GARDENING DURING THE DORMANT SEASON

GARDENING DURING THE DORMANT SEASON

With autumn now almost past, colder weather with frost and snow will most likely be arriving very soon. We still hope for another mild winter, but we have had quite a few lately and word on the street (allotment) is favouring a return to that one off bad winter like in 2010. Time will tell, but while we wait there are a few wee jobs we can get on with.
I always set myself a target of trying to get

Digging up leek Musselburgh

all my winter digging completed by the end of the year, and leaving the surface rough allowing frost to penetrate the ground and break up clods so I get a friable seedbed surface for spring sowing and planting. There will be compost to spread before digging commences, but you need to have your

Green manure of field beans

rotation worked out to make sure the heavy feeders, (peas. beans, onions, pumpkins and courgettes) get the most compost and the root crops don’t get any otherwise forking is likely. Areas sown down with green manure crops can get dug over last, or if tares or field beans were used they can wait till near end of winter. These leafy crops will prevent nutrients getting washed away in winter rains, but then once they decay they will release these nutrients for the next crop.

Herbaceous plants that have been growing in a clump for several years are best divided up and the strongest roots with good crowns replanted after adding some compost to the soil. Late

Swede Marion

autumn to early winter is a good time for this task. The dormant season is also the best time to carry out any replacement planting of trees, shrubs, roses and fruit bushes, but choose a day when the soil surface is dry enough to walk on. With existing trees check any stakes and ties that may need adjusting or removal once the tree is well established.

During winter when snow or frost puts an end to working with the soil, we can always find a pruning task with roses, fruit trees and bushes, grape vines, and figs. Autumn raspberries get the whole canes removed to ground level, but summer fruiting ones only have the old fruiting canes removed and new canes tied in to the support wires. If you are on an allotment site, and have a

The last chrysanthemums

shredding machine it can shred all the pruning so the resultant waste can be put back on the plot as a mulch, put onto paths, or added to the compost heap. Repairs to fences, paths, gates, sheds and greenhouses can all be tackled when access to the soil is limited, and this is also a good time to give the greenhouse glass a good wash both inside and outside.

However crop harvesting will continue no matter the weather as we all try to be self sufficient over most of the year so the plot will still have plenty, swedes, sprouts, kale, winter cabbage, leeks, Swiss chard, parsnips and maybe even a cauliflower. I normally have plenty beetroot left in the ground over winter as our recent mild winters have allowed them to remain unharmed, but this year the wet summer has not been to their liking and many roots have just given up. This year however has been brilliant for leafy plants

Nerine bowdenii

and I still have plenty of lettuce and spring onions in the ground.

The poor summer has held back ripening of grapes grown outdoors and my two vines of Regent and Rondo just gave up. All the bunches just shrivelled up long before they had a chance to ripen. White grape Phoenix was a wee bit better, but Brant on my south facing wall gave me forty pounds of grapes with a specific gravity reading of 1080. They are now in three demijohns, though I have added a wee bit of sugar for the yeast so I can get my 14% alcohol strength.

It is good to see the garden flowers a bit late but still trying to put on a show. Fuchsia Mrs Popple is very reliable as it a large drift of the pink Nerines, but geraniums, border pinks, roses and chrysanthemums have all got plenty of flowers still on display.

Greenhouse at end of November

Wee jobs to do this week

The last of the tomatoes have been picked and the grapes have now been eaten or are now fermenting in several demijohns, so tidy up the greenhouse and use the space to grow a few winter hardy salads or over winter a few geraniums and fuchsia and fig rooted cuttings. These are not totally hardy so be prepared to put in a heater overnight if frost is forecast. Take the chance to give the glass a clean while the greenhouse is not packed with plants. Keep the fuchsias relatively dry.

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PLANTS WITH SCENT

PLANTS WITH SCENT

Azalea luteum

As the dormant season arrives, this is the perfect time to do some garden renovations. Some trees, shrubs, roses and herbaceous plants may have outgrown their allotted spaces or are in need of

Narcissus

replacement. I had the climbing rose Mme Alfred Carrier, shrub rose Ispahan and the shrub Lonicera Baggesons Gold now all so big that they were restricting access along paths. Some got a severe pruning and some got removed. This creates fresh garden space needing new plants. In selecting new plants we tend to think of the obvious flower power, but we also need to consider, autumn colour, berries, variegated foliage, colour of stems and scent of flowers and foliage. There is a wealth of plants with scent for both the garden, greenhouse and in the home.

Home and greenhouse.  Many plants can be grown in the greenhouse then transfer them to the house once they start to flower. Freesias, hyacinths daffodils and narcissus grown from dormant bulbs planted in pots in early autumn

Hyacinths and heathers

can be in flower from December onwards. Use prepared hyacinths for forcing to get an early show. Most daffodils and narcissus are scented, but some have quite a strong perfume such as the Cheerfulness varieties as well as the Jonquils. These can also be used to advantage in the garden in drifts alongside paths, patios and door entrances. They are also perfect in tubs and outdoor pots mixed with spring bedding plants. After flowering they can be planted out in the garden where they will grow again and flower in years to come.

Gardenias and Jasmine are grown as pot plants

Lilac

under glass then brought into the house when flowering. In time they can grow quite big so give them a wee bit of pruning after flowering to prevent them getting too big.
Outdoor scented plants.  Oriental lilies are one of my favourites for huge scented flowers. They can also be cut and put in a vase to provide both flowers and a heady perfume, but take care as the scent is quite strong and some folk may be allergic to it. Bulbs are often bought in late summer or autumn for immediate planting though some suppliers don’t deliver till February. Lilies are also very popular in the herbaceous border, but for scent also plant up some flag iris as most of these are scented. Garden Pinks come in a range of colours and as they are all low growing they

Viburnum carlcephalum

are perfect for the front of borders or on top of walls where drainage is good. They are nearly all scented.
When planting up my tubs, pots and hanging baskets with summer bedding plants I always include some dark blue petunias as they have a wonderful perfume, and for an impressive dot plant in a large tub try a Datura stramonium known as Angels Trumpets because of the large tubular flowers. They are pollinated by a night flying moth so the plants becomes highly scented in the late evening, but take care with this plant as all parts are highly poisonous. Tulips are also used in tubs, pots and borders

Oriental lilies

for the spring display and quite a few are said to be scented. The white tulip Purissima has a lovely scent, and though I have planted up many other scented tulips their scent was not very evident. There are numerous shrubs and climbing plants with great scent including Viburnum carlecephalum, most lilacs, Philadelphus, Hamamellis mollis the witch hazel, honeysuckle climbers, and many Azaleas have a great scent such as Azalea luteum. When it comes to roses you are just spoilt for choice, but a few of my favourites must include Margaret Merril, E H Morse, Wendy Cussons and the shrub rose Gertrude Jekyll.

Shifting good compost

The scented garden would not be complete without some herbs for scent as well as culinary use in the kitchen. A must for a few herbs will be rosemary and lavender.

Wee jobs to do this week

After a long wet summer some of us hoped for a better autumn, but so far that has been a very distant dream. Heavy rainfall and gales have taken down a lot of leaves from deciduous trees and shrubs. Take the chance of any dry days to rake and brush up the fallen leaves and add them to the compost heap. This will be getting quite big now with last summers old bedding plants and waste from the autumn harvests, so it will benefit from being turned over to help decomposition. It is quite hard work, but we can all benefit from the occasional wee bit of hard graft.

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GARDENING FOR KIDS

             GARDENING FOR KIDS             

When you reach a certain age you are able to look back to your childhood and compare it to today’s kids growing up in a technological age. We all played outdoors as there was no television, no phones and no-one had heard about paedophiles so

Watering the pumpkins

outdoor activities for kids was safe. We also lived in a time when there were very few cars so we played football in the streets and ice hockey in winter and got extremely annoyed when some rich bloke with a car drove up the street and disturbed our game. I have a vivid memory looking down St.

Sophie picking the redcurrants

Fillans Road during the seven weeks holiday and feeling great to see over fifty kids all playing on the streets. Living in St. Mary’s in the early sixties we had fields and woods to play in and often walked up to the Sidlaw Hills as I needed to know what lay beyond those hills. My only knowledge of Scotland came from reading the Broons and Black Bob. We learned to climb trees, roast potatoes on a bonfire and holidays were a bus trip to the Trossachs with a tent, or a day on the sands at Broughty Ferry.

Life has moved on, we now all have cars so streets are out of bounds, open spaces are plentiful, but devoid of kids as parents are not too happy to set them free. However kids now have mobile phones, play stations, television and holidays abroad, so no need to venture outdoors. Very few houses come with any garden as space is needed for the cars and to save work garden space is covered over with slabs, sets, gravel and tarmac. Many people live in flats so kids never see where their food comes from. I never forget a few years ago when one of the kids was playing on the allotment next to mine. I had a cracking crop of strawberries so picked a large one and offered it the wee fellow. He ran off in a panic to his mum, “That man wanted me to put THIS into my mouth!!!”

He never knew that strawberries in a packet on a supermarket shelf had at one time been grown outdoors in the ground.

This case is not isolated and it is now recognised that the kids of today need educating with gardening

Erica waters the spring flowers

to let them see where food comes from, together with the benefits of fresh food free from chemicals. Many schools, such as Kingspark School in Dundee are creating garden plots to grow food and other plants for education. Allotment sites are also very helpful as we can all encourage our kids to do a bit of planting and looking after their wee bit of garden. It helps if you can interest them in growing something that will catch attention, like a huge pumpkin or a tall sunflower.

Another long term plan is to get them to sow the seeds from the core of an apple after they have eaten it. They grow quite easily on a windowsill, but then need potting up and planting outside in spring. As these young plants are juvenile, they won’t bear fruits till they become adult after about fifteen years. You can get round this problem by grafting a shoot onto the young apple seedling using a shoot of Discovery, Fiesta, Red Devil or others. Plenty information on grafting on the internet, but it is a task for the adults as you

Sophie and Anna top and tail the gooseberries

need a very sharp knife. It is quite simple and the grafts grow readily and will fruit in a couple of years.

Sowing annual flowers from seed is another wee job for the kids, then they can learn how to thin and in hot weather they can water the young plants, but when you give kids the hose stand well back as a wee bit of fun is inevitable.

Harvesting crops such onions, then after drying them out they can pleat them up for drying. Picking peas, beans and sweet corn is also interesting as is picking raspberries and strawberries, though crop weights seem to shrink on the journey home much to the amusement of the young labour force.

Chrysanthemum stools boxed up

Wee jobs to do this week

Early outdoor chrysanthemums will now have finished flowering, though the season was late and some were still in bloom in November. Cut back all growth leaving about six inches of stem, then attach a label to each stem before digging up and replanting into boxes. These can be over wintered in a cold greenhouse or frame. However it is best to start each season with fresh stock taken from cuttings in spring in the greenhouse.

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TOP FRUIT

                                                             TOP FRUIT

The harvesting season of the top fruit trees now begins in mid September. It used to start in August when my outdoor peaches ripened, but the Scottish climate was more than they could handle. They are successful in a greenhouse, but mine is just

Anna picks apple Discovery

not big enough for tomatoes, grapes, peppers and bedding plants as well as a peach. I tried Peregrine but peach leaf curl disease was rampant and just about completely defoliated the tree. I never got more than two peaches. Peregrine got dug out and replaced with Avalon Pride said to show strong

Peach Avalon Pride

resistance to this disease, and though peach leaf curl was less rampant, it was still a problem and this variety was poor to flower so I only ever got one peach each year, so it has now been dug out. The next tree to fruit had always been the Oslin (Arbroath Pippin) which is ready in August. However it is very prone to brown rot, and in this year of continual rainfall all summer the whole crop was affected, so a bit of summer pruning was carried out, and the Oslin is no more, but I will graft the remaining stumps next year with a new variety. September is when the early apple Discovery is ready to pick. There was an excellent crop, but the wet and sunless summer created an apple with less flavour

Apple Fiesta

and sweetness. My late variety Red Devil, had just about given up hope for a decent autumn and started to fall off the tree in September, a good month ahead of normal. However it is a good keeper so it is now in store. Apple Fiesta is a biennial cropper and last year was its off year so this year there is a good crop ready to harvest in mid to late October. Red Falstaff has been a very poor cropper this year, but although it is not known as a biennial bearer and gave us a great crop last year, maybe it is just having a wee rest from cropping. Our Bramley cooking apple usually stays on the tree till the end of October, but this year a lot of apples have been falling off since

Apple Oslin the Arbroath Pippin

early October, though we have suffered a lot of gales and heavy rainfall. Some of those fruits still on the tree are massive and looks like we will have a great crop to store and keep us supplied with a great cooking apple right through the winter.

We had a huge plum Victoria which was always laded down with very heavy crops every year but sadly this forty year old tree suffered from an attack of silver leaf disease which killed it, so it was chopped down and its replacement is growing well but as yet has still to establish and start fruiting. With a bit of luck it will have a few fruits on its branches next year. Up on City Road allotments the leaf curling plum aphid arrived in swarms and totally defoliated a few trees, so there

Pear Concorde

was no crop this year, but the trees later on survived and put out fresh leaves. The overwintering eggs on the tree can be killed with a winter oil applied November to February. In spring give the trees an insecticidal spray at bud burst when the aphids hatch and start to feed on the young shoots and before the new leaves begin to curl up and give them protection.

Apples in store

Pear trees this year are all giving very good crops. My first to ripen up was Beurre Hardy then Beth but Concorde, Christie and Conference stayed on the trees for a few more weeks. No sign this year of any damage from codlin moth in the fruits or the dreaded stony pit virus. There was a lot of damage last year, but now the trees all have healthy fruit. The Christie pear is not an attractive shape or colour, but it has large fruits and has a great flavour. However it does not store well, whereas Concorde and Conference store for longer. We use pears cut up and added to breakfast cereals, mixed with apple and banana in desserts with custard. Surplus fruits can be cored, and cut up and lightly poached then put in the freezer for use later on in compote, sauces and many other recipes. They are a great companion to Bramley apples in numerous dishes.

Wee jobs to do this week

Pink cuttings now well rooted

Border pinks that were propagated from cuttings of non flowering shoots taken in early August rooted in a couple of months and then got potted up. Some of these are now ready to plant out into their permanent positions. Choose a sunny border with well drained soil such as at the top of a wall and close to patios and paths so you can enjoy the strong scent as well as the flowers.

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PUMPKINS

                                                             PUMPKINS

Pumpkins

Pumpkins belong to the cucurbita family, which also includes vegetable marrows, cucumbers, butternut squashes, gourds, courgettes, shark fin melons, melons and several other variations which differ according to the country where they are grown. Outdoors the courgettes, gourds, vegetable marrows, mildew which spreads very rapidly. They all need a warm summer and a favourable autumn to help ripen them up. The summer of 2018 was perfect for them but this year the continual wet weather and lack of sunshine has done them no favours. My two Zucchini courgettes only gave me six courgettes to take home, although the plant had great vigour. The flowers just did not set. My three pumpkins planted nearly four feet apart only produced four large fruits.
However my four pumpkins will keep Anna happy in the kitchen for several months as they go a long Butternut squash has become very popular as the main ingredient in creamy soups, ravioli filling, and risotto. It is quite sweet and has very few seeds. Pumpkins are a great plant to get the kids involved in nature and growing from seed sowing, planting, watering and feeding, and then you will need them to help in the harvest. Unfortunately they will want the biggest one for carving up into a lantern, though all the flesh scraped out can still be used for a sweet pumpkin pie, cooked of course by the kids.

Squashes

way. My favourite is roasted pumpkins, but they also make a great soup, or used as a side dish or added to numerous other recipes. Pumpkins as well as the other cucurbits are all a good source of potassium and vitamin C and rich in the antioxidants alpha and beta carotene, which are both

Roasted pumpkin slices

There were a few more but they all rotted away in the wet weather. However, vigorous shoots started running all over the place, even trying to climb up my Autumn Bliss raspberries and blackcurrant Big Ben. I had let them roam free hoping that at some point the flowers would produce a pumpkin. To get really big pumpkins give them a weekly feed with a high potash liquid feed like tomato fertiliser.


precursors to vitamin A, a vitamin that is important for keeping eyes healthy.

Auralia with her shark fin melons

butternut squashes, sharks fin melons and pumpkins are all relatively easy to grow provided they get fertile soil and a constant supply of moisture. Usually a mulch will help them through any dry spells in summer, and keep an eye out for
They have been a source of food for over 7000 years growing in their natural environment from southern Canada down to Mexico, Central America, Argentina, Chile and Brazil, but are now so popular they are grown all over the world. The USA is a massive importer of pumpkins mostly grown in Mexico. Gardeners in UK grow melons and cucumbers under glass and courgettes, marrows, squashes, gourds and pumpkins outdoors. As people on holiday see other types grown

Yellow courgettes

abroad we are now all experimenting in growing something different and then trying out new ways to cook them. The Shark Fin Melon seems to be the latest to appear in allotments. It is very vigorous and can soon take over large parts of the plot if allowed. It produces an abundance of large green and white spotted fruits which can be used in soups and stir fry dishes. Cucumbers and melons need warm conditions in a glasshouse and although the cucumber is relatively easy to grow and very productive, melons are far more challenging. They can take up a lot of space in the greenhouse, so if you grow tomatoes and a grapevine you will need a big greenhouse to accommodate a melon.

Wee jobs to do this week

Pansy hanging basket

Make up hanging baskets for a spring display. Pansies are always favourite. Use an old compost bag

inside out (black side outside) with a few slits around the side and cut to shape. Fill with a mixture of potting compost and some good garden soil and add a dusting of fertiliser. Plant up the sides first then add compost up to the top and finish the planting. To give an early start to the display, plant a few crocus bulbs amongst the pansies. I keep my hanging baskets in a cold greenhouse perched on top of a large flower pot to give them some shelter over the winter and an early start in spring.

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HEALTH BENEFITS OF BLACK FRUITS

HEALTH BENEFITS OF BLACK FRUITS

I can remember getting my first allotment up at Stirling Park on the Law Hill in early 1960s. I had a plot of land to grow fruit, vegetables and flowers and it also had a greenhouse for a few tomatoes. As a young apprentice gardener I was very eager to

Anna picking chokeberries

learn all about my trade. The plot had a row of blackcurrants which I knew were full of vitamin C so they just had to be good for you. However it was a long time after before the health benefits of fruit began to sink in as I experimented with a whole variety of fruit bushes and sought information on

Chokeberry jam

cultivation and use on the internet. All of a sudden the world becomes a small place as the internet opens up and you can reach all for information from around the world. In my early days it was the blueberry that got all the attention, and I can remember picking a range of new varieties on trial at the Scottish Crops Research Institute (now James Hutton) in the mid sixties. They are still grown up at Mylnefield but a lot of research is going into blackcurrants for commercial use. Two other black fruits grown there were the saskatoons and chokeberries (Aronia melanocarpa Viking) but they never received much attention as no-one was growing them and after many years they got grubbed out. I took an interest in saskatoons after a trip

Aronia wine fermenting

to Canada in 2004 where they are very popular and with a huge demand for them as fresh and processed fruit. When I found out that the Saskatoon was the fruiting form of the Amelanchier which is grown all over UK as an ornamental shrub, I knew they would be easy to grow here, so I started growing them about fifteen years ago.

Their popularity was helped by the fashionable custom of looking for a superfood with more health giving qualities than normal. The blueberry was very popular and had high levels of vitamin C and antioxidants, but the Saskatoon levels were even higher giving it superfood status. Its demand in Canada and the USA far exceeds its production, but in UK it has yet to find much

Aronias washed and dried

attention, apart from one grower in Pershore growing it as an additive in gin which at present is very much in fashion. A lot of research in USA and Canada has been given to the health benefits of these black fruits and while checking them out I came across the chokeberry which had been identified as the next superfood as it had more antioxidants and vitamin C than any other fruit. I had grown them before as a shrub with great autumn colour but never realised the fruit was edible, but after doing a bit more research I had to find and grow my own chokeberries. It seems that black coloured fruits have more health benefits than other fruit so I now add black grapes, blueberries and blackberries to my fruit collection. The dark skins are a rich source of vitamin C and anthocyanins, an antioxidant which may help prevent heart

Brant grapes

disease, strokes, cancer, cataracts and other chronic illnesses associated with ageing. However the fruit is a bit astringent when eaten fresh so it is usually processed and added to numerous recipes.

During my research as well as Anna’s looking for chokeberry cooking recipes we came across the Midwest Aronia Association based in Iowa which has a high concentration of Aronia growers. Their website, www.midwestaronia.org and videos were a real treat and very informative. So now Anna after acquiring the Aronia Berry Recipe book regularly creates her Aronia crumble bars, makes jam with a mix of aronia, apple and raspberry. It also goes into cakes, compote and sauces, and I use just over ten pounds for three demijohns of a fantastic wine with great health giving properties. Now that canna be bad, and should help to keep me in good form for many more years.

Lifting gladioli corms

Wee jobs to do this week

Lift and dry off gladioli, tuberous begonias and dahlias before frosty nights arrive as these plants are not hardy, though with recent mild winters I have seen both gladioli and dahlias left outside come through the winter unscathed. However I would not risk it just in case The Beast from the East pays us another visit. They can be left outside on sunny days to dry off, but then clean them up and store inside in cool but frost free building. Make sure you tie a label on the Dahlia stems so they don’t get mixed up.

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A DAY UNDER GLASS

A DAY UNDER GLASS

Crops in the greenhouse, may be well protected from the worst of the weather, so the incessant rainfall did not worry grapes, cucumbers, peppers and tomatoes, but lack of sunshine has been a big problem. Sunshine is necessary to give crops

Black Hamburg Grapes slow to ripen

a decent flavour and help to sweeten up the grapes. There has been some great very warm days but they just never last very long before the rain arrives.

Outdoor crops have suffered the most. Autumn strawberries have been prolific, but botrytis rot has affected a lot of them, and many are not very soft or sweet. Some outdoor grapes are just shrivelling up. They have had enough. Last year I got enough for a couple of demijohns of wine, but crops this year will not be producing vintage wine. However my Solaris and Seigerrebe in the greenhouse were ready for picking in August so I picked a great crop and all now sitting happy in a demijohn, with fermentation completed at 14% alcohol, though I did have to add a few ounces of sugar. Black Hamburg grapes are normally ready in late

Cherry tomatoes

October but poor weather is holding back ripening and some grapes have gone mouldy. These get removed immediately before the disease spreads, and ventilation is also very important to prevent dampness building up.

Tomatoes have given very good crops, but now damp atmosphere due to lack of sunshine and too much rain has encouraged botrytis rots on fruit, leaves and some stems of Alicante. However all my cherry tomatoes (five varieties) have cropped well except Cherry Baby. It produces trusses with well over a hundred flowers, but most of these fall of so number of fruits ripening is very poor. Supersweet 100 is my best red cherry for flavour and cropping, (over 100 tomatoes per truss and most ripened) and Sungold my best orange cherry. Sugarglass is also a good cropper but flavour

Pepper Trinidad Scorpion

and texture not as good as Supersweet 100. Hopefully tomatoes will continue to crop for a few more weeks depending on weather, but then it is time to harvest all remaining fruits and ripen them indoors. The old plants can then be removed and the soil or growbag get tidied up. However ahead of this operation you can sow a few salads for planting in this space once it is available. Use winter hardy lettuce like Hilde or Winter Imperial and some spring onions and rocket.

Hydrangea cuttings

Cuttings of fig Brown Turkey and Hydrangea Charme taken in September have rooted and can now get over wintered in the cold greenhouse. They are both hardy, but some shelter will help to get them off to a good start next year. Other cuttings of geraniums and Impatiens taken earlier to keep good varieties going for another year are better taken out of the greenhouse before frosts arrive as they are not hardy. A windowsill in a warm room is the best place for them. You can let them flower to give an attractive house plant, but in mid winter it is best to remove all flowers to keep growing shoots sturdy.

Peppers sown in early January indoors in a propagator soon germinated and were then potted up and

Rooted fig cuttings

kept on a windowsill till early May before planting in pots in the greenhouse, as well as in garden planters and hanging baskets outdoors. They are quite successful outdoors in Scotland even with our unpredictable climate, but need starting off indoors, and for good plants they need a long growing season. Keep an eye on the outdoor varieties as snails are quite fond of Pueblo chillies from Mexico. Most garden centres now stock a wide range of peppers as plug plants from mild to searingly hot, such as the Trinidad Scorpion (third hottest on record) If you wish to try out the hottest go for the Carolina Reaper, but be careful !!! For storing peppers, they can be dried and ground into flakes in a food processor, pickled, and my favourite frozen.  

Wee jobs to do this week

Snails, caterpillars and mealy aphids on sprouts

Look after the winter vegetables to keep the kitchen supplied over the coming months. Sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower and kale are still prone to attacks from slugs, snails, caterpillars and mealy aphids. Check the growing points, right into the centre and destroy any pests found. They are all easily found as they nibble young leaves. Plants are now a few feet tall but start to drop older leaves. Remove these from the ground as well as any weeds as they give shelter to slugs and snails.

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FLOWERS FOR THE SPRING

                                               FLOWERS FOR THE SPRING

Autumn is a great time to look ahead to next year and make plans for the spring flowering displays.  Bulbs play a massive role in spring displays from snowdrops and crocus to tulips and daffodils and numerous other wee bulbs with massive impact.

Tulip Red Emperor

In tubs, baskets, troughs and borders we can plant wallflower, primroses, polyanthus, pansies and myosotis to provide the main show but these are greatly enhanced by planting bulbs in between the

Aconites pushing through the snow

plants. With wallflower the tall Triumph, Darwin Hybrid, single early and Fosteriana tulips are the perfect match and come in a huge range of colours. We all have our favourites and some have been with us for many years such as Red Emperor (also known as Mme Lefebre) an early scarlet to be followed a bit later by Apeldoorn another strong red, and its partner Golden Apeldoorn. To add variety try some of the bicolours in the Rembrant tulip range and Happy Generation is a brilliant white with red markings. Purissima is a brilliant white and Purple Crystal a deep burgundy purple. Polyanthus, pansies and Myosotis are all better with tulips a bit smaller so use the dwarf double early varieties such as Showcase (deep purple) Peach Blossom (pink) Sun Lover (yellow with red markings) and Abba is a great red. The dwarf early tulips are also a perfect size to

Red polyanthus

grow in amongst roses, then later when the young rose buds need the space the tulips are ready to die down.

I like to plant up a hanging basket for spring flowers, but use pansies under planted with crocus. I usually keep them in my cold greenhouse over winter as this gives them a bit of shelter and they then come into flower a bit earlier, but keep an eye out for greenfly and leaf spot disease and spray if necessary. Pansies need regular dead heading to keep them in flower, but you can save these seed pods and sow them in late summer to provide fresh plants for the next year.

Snowdrops are always the first flowers of the New Year and with our mild winters and a sheltered location some varieties start to

Doronicum Little Leo with tulip Abba

flower in December. A drift of these close to a window is essential to raise spirits with knowledge that winter is on its way out. Even when we get a layer of snow they are tough enough to rise above the snow and open up their flowers. Then in February it is the turn of the aconites to flower. These grow and spread very easily from seed gathered and scattered wherever you want to see them flourish, so you can create large drifts and as it is a time of year when most other plants are still dormant they will not bother other plants.

Crocus follow the aconites and again they give

Crocus Pickwick

a great display when planted up in large drifts. They are perfect amongst most deciduous trees and shrubs. They will spread very slowly so I always buy a few new bulbs every year and it is easy to find a space that needs brightening up.

Daffodils also give their best display when mass planted in borders, lawns and even in gravel paths under a wall, provided you excavate poor soil, replace it with good soil plant the bulbs, and then replace the gravel. This keeps the weeds down and the daffodils will easily grow through the gravel.

White crocus

As with all flowering bulbs you need to let the leaves die down naturally (at least six weeks after flowering) before you cut back old leaves and tidy up the drifts.

Hyacinths are often used in tubs, troughs and borders, then once the flowers are over they can be planted in borders where they can continue to flower in the years to come. I like to put them in pots around house entrances and on patios where you can appreciate their perfume.

Impatiens cuttings in water

Wee jobs to do this week

The summer bedding flowers have had a good run, but now as colder weather replaces the warm

summer days geraniums and Impatiens will soon stop growing and flowering. Now is a good time to propagate them from cuttings to provide stock for overwintering and flowering again next year.

Snap out the top three inches of geranium shoots and put three around the edge of small pots full of well drained compost, water them in and place in a cool greenhouse but out of the sun. Impatiens cuttings are best placed in small jars full of water where they will root after a few weeks. They can then get potted up to flower on a sunny windowsill as a house plant.

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