PLANT ROSES

PLANT ROSES

Roses were at their most popular about fifty years ago. No garden was complete without a few roses, and Dundee Parks department propagated them by the thousands every year for brightening up the parks, town centre and outdoor landscapes. They were also functional used to deter trespass with varieties like Rosa omeiensis pteracantha with

Anna relaxing beside rose Gertrude Jekyll

spectacular thorns totally covering the stems. As air pollution improved over the years rose diseases gained a foothold as the pollution had acted as a mild fungicide. Unfortunately so many varieties suffered severe loss of leaves from blackspot, rust and mildew that they were not worth growing. Rose breeders

Rose Dearest

were left with the task of finding new varieties with strong disease resistant foliage while still having attractive flowers and a scent where ever possible. I have grown hundreds of different varieties over the years, and discarded very many, but there is still a good roses well worth growing and every year new varieties appear in nurseries and garden centers to try out.

Roses come in many forms from miniature to bush (floribundas and hybrid teas) then shrubs, climbers and ramblers, so you can choose a plant to suit any occasion. Always buy from a reputable source and keep your receipt and the label. I have had several purchases where the plant did not reflect the label. One lovely red bush rose turned out to be a disease prone pink rose, and a dazzling yellow Julie Goodyear from a local garden centre does not seem to exist except in my garden.

Rose Julie Goodyear

Roses can be grown against walls, fences, up pergolas, or in borders as miniatures, bushes or if you have plenty of room free standing shrubs. Make sure you read about the ultimate size as some can be quite enormous. My climbing Mme Alfred Carrier wrecked my six foot fence then stretched well over twenty feet in every direction. However it is such a beauty that I cut it back to young shoots about six feet long so it can have another lease of life for a few more years.

I grow a deep red Dublin Bay on my south wall of the house and it flowers all summer from ground to twelve feet tall making a spectacular show, but unfortunately it has no scent. Another shrub rose I converted to a climber is the pink scented Gertrude Jekyll which never lets you down. It gets a wee bit of mildew, but nothing severe and greenfly can be a problem, but a couple of insecticide sprays sorts them out. It is a real show stopper on the house wall on

Sophie with scented roses

our patio.

Another of my favourite shrub roses, Ispahan has quite disease free foliage and is a mass of old English pink flowers in summer, but it can grow ten feet tall so either keep it pruned or if you have the space let it grow naturally.

Bush varieties are numerous in all colours and dependable varieties include the pinks Dearest and Myriam, the red scented E H Morse,

Climbing rose Dublin Bay

the bicolors Piccadilly and Rose Gaujard, the golden yellow Arthur Bell and Julie Goodyear (if it exists), and my best orange is Dawn Chorus.

Roses are propagated commercially by budding, but the home gardener can propagate roses with hardwood cuttings about 9 inches long, taken in the dormant season and lined out six inches apart with half the cutting buried in the soil. They should be ready for replanting the following winter.

Cultivation
Roses grow best on fertile clay soil provided it is well drained. Always dig deep and add plenty of compost as the bushes will last ten or more years. Plant about eighteen inches apart and add some fertilizer in spring to give growth a boost.

Amaryllis just potted up

Wee jobs to do this week

Amaryllis bulbs can be potted up now for flowering 7 to 10 weeks later. Pot them up in pots just slightly larger than the bulb using good potting compost. Leave one third of the bulb above the compost surface. Keep in a light warm spot and do not over water. The strong flower spike arrives before the leaves. After flowering keep the plant watered and fed to build up bulb strength so it can flower the next year, but it needs a good two months dormant period so slowly dry off in September. It can spend the summer months outdoors in a sheltered spot.

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NOVEMBER IN BLOOM

NOVEMBER IN BLOOM

Dahlia My Love

In the days before global warming, we gardeners could rely on the seasons to behave normally so we could organise our gardening activities on schedule. The summer season normally started with a dry warm June followed by just enough rain to keep plants growing, and then there was the July dry spell for the berry picking season and a cold but dry October for the tattie pickers. Summer flowers died down end of October so we could remove the bedding plants and replace them with spring flowering wallflowers and tulips. Winters usually arrived with a cold snap early November and I can remember skating in my early youth on several Dundee ponds in December.

Fuchsia in November

Today it has all changed. This year is said to be the hottest on record, but at my end of Dundee, the rains started in June and continued till November. In fact I think it is still raining. So where was that long hot summer? Onions got wiped out with white rot, and potatoes got blight, but green leafy plants were luxuriant. Flowering plants sulked for months, petunias and French marigolds died out and my roses got severely infected by black spot, but plants do not give up easily so the survivors are refusing to die down. It seems they want to make up for lost time!!!

This should be the beginning of winter, but walking around the garden you would think it is still summer. There are flowers everywhere.

Primroses

My tulip bulbs and spring flowering pansies and polyanthus (all covered in flowers) wait to get planted in tubs, but my tuberous begonias and geraniums in the tubs are in full flower and I just can’t pull them out. A batch of bright red geraniums planted in the shelter of a south facing wall still think it is summer, and as I have no plans to replace them I will just leave them to see how long they will last. On a previous occasion in this spot we got a very mild winter and they came through winter unscathed. Time will tell how they do this winter.

Fuchsia Mrs Popple has just loved this wet year and is still a mass of flowers, to be followed by a crop of fuchsia edible fruit with

Nerines

a sweet spicy flavour.

Rose varieties with more disease resistant foliage are having a late flush of flowers, especially the orange Dawn Chorus and yellow Arthur Bell. The white scented Margaret Merril has suffered blackspot, but is still flowering.

Spray chrysanthemums

Nerine bowdenii always puts on a great autumn show and the clump just seems to get bigger every year. It is very reliable and to see it at its best take a trip to Botanic Gardens as there is a huge drift by the glasshouses.

Dahlias would normally have been blackened by an early frost but mine are still giving a great display, so I’ll leave then a wee bit longer, but keep an eye on the weather forecasts.

Chrysanthemums are also continuing to flower so lifting them is also going to be a late task.

Pink orchid

Mahonia Charity is more associated with a late winter flower, but not this year as it is coming into flower now, and my snowdrops which should still be dormant are now pushing up into the light so they could yet again be in flower in December.

Back indoors I have a lovely pink Phalaenopsis orchid with a long raceme of flowers which is quite normal, except that I bought this one in full flower at the City Road Allotments Open Day in August and it just continues to flower. Four months of flowering is quite remarkable.

However my Christmas cactus, Zygocactus truncatus appears to be behaving normally as I have started to water it to bring on the flowering period just ahead of Christmas.

Wee jobs to do this week

Rhubarb

Lifting rhubarb

is now dormant, so after clearing off all dead foliage mature clumps, often six to ten years old can be lifted and divided. Discard sections from the middle but there should be plenty strong crowns around the edges. Select crowns with two or three strong buds and replant into well manured freshly dug soil, spacing them about three feet apart. Any spare crowns can be left on the surface to get some winter chill and then used for forcing to give an early crop of bright red sticks.

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HEAVENLY RASPBERRIES

HEAVENLY RASPBERRIES

My first experience of fresh raspberries goes back to the early fifties as this wee scruffy lad joined a band of other kids from the new housing estate St. Mary’s and headed into the countryside to pick some berries for which we would get paid a hefty price of a half penny for every pound picked. Pickers came from Dundee, surrounding villages and many travellers. Most of us got a few berries to take home for jam.

Polka raspberries

Summer berry picking stayed with me till I was old enough to get a full time job on leaving school, but the pleasures of the berry fields never left me so my garden always had a row of raspberries as well as some strawberries. At first it was the tall Norfolk Giant variety, but then along came Malling Jewel as an excellent main crop with a heavy yield. As time went on these were replaced with the very popular Glen Ample but then as climate changed and summers got wetter raspberries began to suffer the root rotting disease, phytophthora.

This event changed everything.

Raspberry tastings at James Hutton Institute

The east of Scotland had the perfect climate and soils for outdoor raspberry growing, but root rot was spreading rapidly so changes were needed. Initially it was the custom to plant canes on the top of ridges to help drainage, but now raspberries are grown in large pots under polythene tunnels with automatic drip irrigation. It was recognised that the older varieties were very prone to root rots so a breeding programme was started to find more resistant varieties for commercial growers.

Picking a few raspberries

Raspberries were so popular that it seemed sensible to extend the season by bringing in early varieties under tunnels as well as autumn fruiting varieties to have fruit well into October or even November in a good year. Autumn Bliss has had a great run for over ten years but now newer varieties such as Polka and Autumn Treasure give us far bigger fruits and picking made easier as the canes have no spines. These autumn fruiting varieties also seem to be less affected by root rots and yellow rust so assist breeding better varieties. However it is not just about disease and larger fruit as flavour is just as important before a new variety is released. Glen Fyne and Glen Dee have good berry size, good disease resistance and excellent flavour, so are perfect for home gardeners as well as commercial growers.

Planting raspberry cane

Raspberries are still grown in rows in the garden, but make sure the ground is well drained. As they will be left for ten years or so, it is worthwhile double digging a metre wide strip along the row, incorporating plenty compost to both subsoil and top soil. Plant the canes in the dormant season, about one to two feet apart and give a dressing of fertiliser to get them started. They will need strong posts with two wires to attach the canes to once they are two years old.

Summer fruiting raspberries fruit on canes produced the previous year, then in winter these are cut out and the new canes tied in with a running knot to prevent the canes moving in windy conditions.

Raspberry rust

Autumn fruiting varieties fruit on canes grown the same year, so after harvesting these canes are totally removed and fresh canes will grow the following spring.

Main pest is raspberry beetle maggots that mainly affect summer fruiting varieties, but sprays and hormone traps are available. The main disease of root rots affects older varieties so use disease resistant types. Raspberry yellow rust can also be devastating on some varieties, though newer varieties have some tolerance. If the rust is not too severe remove affected leaves in spring and burn them.

De Cayenne peppers

Wee jobs to do this week

Pick pepper De Cayenne as the season is now over. They can be stored for a few weeks in the fridge or washed, sliced removing the seeds and dried off for the freezer. This chilli is quite hot so be careful and use sparingly, though the health benefits of these hot chillies are very impressive having vitamins A, B, C and E and the minerals potassium and manganese. Hot peppers boost metabolism, circulation and blood flow and is said to increase energy levels with beneficial long term weight loss.

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HOME GROWN WINES

HOME GROWN WINES

In early youth, once you are old enough to sample a wee bit of alcohol you go over a threshold with a new experience that stays with you, but is forever changing as life evolves. As you are still very young there are a lot of lessons to learn, like,

Cutting a bunch of grapes

men drink beer, old men drink whisky and women drink wine. Way back in the sixties when the pubs shut at ten o clock (later on it changed to 10.30pm) as it was too early to go home we went for a meal and

Grape Brant

as we learned to be posh we got a bottle of wine. Following the fashion of the day, this would be Blue Nun, Mateus Rose, or even Liebfraumilch. However, on a trip to Melbourne visiting family my hosts were horrified to hear I drank wine as I got told all Aussie men only drink beer. As time marched on into the seventies, back in UK beer and wine consumption was not gender based and I got back to both beer in the pub, but wine with a meal. I enjoyed wine but these were poorer times so there was a surge in home brewing where you could make your own tipple with a few demijohns, some home brew equipment and a bit of foraging for fruit, such as elderberries, apples and brambles. Home brewing was very popular with shops stocking everything you need, then home brew magazines gave you the recipes and I even went to evening classes for wine making when I lived in Darlington. As my few demijohns bubbled away, then settled down to clear, it was very difficult to

Grape Rondo

contain your patience to leave the wine alone to mature so there was always a bit of early sampling. Eventually the good times arrived and we could have a bottle of wine with our meal on both Saturday and Sunday. Now that was living life to the full. However this was a learning curve, and not all fruit makes good wine so both the raspberry and strawberry went down the sink plus a few others. There was only one answer, and that was to get an allotment and grow my own wine crops. So I started with red currants, white currants, blackcurrants, gooseberries and apples, but had to have trips to the countryside to get my elderberries. They all make fantastic wine, especially if you can lay it down somewhere cool for three years.

Moving on to more recent times, I now grow saskatoons and the chokeberry, Aronia Viking which is extremely high in antioxidants so it makes a great health drink with a wee kick and a fantastic flavour. As climate changes and Scotland gets a wee bit more global warming

One year old wine clearing

(I haven’t really noticed any difference, other than the summers are wetter and there’s not much snow in winter) now could be the time to see if we can grow grapes up north. After trying many varieties my best bet has been Regent, Rondo and Brant which has small bunches, but are very sweet, juicy and black. All of these fruits can be frozen for future use to spread out the work load and demand on demijohns.

Aronia makes a healthy drink

All the normal fruit wines have great flavour, but need added sugar to boost the alcohol strength and once they come out of the fermentation bucket (4 to 5 days) I add some grape concentrate to add vinosity. Modern yeasts can give quite high alcohol strengths, but I try to keep mine at 11 to 12% alcohol and ferment right out for a dry wine as this keeps the calories down.

However wines made from home grown grapes have to stand on their own merits so no additional grape concentrate, but we need more sunshine to encourage the grapes to produce more natural sugars.

Checking the strength of the wine

This year my greenhouse Solaris and Siegerrebe picked in August gave a specific gravity reading of 1074 so needed some sugar to give a strength of 11% alcohol. Similarly my outdoor grape Brant left till the end of October gave a similar reading so the yeast also needed a sugar boost, but my vine yielded 36 pounds of grapes so I got 2.5 full demijohns after racking off the sediment.

Now I just need to wait three years before sampling begins!!!

Wee jobs to do this week

Dahlia drying off

Chrysanthemums will now be finished flowering and dahlias likely to get cut down by the first frosts so lift them both up for storing. Chrysanthemums are labelled and boxed up to grow on slowly in a cold greenhouse, so keep them watered , but not wet, and keep a lookout for greenfly.

Dahlias are dried off and stored in a frost free shed in boxes. They do not need any soil.

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