PLANT OUT THE TENDER PLANTS

PLANT OUT THE TENDER PLANTS

Summer is a bit late this year so I have been in no rush to plant out my sweet corn, courgettes, pumpkins or runner beans. Early June still gives plenty of time for these crops which will soon put on strong growth once the warmer weather arrives. Most of these plants have been raised from seed inside on a warm windowsill, then after germination, transferred to the cold greenhouse. It was late May before the weather warmed up sufficiently to put them outdoors for hardening off.

In the meantime land allocated for them has had a clover green manure crop sown down in March. Growth was quite slow this year due to lack of warmth, but eventually I got quite a thick stand of clover for digging in a fortnight ahead of planting.

Sweet corn

The ground was raked level and some fertiliser added. I usually take out a shallow furrow to mark the rows. Sweet corn was planted in one large square block with plants spaced about eighteen inches apart each way. The plants require wind pollination as the female cobs get their pollen from the male tassels. If the land is in good heart and kept weeded and watered in any dry spells they should be just fine as they are little troubled by pests or diseases.

Pumpkins and Courgettes

These both like the same 

growing conditions of well cultivated and 

composted soil, added fertiliser and watering and feeding in summer. Again they do not suffer much pests or diseases though mice can nibble young courgettes. Allow plenty of room for them to grow with spacing plants three feet apart. Two courgette plants are quite enough for normal use and three plants for a larger family with ample spare courgettes to hand out to anyone passing by the plot. In a good summer they can produce an embarrassing number of courgettes, and when they grow too big to use as a delicacy because you are not eating them fast enough, find a good soup recipe as this is not only delicious and very healthy, but any surplus can be frozen and stored. I grow about five pumpkin plants and try to get one or two fruits from each. When growth starts to wander all over the plot it is time for a wee prune provided you have got a couple of decent sized fruits. Harvest them once they have attained the bright orange colour usually towards the end of October and store them in a cool but frost free place. They should last till the following spring. With large pumpkins it is best to cut them up into smaller slices for roasting then the skin is easy to remove. The flesh can be used as a vegetable or soup or as a sweet in a pie and stores a long time in the freezer.

Runner beans

These also enjoy a rich well drained soil that holds moisture and prefer a more alkaline soil rather than one too acidic. Plant out about a foot apart in early June or sow seeds at that time. Grow them on a wigwam support, trellis, tall fence or the traditional double row of eight foot canes leaning inwards and crossing at six feet with horizontal canes tied in to secure the frame. They will soon find the canes and twine around them as they reach upwards.

Wee jobs to do this week

Give support to all tall growing herbaceous plants such as oriental poppies, peonies, delphiniums and pyrethrums as we seem to be in a period of strong winds.

Now that warmer weather has arrived weeds are starting to become a nuisance so keep the hoe going or pull them out and add them to the compost heap as long as they are just annual weeds.

Keep checking the tips of roses, blackcurrants and gooseberries and other plants with young succulent shoots as greenfly will very quickly multiply. At this stage they squash quite easily.

Gooseberries are also prone to attacks by the sawfly larvae, so be vigilant and continue to squash as necessary.

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UNDER GLASS

UNDER GLASS

The greenhouse has been straining to cope with young growing plants waiting on a decent spell for hardening off. Dahlias and African marigolds have been out during the day but as our weather forecasters keep threatening us with an overnight frost they go back indoors for protection over night. Geraniums have been hardened off ages ago but cold nights and severe winds have shredded a lot of the leaves. They may look a bit sad, but they are tough and will grow out of it once summer arrives.

A second sowing of cabbage and spring onions were grown under glass, but have now been hardened off and planted out.

Early spray chrysanthemums have all rooted well and have been potted up so they are also outside for hardening off. They are destined for planting on the allotment to brighten it up and provide cut flower for the house. Fuchsias and Impatiens are still under glass as I don’t want to chance exposure while this cool windy spell prevails.

My sweet corn has been moved outside to harden off as glasshouse space is fully used up with tomatoes planted in one border and tuberous begonias, young geranium cuttings recently rooted and aubergines taking up other borders and paths.

Courgettes and pumpkins grown from seed are coming along just fine but cold winds prevent me putting them outdoors to harden off as my garden is quite exposed to winds.

Tomatoes are again planted in borders hoping I can get another decent crop in really good soil which has had plenty rotted compost added a few months ago. The border also got a dressing of a general fertiliser to get the plants established. I support my cordon grown plants with strong polypropylene binder twine dropping down from heavy duty wires tied to roof brackets. The plants are twisted around the twine as they grow. All sideshoots are removed as soon as they are long enough to break off. The first truss is in flower so feeding has commenced. A few spare plants have been potted up and will be planted outdoors against a south facing warm wall.

Grape Black Hamburg has now produced small bunches on the sideshoots coming off the upright rods so pruning has commenced. This continues almost every week till autumn, otherwise growth would be rampant at the expense of grapes. It is always worth repeating information on pruning grapes as I see so many unpruned vines taking over greenhouses. Once sideshoots show a wee bunch of grapes let them grow a few inches then nip the ends off leaving two leaves after the bunch. Thereafter nip every sideshoot after just one leaf so it can concentrate on developing the grapes.

I am trying a new grape under glass to see how it likes our Scottish climate. Siegerrebe is not new having been around for over eighty years. This pinky white grape was bred in Germany for wine and dessert use and is said to favour colder climates, so should be very happy in Scotland. I will take a few cuttings and try a plant outdoors once they root and put on a years growth.

Aubergines sown a few weeks ago have been potted up into small pots, but growth has been quite slow as they wait on warmer weather to arrive. This is a new crop for me but we all like to try something different.

Wee jobs to do this week

Plant up tubs, hanging baskets and flower borders with summer bedding plants which should now be perfectly hardened off. Most of these are quite easy to grow from seed, bulbs and corms, and you can top up to extend the range with a few special plants from garden centres. To add height to flower borders I can always find room for a few dahlias, chrysanthemums, Oriental lilies which have a strong exotic scent and even some gladioli.

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FRUIT CROPS

FRUIT CROPS

Top fruit

The dormant season may have passed but there is still time to plant fruit trees and bushes as most plants are containerised today. There is a wide variety of top fruit trees and soft fruit bushes in garden centres, but care is needed in selecting the right varieties for your own locality. Some shops and garden centres are selling plants that may not be suitable for Scottish gardens. The Scottish climate is wetter and cooler than the south of England, so some popular varieties down south such as Cox and russet apples are not great up north. However, Discovery, Katy, Fiesta and Red Devil are all good for our climate, and Bramley is still an excellent cooking apple in Scotland.

Apple Discovery

Pear Beurre Hardy and Concorde seem to do well, but Conference struggles to ripen up properly and the best flavoured Comice is a sucker for scab disease.

I lost my plum Victoria to silver leaf disease, but have replaced it with another as it has always been one of the best varieties.

Peaches grown outdoors are a gamble on getting a good year. Pollination of flowers is a real struggle and in our wetter cooler climate peach leaf curl is a major problem.

Cherries are a better prospect now that they can be grown on a dwarfing rootstock such as Gisela 5, but you need to know that they are on that stock otherwise they will grow so big that netting is impossible and the local blackbirds will reap the harvest.

Soft Fruit

Strawberry Flamenco

There are just as many new varieties of soft fruit arriving on our doorsteps, so just when you think you have the latest, out pops another type sweeter or bigger or with less thorns than the last one.

I still await my new Big Ben blackcurrant to show me if I really do have a bigger and sweeter berry than my lovely Ben Conan. I enjoy eating fresh blackcurrants straight from the bush when fully ripe, but are we ready to munch our way through a whole punnet then go back for some more.

This will also be the year to sample my first autumn fruited raspberries Polka and Autumn Treasure said to be much bigger than Autumn Bliss, and at the same time my new blackberry Reuben claimed in catalogues to be much sweeter and twice as big as other brambles. Reuben is a primocane bramble fruiting on canes grown in the same year.

Sophie picking grape Phoenix

 

My other venture into the unknown is my variety trial of grapes grown outdoors on south facing fences hoping to find the perfect Scottish grown grape. Earlier plantings gave a lot of promise before phytophthora root rot took out two good varieties, Rondo and Regent, both of which had given me small bunches of ripe grapes. These have now been replaced on land hopefully free from this disease. Solaris has been grown for several years and although slow to establish, did give me a couple of small bunches of Muscat flavoured grapes last year. Muscat Bleu and Polo Muscat are now well established so maybe I will get some grapes this autumn. Phoenix has somehow survived on my diseased ground, and had three bunches last year. Growth has started well this year, so could be another

Saskatoons ready to pick

winner if we can get a good warm and sunny autumn.

New varieties of saskatoons such as Martin, Northline JB30 and Pembina as well as Smoky and Thiessen have arrived in Scotland and will soon be available.

Strawberry Mae is just about ready under tunnels, then fresh strawberries will continue all summer with Elsanta, Florence and Symphony, then into autumn with Flamenco.

Wee jobs to do this week

Start thinning out any seedling of radish, lettuce, parsnips, turnips or even beetroot before they get too big. Lettuce thinnings can be used to increase supply if required and planted as an intercrop between sprouts or other slower growing fruit or vegetables.

Annuals sown in rows can be thinned out or used as transplants. Some types sown in cellular trays can now be planted out as plugs. I use Livingston daisies and poppies this way. They are perfect for adding colour to areas devoted to my aconites and snowdrops which will soon be dormant.

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A DAY ON THE ALLOTMENT

A DAY ON THE ALLOTMENT

As the risk of frost gets less, we can now start to sow those less hardy vegetables such as dwarf French beans and runner beans direct into the soil, provided we are out of this cold spell and the soil has warmed up. These can also be raised indoors from seed to gain an extra couple of weeks, but I find the later outdoor sowings soon grow rapidly once the warmer weather arrives. I got a bad result two years ago with an indoor sowing of French beans when the poor quality of peat free compost was so bad that all the seedlings rotted off. Outdoors, Dwarf French bean seeds are spaced a few inches apart in a single row and then thinned to four to six inches, but runner beans are planted around the base of a six foot tall wigwam support which they can then twine around.

Broad beans are now well established and starting to put on a bit of growth so now is the time to put in some stakes and twine for support. Keep them weeded and keep on the look out for blackfly on the growing points. Remove the growing points if they are a problem.

Early peas are also in need of support, even the lower growing Kelvedon Wonder which can reach four feet tall. I use the prunings from my coloured stem border as the cornus and salix get cut back to ground level every year at the end of March. The cornus reached four feet long and the willow (Salix britzensis) grew nearly ten feet last year, so is perfect for staking my peas after cutting back a wee bit. Peas also suffer attacks from pigeons, so I protect them with a couple of rows of black thread. It is an old fashioned trick but still works. Last year I lost my Goji berry which was trained up a six foot fence, so I will now use this fence for a sowing of Pea Alderman which will use the entire fence as it knows how to grow tall.

Now that family feeding is just down to two people, there is precious little sense in growing masses of cabbage and cauliflower that are all ready to eat over one month, so I now grow them in small batches over the whole season. The first batch was sown in March and is growing just fine, but now my next batch is ready to succeed them. I will sow a small batch of cauliflower Clapton and cabbage Kilaxy, both of which are clubroot resistant. This will be followed at the end of the month with a sowing of cabbage Tundra to give me my autumn and winter hardy cabbages.

Potatoes are now growing and in need of earthing up, which also helps to kill weeds.

Salads grown under my low tunnels have been giving me some early fresh radish, spring onions and lettuce leaves. They should continue for another month then the ground will be used for another sowing of peas.

Rhubarb has also been very plentiful this year as the long cool but dry spring seemed to suit it just fine.

Other crops are all at an early stage but growth has been good on onions, leeks, turnip and now my parsnips are appearing and will soon need thinning out.

Fruit crops are all showing plenty of promise. However I am waiting to see if the cold snap at the end of April has affected the fruit crop fertilisation of apples, pears, cherries and peach.

I keep checking my gooseberries for presence of sawfly maggots, but they are nowhere to be seen.

The ground underneath the bushes has been regularly disturbed then mulched in spring which must have helped to discourage them.

Wee jobs to do this week

Remove cordon trained tomato sideshoots as soon as they are big enough to handle to retain the plant strength for fruiting, and continue to feed every week with a high potassium tomato fertiliser.

Greenhouse grapes are also grown on upright rods just like a cordon with fruiting laterals growing every ten inches or so up its length. Remove any lateral that is barren and pinch out the growing point on all fruiting laterals at two leaves beyond the fruiting bunch. Thereafter as new side shoots grow keep all of them tipped after just one leaf otherwise the vine will take over the greenhouse at the expense of grapes.

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SPRING FLOWERS

SPRING FLOWERS

Early May is tulip time, and this year our dry warm spring has brought numerous other plants into flower. Our season is running at least two weeks behind normal as winter and early spring have been remarkably cool, though dry. Bulbs, rock garden plants, spring bedding plants and many spring flowering shrubs are now all competing with each other for the best display of flowers.

Bulbs

Snowdrops and aconites finished a long time ago and will soon be dying down so make sure you save seeds and scatter them to increase the size of drifts.

Doronicum

Anemone blanda is still in flower but soon they will also produce seeds for establishing bigger clumps. Daffodils, narcissi and tulips don’t spread from seeds so cut the seed heads off after flowering to save the bulbs energy for growing bigger before summer dormancy.

My earliest tulips started to flower in March with Scarlet Baby accompanying a bright yellow saxifrage. This lovely combination was also reflected a couple of weeks later with tulip Monsella and Red Riding Hood planted amongst a drift of golden herbaceous Doronicums. I intend to keep this theme going so next autumn there will be a drift of tulip Scarlet Baby getting planted amongst a large drift of blue pulmonaria.

Hyacinths have been outstanding planted and naturalised amongst my herbaceous plants. Timing is perfect as the hyacinths are in flower when herbaceous growth is only just beginning, and then they die down as the taller plants need the space.

A bed of peonies which will flower in early summer have now got an under planting of tall oriental and highly scented lilies. They will flower in mid summer and being quite tall will fit in with the peonies just fine.

Darwin Hybrid Tulips

Ground cover

Aubretia, phlox, doronicums and Japanese azaleas are now all at there best, and the spring bedding of wallflower, pansies and polyanthus are giving us a fantastic spring display. They are made all the more brilliant as this dry sunny weather has been fantastic for tulips which are lasting longer than usual.

Shrubs and trees

Forsythia and kerria have never looked better and now the scented viburnum carlesii and carlcephalum are in flower, but the best shows of colour are seen in numerous azaleas, rhododendrons and camellias. However for size and impact it is hard to beat magnolias, especially varieties of Magnolia soulangiana. My garden is too small for this one so I grow the smaller Magnolia stellata. Cherries are now stealing the show as they have height as well as flowers. The upright form of cherry Prunus Amanogawa is perfect for the small garden and the flowers are scented as well as quite prolific.

Tulip Yokohama

Even my fruiting cherry Cherokee has given a great display. Other fruit trees such as pears, apples and peaches have all had a great time flowering profusely. This could be a great year for top fruit.

Wee jobs to do this week

Keep a check on recently planted vegetables and flowers and water if weather turns dry. Any plants such as salads or early strawberries under tunnels will need watering as rain will not reach them under the polythene.

Gooseberry bushes are prone to attacks from the sawfly maggots, but these are easily spotted and removed, but if there is a heavy infestation removal can be a bit messy. Not all gardening jobs are pure excitement. While on this topic it is worthwhile keeping an eye out for cabbage white butterfly maggots, as these are even bigger than the gooseberry sawfly, but removal just as essential.

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