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July 4, 2015
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Wimbledon worthy strawberries to grow!
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AboutNOW
Poisoning verdict left ‘open’ Shu erstock
Monkshood are highly poisonous, but instances of poisoning are very rare
Gardener’s brush with popular perennial monkshoodjudged insufcient for symptoms Words Ian Hodgson
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INS
n inquest into a professional gardener who died from organ failure initially attributed to the garden perennial monkshood has closed leaving an ‘open’ verdict. rdict. Nathan Greenway, reenway, 33, was taken aken to hospital in August last year after fter wife Katherine found ound him collapsed on their living iving room floor. Earlier in the day he had been Nathan Greenway: working around open verdict patches of aconitum nitum in the garden he tended near Alton in Hampshire. Although not wearing gloves, the inquest heard he did not directly handle the plants. Hours later he became seriously ill with blurred vision, blue fingers, laboured breathing and vomiting. He also had open cuts to his hands and fingers. When Nathan’s condition
The Hampshire garden where the incident took place
INS
worsened his wife summoned paramedics and he was taken to hospital. “They told me his internal organs were failing, specifically his kidneys,” she says. Nathan died days later on September 7 at Frimley Park Hospital. “Aconite is a popular garden plant and we don’t have people coming into hospital with aconite poisoning,” said Home Office pathologist Dr Debra Cook at the inquest last week. “It’s an extremely rare death. I cannot say what caused the multiple organ failure.” North Hampshire coroner Andrew Bradley recorded an open verdict, commenting: “When I first picked up this case I was under the impression Mr Greenway had been working hands on with monkshood and that he had considerable contact with it, but he was not actually handling the plants at all. The actual contact he had with the plant would not have supported aconite poisoning. I don’t like cases like this where there are unanswered questions.”
Be more Welsh, or else! Botanic garden has its budget slashed
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4 Garden News / July 4 2015
payments over the next three years from £70,000 to £50,000 in 2016-17, and £30,000 in 2017-18. The council’s executive board also stipulated future payments would depend on the garden’s improved use of the Welsh language, inviting it to work with Government Welsh language body Mentrau laith to ensure it becomes fully bilingual. “It needs to change, it needs direction, it needs marketing,” says council leader Emlyn Dole.
“This is an opportunity to underline that we are a bilingual county,” added the council’s Welsh language champion Mair Stephens. They also urged urg the venue to look at ways of becoming more sustainable. The council sanctioned a contribution of £50,000 towards the garden’s Regency landscape project, launched in September last year. “We are pleased to hear
Language barrier: National Botanic Garden of Wales Alamy
he National Botanic Garden of Wales is to receive less money from its local authority paymasters. The scientific attraction was blasted for not being sufficiently supportive of the Welsh language, and concerns have been raised recently about English-only signage being staged on roadsides for some events. Although Carmarthenshire Council will continue to support the attraction it will scale back
that councillors have agreed to continue to recognise the important contribution the garden makes to the area and to continue to support it,” says garden director Dr Rosie Plummer.
Plant
OF THE WEEK Shu erstock
6 delicious varieties to try
The smell and taste of the frst ripe berries is an experience to savour
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trawberries warmed by the sun and fresh from the garden, sprinkled with sugar or devoured with clotted cream, are an eagerly awaited summer luxury – but it’s a luxury that every gardener can aspire to. Different strawberries have a variety of delicious tastes and uses, from the concentrated flavour of tiny alpine strawberries such as ‘Mignonette’ to old classics such as ‘Cambridge Favourite’. There are even white varieties. Choose early, mid-season and late varieties, or an everbearing strawberry, for a long succession of fruit. We take a ready supply of strawberries for granted, but not so long ago fresh British strawberries were a midsummer-only treat. Now, with everbearing strawberries that bear fruit and flowers together, and cold stored ’60-day cropping’ varieties, it’s possible to pick home-grown strawberries from midsummer until early autumn.
Keep them happy Strawberries need a sunny position to ripen the fruits, but alpine strawberries will still give a crop in shadier sites. Plant strawberries into fertile soil with excellent drainage – plant them with the roots in the soil and the crown of the plant just on the soil surface. The easiest way to achieve this with bare root plants is to plant on a small ridge of soil, burying the roots either side of the ridge. If your plants are already potted, make sure the crown isn’t buried below the soil. Plant ‘misted-tip’ strawberries in summer to crop early the following year. Water and feed strawberries with a high-potassium feed to encourage the best quality fruits, and replant strawberry beds every three years to keep plants vigorous. Buy new ones or pot up your own rooted runners to make new plants. You can also grow strawberries from seed sown in late spring ready to plant out in summer. They’ll crop lightly the first year with a full crop the year after.
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Photos: Marshalls
Strawberries ‘Mara des Bois’
‘Buddy’
Once tasted, never forgotten! This is a hybrid with an alpine-strawberry taste and long season. Harvest June-October.
A delicious everbearing strawberry, it’s ofered as top of the range in the supermarkets. Harvest June-October.
‘Vibrant’
‘Christine’
Large and sweet berries, on healthy vigorous plants. Disease-resistant and crops within 60 days of planting. Harvest May-September.
Propagated from misted runner tips, this early variety has good disease resistance and sweet berries. Harvest May-July.
‘Malling Centenary’
‘Fenella’
Bred at East Malling to celebrate 100 years of fruit breeding, this main crop variety looks and tastes good. Harvest June-August.
A sweet-tasting, late variety. Ideal for Northern gardens, it’s weather resistant, shrugging of rain and cold. Harvest July-August.
● Marshalls, tel: 0844 557 6700 www.marshalls-seeds.co.uk
July 4 2015 / Garden News 5
What to do this week
ON YOUR FRUIT & VEG PLOT
Propagate strawberries Prepare your next helping of these juicy fruits, says Clare
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St e p by st e p
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Pot up some plants for free!
Find a runner that’s heading out from an existing clump with the start of a small plantlet on it.
40 Garden News / July 4 2015
Photos: Neil Hepworth unless stated
trawberry plants don’t last forever, but you can make sure you’ve got young strawberries waiting in the wings to take over by propagating from your existing plants’ runners now. Make sure plants are disease and virus free to start with. There’s no point propagating plants that won’t perform well. If their leaves look mottled, have yellow edges, spots or strange crinkling and yields are reducing, there’s a chance they could have a strawberry virus and are best disposed of. Start again in a new patch of ground with clean, certified virus-free plants, instead. Plants produce plenty of runners during the growing season, most of which you’re best off removing before they sap each plant’s energy – but propagating a few will take advantage of strawberries’ natural colonising tactics. As well as the technique below, you can also simply dig up ready-rooted plantlets and pot them on, ready to replant in a new bed in autumn or spring.
2
Fork over the ground below the plantlet, then scoop out enough soil to drop a pot of compost in place.
3
Pin the runner and plantlet so it can root straight into the pot. Once severed from the parent, you’ll have a new plant.
Sow beetroot
MEDWYN WILLIAMS
Growing for
Beetroot are extremely easy to grow, as they like most soils and are fine growing in pots and raised beds, too. You could give a range of colours a go – purples and yellows or varieties such as ‘Chioggia’ with red ‘bullseye’ striping at the centre. Classic ruby-red types are especially good if you’re planning to exhibit beetroot on your Top Tray at this year’s show. In your chosen patch, sow the peppercornlike seed directly, 2–3cm (¾in-1¼in) deep, spaced around 10cm (4in) apart. Rows should be 30cm (12in) apart to leave enough room for growth. When seedlings are about 2cm (¾in) tall, thin them out to let the strongest ones thrive. Harvest them from July as golf ball-sized tender baby beets, or you can leave them to grow into earthy, mature veg later into the year. For a copy of the Top Tray rules, our veg exhibiting class that’s sponsored by D.T. Brown, visit www.gardennewsmag.co.uk
SHOWING
Winner of 11 Chelsea golds and awarded an MBE!
Sturdy arches will support a carrot fly-proof Enviromesh covering
Photos: Medwyn Williams
Beating carrot fy
Garden News RECOMMENDS
They’re bothering my long carrots!
D D.T. Brown
D.T. Brown
‘Cardeal’
‘Red Ace’
Very sweet flavour and a good deep-red colour. Ideal for lifting early as ‘baby beets’.
Really uniform, spherical roots, which do not turn ‘woody’. Perfect for Top Tray exhibition.
D.T. Brown
‘Burpees Golden’ Beautiful golden yellow, and perfect for adding colour to a salad. All from D.T. Brown, tel: 0845 371 0532; www.dtbrownseeds.co.uk
readed carrot flies are bothering my long carrots outdoors. That’s despite wrapping clear polythene, 60cm (2ft) high around them to exclude the low-flying females! Perhaps Anglesey is home to a pole-vaulting species because they’ve managed to reach my exhibition long carrots in long pipes and they’re at least 1.2m (4ft) above the ground! There’s no chemical to help, so I’m covering my beds with fine Enviromesh. My carrots are grown on two raised concrete block beds, both 1.2m (4ft) wide, to which I’ve attached a framework of plastic water pipes to hold the mesh. I screwed short lengths of a larger bore pipe on to the outside of the block work using 6cm (2½in) long screws, with the top of the pipe extending 15cm (6in) above the block work. I then formed an arch with a smaller diameter pipe and slotted each end into the larger pipes to a depth of about 10cm (4in), with a nail pushed in to stop the pipes sliding down too far. I threw some of Medwyn’s of Anglesey 2.6m-wide Enviromesh over the framework and had enough left to sure up the edges. I also stapled the ends of the mesh to roofing battens so I can roll it up when I need access for weeding and other jobs. After all that effort, just in case
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any pupae are lurking in the soil, I’ve bought some Nemasys Natural Fruit & Veg Protection.
Potatoes are shooting ahead I like experimenting with my potatoes. I remember my father lifting potatoes from a compost heap where my mother threw her peelings, so earlier this year, while preparing my seed potatoes, I tried planting some shoots removed from the eyes. I carefully removed the eye and emerging shoot with a sharp knife, left it to dry for an hour and then planted it in 7.5cm (3in) pots of Levington F1S compost, just under the surface. Within a week there were signs they were growing away. Roots developed at the base of the shoot and close to the potato itself so I covered that part up. I planted them in early June into 20-litre potato bags. They’re now growing away well outdoors next to my earlier batch. I’m hoping to get a small quantity of larger, excellent-quality potatoes for the show bench.
The sliver of potato and shoot were po ed up
July 4 2015 / Garden News 41