SCENTED FLOWERS FOR SUMMER

SCENTED FLOWERS FOR SUMMER

Our summers are just too short in Scotland so we must make the most of every sunny day. Most gardens have some form of permanent plant structure to create form, boundaries, give privacy, screen eyesores or just to include some of our favourite plants. Each year we add to this a range of annuals and biennials to give colour and impact to borders, tubs and hanging baskets.

There is plenty of scope to consider scent as well as colour. Summer scents stay in the memory long after summer has gone and help to maintain pleasant thoughts of those happy days.

In the early stages of planting up the new garden or refurbishing an existing one with new plants there is a strong probability that scented trees, shrubs, roses, herbaceous plants and bulbs will be included as there are a lot of plants with scent. However once you have sorted out your favourites it is worth giving a lot of thought as to where they are best planted. If you have a sunny patio that is well used, then this is a must as well as around entrance doorways. Visitors will always be left with a good impression if they arrive amongst a strong waft of delicious perfumed plants, and sitting on the patio on sunny days is very pleasant if you can also enjoy some exotic scents.

Structure planting

Trees, large shrubs, and climbers planted along fences and on walls are all usually permanent and make a big impact on the landscape so choose the types very carefully. Many cherry trees such as Prunus Amanogawa are scented as are most lilacs, and coming down in size philadelphus may still grow very tall, but the scent is overpowering. Viburnum carlesii, juddii and carlcephallum all have a strong exotic perfume in early summer. Deciduous azaleas have a very pleasant scent of soft woodlands and coming down in scale the daphnes are one of the earliest to produce a scented flower.

House walls and all fences are perfect spaces to plant climbers or other suitable tall growing plants that can be trained to the support surfaces. There are numerous scented climbing roses and other shrub roses that can lend to being trained against a wall. My favourite pink one is Gertrude Jekyll and the Climbing sport of Ena harkness is a brilliant well formed deep red scented rose.

Honeysuckles are a must and if you have a sheltered spot try the white scented Jasminum polyanthum which can last many years but may not survive a severe frost in winter.

Beds and borders

Herbaceous and border plants are often used to bring the garden structure down to ground and lawn level and give ground cover to eliminate weeding. Flag iris, lilies, garden pinks and numerous herbs such as lavender, rosemary, thyme and mint will all add a range of different scents in early to late summer.

Tubs and hanging baskets

Most summer bedding plants are grown for sheer brilliance of colour as most do not have a scent, so I always include some blue petunias both for the deep blue colour but also for the scent. These always get planted in hanging baskets adjacent to house entrance doorways. For larger tubs try a dot plant such as the white flowered Datura, also known as Angels Trumpets, which has an exotic scent at its best in late evenings as it is trying to attract night flying moths.

Cut flower

If you have an allotment or large garden, and can afford to spare some ground for growing cut flower for the house, then plant a row of sweet peas. As you will be cutting flowering stems frequently you will not need to remove seed heads. Keep them well fed and watered and they will flower well into autumn. Border carnations are another perfect scented flower to grow for home decoration. There is a wide range of colours available and many have the strong clove scent.

Plant of the week

Shirley Poppies originated over a hundred years ago when a vicar, the Reverend William Wilks from the English parish of Shirley found attractive variations of wild field poppies which he then started to select from and breed a new strain. Over many years he established a range of colours from white, pink, mauve, red and lilac. They now come as singles, doubles and semi doubles. These annuals are easily grown from seed broadcast onto a prepared seed bed and lightly raked in. They do not need rich soil or fertiliser and even on poor soil will quickly grow and flower profusely all summer.

END

SOME LIKE IT HOT

SOME LIKE IT HOT

Peppers in some form or another have been cultivated and eaten for thousands of years. We are all familiar with the sweet pepper known as the bell pepper as we eat it fresh in salads or cooked in numerous dishes very frequently. However hotter peppers such as cayenne, chilli, Thai peppers, Jalapeno, Habanero, Scotch Bonnet and if you like it dangerously hot Dorset Naga are all very healthy. They also add a bit of spice and heat to a wide variety of dishes in curries, as paprika, Tabasco, or they may be dried, ground or pickled.

The active ingredient in hot peppers is capsaicin and the amount present varies according to type grown, method of cultivation and climate.

The hottest parts are the seeds and central membrane that holds the seeds. A method has been established to determine the strength of heat in the chilli. This is known as the Scoville Heat Units. The sweet pepper counts as zero, Jalapenos have 2.5 to 10 thousand SHU, the cayenne has between 30 to 50 thousand SHU, Thai peppers have 50 to 100 thousand SHU, Habanero and the Scotch Bonnet has 100 to 350 thousand SHU. The Dorset Naga was top of the hotties at well over one million SHU, but this has now been overtaken by the Trinidad Moruga Scorpion at two million SHU.

The hottest types are also the source of capsaicin extracted from chillies and used as non lethal pepper sprays by police for crowd control.

Take great care in handling the hottest fresh chillies as the sap can cause severe burning of hands, eyes, lips and other parts of the flesh in contact. Wear thin rubber gloves and thoroughly wash all knives, utensils and cutting boards after use.

Always thoroughly wash all kinds of peppers as they are mainly grown in countries that are still using high levels of pesticides that adhere to the surface of the fruit.

Peppers may be picked green or left to ripen and go bright scarlet, though this often reduces the amount of fruit produced. The red fruits are very high in Vitamin C, vitamin A, and most of the vitamin B range, as well as the minerals potassium, magnesium and iron. If you can build up a tolerance to hot peppers they are recognized with excellent health benefits. Studies indicate they are useful in treatment of arthritic pain, reduces blood cholesterol, and the peppery heat can reduce nasal congestion. Capsaicin studies are also helpful in stopping the spread of prostate cancers.

The plant thrives in hot climates like South America, Mexico, India and Thailand, so up in Scotland we need to grow them in a glasshouse.

Cultivation

This year I have been growing some Jalapeno peppers, but the cultivation of other types is very similar. Only tall varieties may need staking or some form of support. My Jalapenos are now five foot tall bushes that seem to be fine without any support but as the fruit swells I will support any shoot that looks likely to bend over with a heavy crop.

Seed was sown in mid March in seed trays on a windowsill. Young seedlings emerged in a few weeks then were pricked out into small pots and kept on the sunny windowsill. These soon grew and needed potting up into larger pots. Once established they were transferred into the glasshouse in early May and three weeks later planted into a growbag at three per bag. They can also be grown direct into borders that have been well prepared by incorporating ample well rotted organic matter. Peppers benefit from high temperatures and ample sun so they are on my south facing border in the glasshouse.

Keep them watered and fed once a week with a high potash feed just like tomatoes.

They can get troubled with red spider, greenfly and whitefly, but so far I have had no problem.

Keep them well ventilated to build up a strong plant and start to pick the fruit when green or wait a bit longer till they turn red.

Plant of the week

Fuchsia Mrs Popple has always been my favourite hardy outdoor fuchsia. It will grow about three to four foot tall and gives a mass of flowers from early summer till winter. It is not fussy about soil as long as it has good drainage. I grow mine at the top of a wall in a bed with variegated ivy ground cover. This gives the base of the fuchsia some frost protection in winter. If the winter is severe the bush can die back to ground level, but it always seems to survive and grow away strongly again in spring. Once growth has started in spring cut back all dead shoots to tidy up the bush. It propagates very easily from cuttings taken in late summer, but needing winter protection, so I keep mine on a windowsill.

END

PERFECT GARDENING WEATHER

PERFECT GARDENING WEATHER

This unusually brilliant summer reflects my first summer as an apprentice gardener in Dundee Parks Department in 1959. We had three months of very hot weather from June till early September with no rainfall, but then the heavens opened up and Dundee got a wee bit of flooding. I never forgot that summer heatwave as I was more used to Scotland’s normal three day summer record.

The new Courier magazine is a new beginning, so although many of the Courier readers will be familiar with my column, my garden and allotment I thought it might be of use to give a wee bit of background to John Stoa, the “Courier Gardener” to understand where all the gardening came from.

My father always encouraged me to do a wee bit of gardening as a young kid. I got the digging and weeding, he did the sowing and planting. I got the gardening bug, so when I left school in 1959 I went for a gardening apprenticeship which lasted six years with Dundee Parks dept. I was very lucky as the Parks were full of very experienced gardeners who had been trained in private service but after the war there was no work left for them so they came to work in Dundee parks, nurseries and greenhouses. We got training in every aspect of gardening from growing fruit and vegetables, glasshouse crops, trees, shrubs, roses, flowers, lawns, propagation, sports and hard landscaping. At fifteen I got my first allotment on the Law Hill and really enjoyed allotment life, though I was very much the learner. I then had a spell at the Scottish Crops Research Institute in Invergowrie studying weed control on fruit and vegetables. After getting married in 1968 I travelled south to Sussex to work on a fruit farm before going to college in Essex to study for my National Diploma in Horticulture. A year later I was manager on a fruit farm near

Worcester, but later went back to Parks work in Dudley. It was here that I took the role of allotments officer for the area. I moved on to Darlington in the late seventies and managed to get a massive allotment about 500 square metres. It took a lot of looking after, but I was younger then. After about ten years I moved back to Scotland to Livingston, and then returned to my home town of Dundee.

You have to leave Dundee and experience other parts of UK before you realise what a great place it is. We are close to fantastic Scottish scenery, clean beaches, vibrant towns, friendly residents, great pubs, good social life and even the weather is no bad in most years.

If this year’s weather was to become normal as we embrace global warming who needs to go abroad for their holidays, and in the garden I could successfully be growing figs, cherries, peaches and outdoor grapes.

Flowers put on a better show in a good year, and this year roses, begonias, geraniums, sweet peas and lilies have just about flowered themselves to death. Dead heading has been a big job to help plants to keep flowering.

Fruit crops have never been more prolific and apples and plums have both got drooping branches weighed down with developing fruits. Black currants and gooseberries gave me huge crops, now either in the freezer or brewing away quite happily in a demijohn.

Figs are plentiful, but need a dry warm spell in late summer to ripen up the fruits.

Vegetables are also having a great year with brilliant cauliflower, cabbage, turnips, salads, broad and dwarf French beans and any amount of large beetroot. Only failure this year is my onions which are all suffering from white rot. I put this down to continual watering during the dry spell as they would have been ok as they are quite drought tolerant. My good deed turned out to be a bad idea.

Greenhouse tomatoes, peppers, cape gooseberries and grapes are all happily growing together with vents fully open as well as the door most days; otherwise it would get too hot for healthy crops.

My best tomatoes have been Alicante and Gardeners Delight, both which are very heavy with huge trusses of ripening tomatoes and grape Black Hamburg has numerous bunches ready to ripen in early September. Red seedless Flame grapes are beginning to ripen now.

Jalapeno peppers have a great crop, but although they can be used green I am waiting till they turn red but as yet there is no sign of that.

Plant of the week

Cosmos is a very useful half hardy annual which can be sown direct outdoors or sown in a glasshouse in late March then pricked out into cellular trays. Harden them off for planting out at the end of May or early June. They can grow quite tall so give them plenty of space. They do not need soil that is too fertile and do not give them fertiliser or they will grow huge at the expense of flowering.

END

PLAN A HEALTHY GARDEN

PLAN A HEALTHY GARDEN

Television, newspapers and other forms of media bombard us with the need to look after our health.

In our youth we never gave a thought about health as we just assumed we were healthy. We had youth on our side, were always very active as few people had cars or televisions and computers had not been invented. We walked to the hills for recreation, climbed trees, (and often fell out of the trees, but we just bounced back on our feet) cycled everywhere, went swimming, skating, running, played football and enjoyed the less active sports of snooker and pool. Then as we matured we went dancing, smoked and started drinking and enjoyed our staple diet of fish suppers, sausages, pies and mince which we considered very tasty as long as no-one ruined it by adding a few green vegetables. Nothing seemed to affect us, though there was always a strain on the wallet.

Moving on to today and being able to look back in hindsight, the long term effects are there to be seen. So many friends from the past paid the price of too much smoking, drinking and a very poor diet.  The youth of today have an even bigger problem, as no-one walks any more as cars take us everywhere, television is on all the time and is very entertaining and kids spend a lot of time in a chair in front of a computer or other forms of social media. Instant meals and takeaways are very popular and cooking skills are being lost, apart from those who enjoy it as a hobby. I am amazed at so many newcomers to allotment life who grow their vegetables, harvest them but have not a clue on how to cook them. They also do not appreciate how cheap it is to live a healthy life with fresh fruit and vegetables, though preparing and cooking food can be quite time consuming and hard work.

However the media is now educating us on the evils of our way of life, warnings of obesity, lack of exercise, heart problems and diabetes. Then when you factor in the age effect for us beyond retirement it compounds the problem. Recently when standing on a chair to reach some ripe brambles high up on my bush, the chair collapsed and I crashed down onto a nearby Ben Conan blackcurrant bush, which did it no favours whatsoever. This time I never bounced back on my feet, so maybe I am losing my youth. No great damage was done as Ben Conan is very hardy.

Having a garden and allotment provides a perfect solution to most of today’s problems. Exercise is required in varying amounts all year round to cultivate, weed, plant and harvest the produce.

One small plot can provide a massive range of fresh produce for year round use.

Summer is the berry and salad season and combined with perfect growing weather crops have been prolific. Cabbage and cauliflowers, courgettes, peas, French beans, beetroot, turnip and early potatoes are all available at the same time. Strawberries started very early, then rasps, black currants, gooseberries, cherries and saskatoons were coming in one after another.

If anyone is worried about reaching their minimum of five fresh fruit and vegetables a day they should get a garden or allotment. I reach my five a day with my breakfast mixing in fruit, bananas and grapes into my muesli, then lunch will add another five, then by supper time a few more.

However summer is the season of plenty, and as we go into autumn there is almost just as much other crops available to give us more variety. Onions, leeks, kale, autumn maturing cabbage and cauliflower, Swiss chard, Swedes will all have there day and autumn fruit trees will start to mature.

Autumn crops are sown in summer on land vacated as early crops are harvested. There is still plenty time to sow more lettuce, radish, spring onions, rocket and late peas. Autumn is also the time to harvest the apples, plums, pears if you have any, grapes, figs, brambles and autumn raspberries. I am also hoping my Flamenco perpetual strawberry will give me a crop of autumn fruit, though this is its first year and growth has not been great.

However towards mid autumn it is too late to catch another quick maturing crop, but soil can suffer from leaching if it is left unplanted till next spring so now is the time to sow a green manure crop of clover, vetches, ryegrass or mustard if you do not have a clubroot problem. Some green manures can be left to overwinter but others will need to be trampled down and dug in if they start to flower. These crops wont give you anything healthy to eat, but the exercise of all that digging in is very good for your heart.

 

Plant of the week

Rudbeckia is an herbaceous perennial native to North America though some forms are biennial and annuals. They flower in September to November and vary in height from one to six feet. Colours are mainly yellow and orange with a darker centre hence the common name, Black Eyed Susan.

They like heavy, moist but well drained soil and planted in full sun or partial shade. Only the very tallest will need support.

END