Home & Gardens

Home & Garden Gardening...

Colourful mango...

DEEP PURPLE: The attractive mango leaves, and the stages of extracting

The festive period is often a time when we expand our usual range of foods with something special, dates, nuts, and perhaps tropical fruits like mango. It is great fun to try and grow some of these plants from seed, and if you have children of a certain age, it will keep them entertained after the wrapping paper has been cleared away. Dates are the fruit of a palm from the Middle East. In the centre of the fruit is a hard, elongated seed. These can be readily germinated in around three weeks, if kept warm and moist. After enjoying the fruits, wash the seeds, then immerse them in water for 24 hours. This allows seeds to take in moisture, priming them for germination. Place them on to damp kitchen tissue in a polythene bag and position somewhere warm. Within three weeks, roots should start emerging and plants can be potted individually and kept warm. If you live in a very mild area, you may be able to eventually grow them outdoors in the garden. However, although dates are fascinating to grow, they don’t form the best plant for the garden or home. Within a few years they become armed with razor-sharp, skewer-like spines, to about 8cm. The supermarket chain Tesco sold loads of date palms during early summer, but I wonder how many who purchased them had any idea of the bayonets that would develop. Mangos on the other hand are a much more attractive and unusual houseplant, spoiler alert, unless you have a tropical greenhouse at your disposal, they will never produce fruit in this country. Mangos are likely to have travelled at least 5,000 miles to reach your home this Christmas. Their cultivation is confined to tropical regions and are native to India and Myanmar. In the wild, fruits are consumed by elephants, which transport seeds before depositing them in their dung. Interestingly, a mango seed starts to germinate when still in its fruit. The seeds don’t have dormancy mechanisms, because in the tropics they are not needed due to the uniform climate. This means mango seeds cannot be stored. In seed biology, these seeds are termed ‘recalcitrant’ because they obstinately defy storage, whereas those we are more familiar with are called ‘orthodox’ seeds. If you have no elephant to hand, removing the seed from a fruit can be a bit tricky and needs care. First, remove the edible flesh from around the fibrous structure that lies at the centre of the fruit. This structure is not the seed, but a tough envelope (called the

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...with botanist Dr Dave Aplin a houseplant you can grow from seed

endocarp) surrounding it. The second step, and the trickiest, is to cut into this fibrous layer and extract the seed. A sharp knife or pair of scissors is required to open the envelope at its edge, taking care not to damage the seed or yourself. I use a pair of scissors to trim along just enough of the curved edge to create a slight opening. Once achieved, put down the sharp tool and use your fingers to prize the envelope apart. You will find a plump bean-shaped seed inside, often with a developing root poking out. Place the seed onto damp (but not wet) kitchen roll and keep it somewhere warm. Make sure the seed does not dry out, otherwise it will die. Once the root reaches 5cm in length, place the seed into a pot of compost and keep in a light, warm room. Since these plants are from tropical climes the warmer their environment the faster they grow. As the leaves develop, they emerge an attractive dark purple colour before turning dark green. This is a phenomenon known as delayed greening. This process allows plants to prioritise the full expansion of their leaves without packing them with nutrients, which herbivores would find irresistible. When sufficiently large the leaf quickly turns dark green and toughens, thus avoiding being eaten. n soilvalues.com.

Get carried away by hospice!

Are you loving your Christmas tree? Why not prolong the pleasure it gives by signing up to Julia’s House Children’s Hospice’s firstever Christmas tree collection charity service? They’ll be out collecting and chipping real trees from local businesses and homes around the BH1 to BH23 areas between Friday and Sunday, January 7 and 9, 2022. By registering your tree for collection, and giving a small donation, you will be

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Orchid show set to spring into action

ANY COLOUR YOU LIKE: There’ll be plenty going on to keep the youngsters engaged

Bournemouth Orchid Society are promoting the launch of our exciting new Learning Zone at this show, writes publicity officer Nick Fry. The Learning Zone will have a special emphasis on combined child and parent activities, all free of charge, which will include quizzes (including internet interfaced), crafty construction, still life and many more. The zone will include a minilaboratory so that the macro details of orchids can be explored. It will be occupied by experienced growers, so bring along your children/ grandchildren and pitch your knowledge with the new generation. You will be surprised what you will learn! Note that children under 18 enter free with a fee-paying adult, plus all materials are provided free of charge!

What Else Is on Offer? There will be plenty of colourful and varied orchids on display, many arranged for competition with many more for sale. We ensure that a good range of growing accessories are on offer, plus Steve Neville will be making his bespoke ceramic orchid pots. They make any indoor orchid into a display. In addition, we will be providing free advice on your orchids, so please bring them along and we will be pleased to help you understand them better. For those wishing to get their orchids re-potted, we offer a re-potting service from £2.00. This is always popular, with many entrants wanting to learn what to use and what to do. Refreshments There is an excellent café on site without the need to leave the building

Car Parking There are plenty of public car parks available locally

Covid 19 Covid restrictions, required at the time of the show, will be applied, therefore if in doubt, please enquire before travelling.

SHOWING OFF: There will be orchids galore at the Allendale Centre in Wimborne

noon to 4.30pm Allendale Community Centre Hanham Road Wimborne Dorset BH21 1AS

Entry £4:00 at the door, however; discounted if prepaid – contact the show manager for details Note: Children under 18 enter free when accompanied by a fee-paying adult.

Show manager Chris Broomfield can be contacted on chrisbroomfield@ ntlworld.com.

Show and Contact Details Bournemouth Orchid Society Spring Fair and Show Saturday, February 26, 2022

Mum’s bombshell over black-out curtains

Jo Green is a former allotmenteer, forager, amateur herbalist, pickler and jam maker who squeezed her allotment greenery into her tiny garden After December 21, the sun after a short pause (the solstice is Latin for Sun stand-still) will be swinging back over to our neck of the woods. The nights will be shorter and mornings brighter which means it’s time for me to fish out the black-out curtains for one light sensitive family member. The curtains I bought didn’t really do the job so I asked my mum if she had any black-out material I could add to the fabric. Mum disappeared to her remnant box and returned victorious with this original Secon World War Blitz black out curtain! I was amazed and then I was more amazed as she told me it had a hole in it as it was hanging in her house when as a child in Morley, Surrey, their home was bombed – luckily the bomb hit the bottom of their long garden and sunk quite deep into the mud before EXPLODING! The next day mum and her siblings were evacuated to the countryside. Most magazines are scouting for signs of spring but I revel in this deep winter time. The aftermaths of storms bring gifts of fossils and sea glass on the beaches and pine cones and kindling in the woods. The black-out curtain picture makes me think of the clear night sky with an incongruous thimble sun and a pin-box moon but mostly it’s empty, an empty ‘tabula rasa’ free from all the business and expectations of the New Year!