LAST OF THE SUMMER FLOWERS

 LAST OF THE SUMMER FLOWERS

The prospect of an Indian summer was always high in our hopes to make up for an otherwise mediocre summer to put it mildly. However gales and floods were on the menu, so the sun lounger has now been stored away till 2013 which I am sure is bound to be a good year.

Garden plants however, do not give up so easily and will continue to push out some flowers at every opportunity. It is very pleasant to wander around the garden when that elusive sun nips out for the occasional half hour and just see what nature provides.

Confused plants

The weird weather has confused the garden plants just as much as humans. However we have papers and television to inform us what is going on. They get no guidance so expect the unusual.

Just like last year, my brilliant white Hellebores, (Christmas Rose) started to flower in September with green flowers, so looks like I have lost another year with this little beauty which normally sits outside my patio windows in full flower in the middle of winter.

Purple Delospermas are still in full flower even as we are now well beyond summer, when this succulent ground cover plant is at its best in a dry hot climate.

Oriental poppies and even my Delphiniums are having a second go at flowering, though both put on magnificent displays in early to mid summer.

Anemone Honorine Jobert just keeps on flowering, though the early flush at the end of summer was brilliant. They just keep going.

Fuchsia Mrs Popple can always be relied upon to flower till the first frosts appear. This year it has given us a lot of very tasty fruit to eat. If you have not tried it, give it a go. They are quite edible and different from other sweeter summer fruits.

Back on the allotment, one lady had a few onions run to seed. These were left to develop into huge purple balls of colour which Helen had cut to take to school to show her pupils how plants grow.

Normal late flowering plants.

Roses gave a far better second flush than the first one which suffered the worst of the cold wet weather. They are now continuing to flower quite profusely, though black spot disease has decimated the foliage. Spraying this year has been impossible as frequent rain showers washes the spray off before it gets a chance to work. You really need to work with forecasted weather and hope that they have got it right if they indicated two or three dry days in a row.

Sweet peas on my allotment were ok, but the variety I chose for being highly scented did not have a good colour range. However my next door neighbour Lynn had an excellent show which I managed to get a good picture from. Sweet peas have been good this year.

Early flowering chrysanthemums are only now beginning to flower. They should have started in August. I bought in a batch of spray varieties from Harold Walker Nurseries from Chester. They do not need disbudding so are quite labour saving, but it has taken them a long time to make some decent growth. The range was topped up with some lovely pink and purple sprays bought from a chrysanthemum grower at Gardening Scotland in June. His Regal Mist is a cracker. He had a huge display on his stand, but one, Barca Red was outstanding. It was the deepest rich purple I had ever seen, but when I tried to buy some plants there was none available. He imported the new variety from China and it is not to be marketed for another four years. However he didn’t like to see me so disappointed so he offered me a spare flowering spike. It was a gorgeous colour so I looked after it very carefully. The stem had been disbudded, but there was still some leaves on the stem that had not yet grown buds. Always keen to try my hand at propagating, so I took about ten leaf bud cuttings about two inches long and dropped them around some pots in compost. Every one rooted and most produced growth from the dormant buds. I am now waiting on them to give me some flowers, but I really do need that Indian summer.

Plant of the week

 Houttuynia is a brightly coloured foliage plant growing about a foot tall. It is a herbaceous perennial that loves moist, even boggy soil and well placed around the edge of a pond. It will thrive in shade to full sun preferring clay soils which hold moisture. The species, H. cordata can become invasive but the variety Chameleon is less vigorous and makes a bright splash of colour.

It is easy to propagate by division.

It comes from Japan, Korea and China where it grows in moist shade.

In Vietnam the leaves are used as a vegetable, the Chinese cook and eat the roots and the Japanese use the foliage for a herbal tea tonic. The plant has featured for years in traditional Chinese medicine and now it extracts from the plant are being studied by scientists for use against numerous ailments.

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AUTUMN IS ARRIVING

I THINK AUTUMN IS ARRIVING

The sweet corn has been harvested, the onions are drying off and the pumpkins are beginning to colour up so all the signs are in place that autumn is just round the corner. Just like everyone else I am still waiting on summer to arrive, but it is getting a bit late now. I should never have joked to a guest from Italy way back in March while enjoying an unbelievable warm sunny spell lasting the whole month. I said I hoped they enjoyed the early Scottish summer, as that would probably be it, reasoning that by tradition, any period of three or more days of constant sunshine constituted a Scottish summer. I was just joking, but fate kicked in to make my humour come true.

We won’t forget this year. Everyone has a tale to tell and most of them concern water logging and the year of the slug and snail.

Harvesting of crops is well under way, the freezer is bulging, and our healthy lifestyle with fresh supplies of fruit and veg. every day has become routine.

Vegetables

Cabbage, kale, lettuce, radish, spring onions and Swiss chard continue to give us plenty of fresh produce, but French beans have been miserable this year. However courgettes just love the moist weather so we have had ample supplies to ensure we have plenty courgette soup.

Beetroot have been brilliant though we have many reports of other folk with very poor beetroot crops.

The wet weather has given clubroot a field day and a double row of January King cabbages got devastated, reducing the plants to four miserable specimens.

I have just purchased some Perlka which contains calcium cyanamide. It is a nitrogenous slow release fertiliser with a 50% lime content and claimed to help to strengthen cell walls in the roots making it less likely to attack from clubroot disease. All my brassicas, turnips, Swedes, wallflower and radish will now get a dressing to see if I can get my clubroot under control.

Sweet corn has now been harvested with a good crop of cobs though a wee bit smaller than previous years.

Fruit

Autumn Bliss raspberries are giving good crops, but lack of sunshine reduces sweetness in the berries. Cape gooseberries are growing strongly on a south facing fence protected with some double glazed window frames. Figs are plentiful, but will need some sunshine and warmth to ripen up outdoors. We keep trying these exotics. My peach tree gave me six fruits, but had a great potential early on, only to be reduced by rotting due to the wet weather. However those few fruits made the effort very worth while.

Blueberries continue to ripen up and give us good crops.

Under glass the first Black Hamburg grapes are now ready and Perlette, my white seedless grapes only need a few more days of decent sunshine and we will be sampling them. Poor summer weather with cool temperatures and too much rain means we have to be vigilant of botrytis rots in the bunches and immediately remove any berries showing signs of rotting before it spreads.

Green manures

Broad beans, onions and spring cabbage have been harvested and cleared so the land can be dug over and sown with a green manure. I am using clover as this does not get affected with clubroot disease. Previously mustard was my choice as it is excellent as a green manure crop having bulky foliage and good roots. It is also easy to kill for digging in and does not regrow. Clover also grows thickly but not so tall as mustard and the fibrous roots have nitrogen fixing nodules so improve fertility. It is easier to bury than mustard and also dies out when dug in.

Let it grow strong till it begins to flower then trample it down and dig it in.

Plant of the week

Eucryphia rostrevor has been in flower for a few weeks now. It is a small columner shaped evergreen tree growing to about 20 to 30 feet tall. It grows naturally in the temperate rain forests of Australia, Chile and Argentina. As it prefers mild winters, cool summers and plenty rainfall it is perfect in our climate, and you can see a fine specimen in Camperdown Park at the side of the first fairway to the west of the big house. My tree is about six years old and only six foot tall, but gets covered in large white scented flowers.

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A SUNNY DAY AT KEW GARDENS

A SUNNY DAY AT KEW GARDENS

The last time I visited Kew I was studying horticulture for my National Diploma way back in the sixties. I was very impressed and knew that I would go back again another time, but to enjoy the gardens rather than study plants. Anna had never been there before and as she loves gardening as much as me it was a memorable visit. I think we got the last of the summer weather as we enjoyed three glorious days with cloudless skies and temperatures of 27 degrees C. Kew was at its best.

The Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew started over 250 years ago as wealthy people liked to show their status with large gardens furnished with the latest exotic plant discoveries from around the world. Plant collections grew in time and buildings and garden structures were created. The tall Chinese pagoda was built in 1761, then a palm house, temperate house, an arboretum and as the gardens expanded they were adopted as a National Botanical Garden in 1840.

It now has a massive plant collection for botanical interest and research, a massive library and a herbarium with 7 million specimens. It participates in the Millennium Seed bank project. Billions of seed from plants all over the world are preserved in nuclear bomb proof underground vaults in case of natural disasters.

Back at ground level it is reputed to have Europe’s largest compost heap created from plant material from its garden maintenance. And I thought I had a big compost heap on my allotment!!!

A museum shows how humans depend on plants for food, tools, clothes, medicines and ornaments.

Two galleries are dedicated to botanical paintings.

The gardens receive about 2 million visitors annually, maintained by about 700 staff. Botanical research is carried out by 650 scientists on projects of a world wide scale, as well as maintaining accuracy on the botanical naming of plants from DNA sampling.

Kew lost hundreds of trees in the Great Storm of 1987, though there is now little evidence of the devastation.

Glasshouses

The huge palm house was completed in 1848 but more recently the Princess of Wales Conservatory was opened by Princess Diana in 1987. It has ten computer controlled micro climates for wet tropical plants to dry tropical plants. Excellent displays of tropical water lilies, orchids and carnivorous plants in the middle sections with cactus on the outer areas needing hot dry conditions.

The water lily house is very hot and humid to accommodate tropical water lilies including the large leaved Victoria Amazonica.

The Davies Alpine House was opened in 2006 to house a collection of alpine plants. The construction has an arched roof to allow maximum light penetration, and cool air is circulated for ventilation with automatic blinds to prevent overheating in mid summer. It is glazed with special glass which allows 90% of the ultraviolet light to pass through. All the plants looked very happy.

The Orangery constructed in 1761 never really worked, so it has been converted into a restaurant.

There is so much to see you can wander around for days and always find something new. I was very impressed with some excellent mature sweet chestnuts with huge crops of nuts, but not yet ripe. However we did find a large fruiting Mulberry tree full of red berries. They were delicious and a new experience for both of us.

We found an Italian grotto surrounded with olive trees and white fruiting grape vines. However there was not an olive in sight, and surprisingly the grapes were far from ripe, I was told.

A perfect hot day was finished off with a round of very tasty ice cream.

Plant of the week

Cyclamen hederifolium is perfect for giving a bright splash of colour (pink, mauve and white) at the end of summer in rock gardens and woodland fringe with dappled sunlight. This perennial grows about six inches high and the leaves emerge in autumn after flowering remaining green till spring. They go dormant all summer. Seed is produced in autumn protected as the old flower stem coils around the maturing seed pod. Allow the seed to fall, or scatter it to form a natural drift.

 

Painting for September

Happy Thoughts is an acrylic painting on canvas. This study is one of many figurative images being prepared for my exhibition at the Dundee Botanical Gardens in October where I will show studies of my “Artist’s Models” Figure painting presents the artist with a huge challenge combining an attractive model in a modern setting but retaining artistic values of good composition, variety of tones and good use of colour and texture.

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James Hutton Institute

HORTICULTURAL RESEARCH ON OUR DOORSTEP

The James Hutton Institute, (formerly known as the Scottish Crops Research Institute) is based in Invergowrie, and has been carrying out research into food crops for over sixty years.

In the early years it was recognised that agricultural productivity was very poor due to pests, diseases, weeds, growing systems and poor yielding varieties of crops. Research stations were set up all over the UK to rectify these problems, often at local levels with the Scottish Horticultural Research Institute being set up at Mylnefield farm in Invergowrie in the early fifties.

I can remember my time at SCRI in the mid sixties when research was concerned with plant breeding to create higher yielding crops, disease resistance in soft fruit and vegetables, fertiliser trials, weed control and studies into plant viruses and eelworm in potatoes and raspberries. We also had a museum collection of apple trees from all over the world to assess their suitability for Scottish conditions, and the first blueberries, saskatoons and aronias were planted.

Many problems of that time were solved, as chemical controls were found for many pests, diseases, and weeds, but today most of these chemicals have been withdrawn, creating more problems to solve.

Growing methods have also changed, so plants suited for open fields are no longer the best for tunnel production as demanded by the supermarkets.

Effects of climate change are also being addressed as Scotland suffers a wetter climate but with a milder winter.

Work is also undertaken to establish isotopes to identify the authenticity of Scottish whiskies in the battle to prevent inferior counterfeits. Isotope signatures are also used for olive oils.

Fruit crops

Strawberries no longer suffer from red core disease, botrytis (apart from this very wet year) and virus and SCRI bred Symphony and Rhapsody are very popular

Raspberry breeding gave us a heavy yielding Glen Ample, but now pressure is on to find resistance to raspberry root rot (phytophthora) as it is so widespread that growers are finding it difficult to find clean land unaffected by root rot. They are now growing them in compost bags in tunnels with Glen Fyne one of the most promising new varieties. Work is ongoing to breed other varieties resistant to common strains of root rot, while still having good size, flavour, colour and taste.

Blackcurrants are mainly grown commercially for production of juice high in Vitamin C, though many of the Ben series are excellent for gardeners. I grow Ben Conan on my allotment. It is a very heavy cropper with large sweet fruit and not troubled by any pests or diseases. The new variety Big Ben has huge fruit, twice the normal size, and suited for supermarket retail sales. I intend to plant this variety in the winter as we like to eat fresh blackcurrants straight from the bush, as well as putting them in compote and summer puddings. Research is ongoing to continue to find ways of increasing the levels of vitamin C in the fruit for new varieties. Other research is underway to tackle the problem of lack of winter chill as we get milder winters. Blackcurrants need a period of cold weather to initiate fruit buds and have been suffering poor crops following recent mild winters, which have also advanced flowering times making the young fruit liable to damage with a late frost.

Gooseberry breeding has been successful in creating mildew resistance and an almost thornless bush. A new variety is approaching release. I have harvested some fruit from these bushes and lost very little blood, whereas my Invicta bush has superb fruit, but it is a vicious bloody battle to pick the crop.

Blackberries for tunnel production include Loch Ness and Loch Tay.

Vegetable crops

Potato breeding is looking at the problems of late blight in our wetter climate, as well as increasing levels of vitamin C and other healthy traits. A new range of Phureja varieties such as Mayan Gold with enhanced levels of carotenoides in the deep yellow fleshed tubers have been created from potatoes grown in Peru.

Turnips and Swedes are being bred with resistance to clubroot and powdery mildew, such as Invitation, Gowrie and Lomond

Plant of the week

Livingstone Daisy (Mesembryanthemum criniflorum) is also known as the Ice plant as the succulent leaves have a frosted appearance. However it is quite tender and really thrives best in a sunny hot summer. Gardens are planned well in advance, so I had the perfect spot for a dwarf annual that would thrive in a dry sunny border at the top of a wall. Seeds were sown in early April in trays indoors, then after a good germination (they are pretty easy to grow) they were pricked out into cellular trays to grow on for another few weeks. Nice sturdy plants were planted out in May awaiting the long hot sunny summer so they could burst into a mass of dazzling colour. They were quite outstanding on several occasions, but this was just not their best year.

They can withstand a bit of salt spray so are perfect for maritime planting locations, and are fine for sowing direct into the soil in a normal year.

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