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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