cherry Ingram’.

He later embarked on several plant

6 Garden News / August 29 2015

Very Important

searching trips throughout the Plant world, most notably to Japan in 1926 and South Africa in 1927 and it’s the latter of these trips which we have to thank for introducing Kniphofia galpinii to us.

This species, from the evocatively nicknamed ‘red hot poker’ genus, is valued for its vibrantly-coloured flowers which reach up to 45cm (18in) high, are set in a dense spike and are orange-red.

For this contribution to horticulture among others, Ingram was given over 70 awards including the Victoria and Veitch medals by the Royal Horticultural Society.

While ‘Cherry’ may not have earned the same kind of fame for introducing Kniphofia galpinii to Britain, this important species is still widely used today in red hot poker breeding due to its distinctive colouration and compact habit.

Dig the city

Not many festivals end in a water fight!

Photos: tos: Mr Fothergill’s

Grafting onto dwarf rootstocks gives us fruit for patio pots

60

SECOND

Expert

Emilia Fox and her new sweet pea

Rootstocks

Alamy

New plants for 2016 from Mr Fothergill’s

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eed company Mr Fothergill’s have unveiled their new introductions for the next growing season. Silent Witness star Emilia Fox has lent her name to a new sweet pea, by premier breeder Keith Hammett. Like a larger-flowered version of old-favourite ‘Cupani’, with bi-coloured flowers in pink and purple, it’s very fragrant

A

rootstock is one half of the partnership that makes up a grafted plant, where the top part or ‘scion’ is joined to a rooted portion that decides how well the resulting combination will grow. It is much like the engine of a car, hidden from sight but vital for good performance.

The rootstock is always related to the scion. A peach scion will grow on an almond or plum seedling because all are forms of Prunus, but cannot be grafted onto a willow rootstock, for example. You can even graft a tomato on a potato, as both belong to the Solanaceae family.

and ideal for cutting. “I’m passionate about gardening. I love watching sweet peas grow and it’s a dream come true and a privilege to have such a beautiful sweet pea named after me,” Emilia said. 20 seeds will retail at £2.15.

Other innovations launched by the company for next year include its GroTray range – a compact, easy propagation system.

Four more new and exclusive highlights

Roses Rootstocks modify growth or improve vigour. When grafted on a Rosa canina seedling a weak Hybrid Tea rose may be hardier and do well on heavy soils.

On Rosa ‘Laxa’ it will make fewer thorns or suckers. On R. ‘Dr. Huey’ it will be a climber.

Sunflower ‘Soleo’

Trees

Dwarf plants with fluted flowers in clear bright pink, ideal for borders and containers. £2.15.

Compact, branched plants with masses of golden yellow flowers, perfect for cutting. £2.15.

Tomato ‘Suncherry’

Tomato ‘Bountiful’

Sweet variety that consistently wins blind taste tests. Disease resistant, for indoors or out. £3.25.

A reliable beefsteak variety with large, ribbed fruit and great flavour. Grow indoors or out. £3.25.

Rootstock effects are most significant with fruit trees, influencing size, vigour and early cropping. Apples in particular can range from 2m (6ft) high (M27 stock) to a spreading 7m (21ft) or more (M2, MM111). Size is related to vigour, so very dwarf M27 stocks are precocious but need support and good growing conditions. Vigorous MM111 trees take years to start cropping but do well on poor soils or as large trained fans and espaliers.

So, when choosing a grafted tree, always identify and match its rootstock to your soil and site, and be wary of cheap plants with unidentified rootstocks if you want to avoid disappointment.

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Words: Andi Clevely

Cosmos ‘Hummingbird Pink’

August 29 2015 / Garden News 7

WHAT TO DO Meet the tea m

THIS WEEK

Clare Foggett

Ian Hodgson

Karen Murphy

Melissa Mabbit

Horticulturist Clare’s 50m (165ft) garden is home to fruit and cut flowers.

A Kew-trained horticulturist, Ian is also a garden designer.

Keen fruit, veg and container gardener, Karen also loves wildlife.

Having previously worked at the National Trust’s Bodnant Garden, Melissa has RHS qualifications.

If y o u d o ju st o n e jo b...

Collect and save your own seed And you’ll save money, too, says Melissa

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Collect on a dry day

open on their own, gently crush them open by hand.

Capsule seed heads like aquilegia and poppy seed should be shaken out into a paper bag or envelope for storage. Paper is breathable, so will help keep the seeds dry. Label the bag with the name of the plant and the date and keep it somewhere cold and dry – a refrigerator is perfect but a cool, dry cupboard will do.

For grass seeds and tiny flower seeds such as campanula, cut off the whole flower head and store them in the same way but, before you do, remove the ‘chaff’, which can harbour damping off disease. When dry, ‘winnow’ the seed to separate the fluffy chaff.

Shake the seed head in its paper bag to loosen up the tiny seeds.

Put the seeds and chaff onto a folded piece of paper – hold it up and tip it slowly so that it trickles into a container below. As it falls,

Neil Hepworth

eed heads of all sorts are ripening, and though it’s great to leave many in place to add structure and interest to the garden in autumn and winter, you can use some to save seeds for next year too. Seeds grown in your own garden will give you more of the plants that look good and grow well in your soil, and will save you bags of cash in the long run.

Plants that produce capsules, pods or winged seeds are easiest to collect, but you can also try your hand at saving seeds from berries and feathery grass seed heads.

Wait until seed heads are ripe – capsules should be dry, papery and on the cusp of opening.

Collect seed after a few dry days.

If you can’t rely on dry weather, pick the seed heads and lie them out on a piece of newspaper on the greenhouse bench, warm windowsill or airing cupboard for a few days. If the capsules don’t

blow gently – this will carry away the light bits of chaff while the smaller, denser seeds continue to fall into the container. Repeat if necessary to get rid of all the waste material.

To collect seed from berries, squash the ripe fruits in a sieve and rinse away the flesh with cold water. Put the clean seeds on paper towels to dry before storing in a cool, dry place.

Seeds that store for 2-3 years:

Seeds that store for 4-5 years:

Garden News RECOMMENDS

Photos: Shu erstock

Neil Hepworth

Seeds that store up to a year:

Salvia Viola Larkspur

Sweetpea Hollyhock Aquilegia

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Nasturtium Amaranthus Poppies

August 29 2015 / Garden News 31

What to do this week

ON YOUR FRUIT & VEG PLOT

A quick tidy up now will pave the way for juicy fruits, says Clare

S

trawberries give their all during the summer, so pay them some attention now to make sure they’re raring to go next year too. Now the crop has come to an end, you can tidy up your strawberry bed. Lift any straw that you put around the base of the plants to keep the fruit off the ground. It will harbour slugs, snails and other pests if you leave it, and turn into a soggy, rotting mess. Keep removing runners so they don’t compete for the plants’ light, water and nutrients, and tidy plants too.

Remove any brown dead leaves from around the crowns, but keep any healthy foliage in place until early spring. Keeping the majority of leaves on the plants over winter gives the strawberries protection from cold weather – when you do cut them back in spring, the increased light and air triggers

38 Garden News / August 29 2015

Remove dead or dying foliage and cut off or pull up runners

the plants to produce fresh, new growth. Finally, remove any weeds that have made their way, unnoticed, into the bed.

Any strawberry plants that were propagated from runners

rooted in July or August should be ready for transplanting by now.

Choose a part of the garden that hasn’t grown strawberries or raspberries in the recent past – they both suffer from the same

root virus problems. Strawberries shouldn’t be planted too deeply otherwise the crowns will rot.

Make sure that the crown is set just at the soil surface, but not above it.

Photos: Neil Hepworth

Get strawberries ready for next year