SPRING IS ARRIVING

                                                       SPRING IS ARRIVING

It only takes a few sunny warm and dry days to cheer us and the garden plants up, after the cold and very wet extended winter had to come to an end.

The first daffodils

We can now wander around the garden (if we can get a few spare moments) and enjoy the first flowers a wee bit late, but very welcome. Crocus seem to be huge this year and large established drifts really catch the eye, not only in my garden but also in numerous roadside verges. Every autumn I seem to find another spot for a packet of 100 crocus to brighten up the borders and over time they

Christmas cactus is a bit late this year

have now become a major feature. They start off the floral displays around the garden, and then the daffodils and narcissi quickly follow on. They are another bulb that I always plant up a few more in the autumn as new varieties are hard to resist. Both Dick Wilden and Replete are recent newcomers, but the double large heads are so heavy that they bend over and if the wind arrives they are liable to break off. Chionodoxa, Anemone blanda, Scillas and many other dwarf bulbs are spring up into the sunlight to add to the show. They will be followed by the grape hyacinths which are very successful in getting established into large solid drifts. I have one large area of grape hyacinths underplanted with tulips and these are underplanted with oriental lilies so I get several displays over spring and summer.

Chionodoxa

The first tulip to flower in mid March is the dwarf Tulip kaufmanniana Scarlet Baby and this year nearly at the same time as my yellow saxifrage. The blue ground hugging Pulmonaria is now in flower but early tulips designed to flower at the same time are a good three weeks behind.

Tubs and hanging baskets with pansies, wallflower and polyanthus have now all started to flower and I couldn’t resist a batch of polyanthus full of bright colours in a local store, so they are now adding some colour to a bare patch after removing some shrubs past their best.

Rhododendron praecox has been in flower most of March and this year there has been no late frost to spoil the blooms. The red flowered Cammelia Adolphe Audusson and pink Donation are now in flower. They have always been very reliable and will soon be joined by many other rhododendrons and Azaleas making up another major garden display.

Yellow saxifrage

Indoors my Zygocactus truncatus, the Christmas cactus has lost all sense of timing. Christmas is well past and it is only now coming into full flower. In most other years it flowers just ahead of Christmas and my pink Phalaenopsis orchid which normally has at least thirty flowers along the stem has only got three flowers this year. I know last year was wet and lacked sunshine up north, but the orchid gets the warmth indoors, so hard to blame the weather.

In the greenhouse chrysanthemum cuttings were well rooted by mid March so they all got potted up and once established they are hardy enough to go outdoors. A batch of oriental lily bulbs arrived by mail order and got potted up as the ground was too wet to plant them out. I will keep them in the greenhouse till end March, then harden them off for planting out in April.

Tuberous begonias were brought out from store and boxed up at the beginning of March. I keep these on plastic trays in my house as they like warm conditions, but as soon as they begin to grow they will get transferred to my cold greenhouse. Tomatoes, lettuce, rocket and spring onions sown in early March and kept on a windowsill in a warm room soon germinated and got transplanted into cellular trays. They will go into the greenhouse at the end of March to grow on for a couple of weeks before hardening off for planting outdoors, except for the tomatoes which will stay under glass. They will get planted later once more space is available.

Plants now hardening off

Wee jobs to do this week

The greenhouse is becoming packed out with plants now we are in the middle of the indoor seed

sowing season and as plants on windowsills need more space they need the greenhouse. So geraniums, rooted chrysanthemum cuttings and stools and young sweet pea plants are all deemed tough enough to get hardened off outdoors. Later on the broad beans will be next to get some fresh air as they are also quite hardy.

END

A VERY BUSY SPRING

                                                           A VERY BUSY SPRING

I have always tried to work to a plan for sowing and planting on my allotment, with timing based on previous year’s experience. Last year we had a mild winter followed by an early warm spring so plans were brought forward by two weeks with potato planting starting at the end of February.

Planting early potato Casa Blanca

This year we still got a mild winter but ending with continual rains keeping us off the wet ground so gardening has been put back by a few weeks. Potato planting started in mid March with my first early Casa Blanca though the ground is still very slow to warm up. To give the spuds a good start I take out a furrow, add good garden compost along the bottom then plant my sprouted tubers a foot apart along the row. After covering over the row I add some potato fertiliser. Second early and maincrop potatoes will go in towards the end of March.

Pick a few dry sunny days and start with some outdoor seed sowing. End of March is a good time to sow a row of Leek Musselburgh. Sow thinly so the small plants have room to grow and make a sturdy plant for transplanting in a couple of months time. Late March is also a good time to sow some annual flower seeds such as poppies, godetia, candytuft, cornflowers and Livingston daisies. Annuals are great for adding some colour and interest where ever you find a bare patch of ground.

Polyanthus ready to plant out

Land set aside for courgettes, pumpkins and sweet corn will lie bare till the beginning of June as these crops are all very sensitive to cold weather and frosts, so take this chance to increase the soil fertility by sowing down a green manure crop of clover, ryegrass, vetches or field beans, or even mustard if you do not have a clubroot disease problem. These grow fast so are ready to trample down and dig in about three weeks ahead of planting.

Outdoor tasks are now getting underway with the first cut for lawns now the grass is putting on a fair bit of growth. Raise the blades for the first couple of cuts and check for weeds and moss if you want the perfect lawn. However ignore the weeds if the young kids are still around and prefer a lawn with daisies, buttercups, dandelions and other interesting weeds, sorry, flowers!!!

Windowsill propagation

Harvesting last years cabbages, sprouts, kale, leeks, swedes and parsnips is now scaling back as crops become depleted, but now young rhubarb clumps are in full growth and soon pulling a few sticks for dessert is very welcome. Give the clumps a feed of fertiliser and a mulch of well rotted garden compost to retain moisture.

Early strawberry Christine can be encouraged to flower and fruit two to three weeks ahead of

normal by erecting a low polythene tunnel over the row, but make sure all the weeds are removed first as well as any old straw left over from the previous year.

Check over outdoor spring flowering pots and tubs and replace any failures with fresh spring

Field beans green manure

bedding plants such as pansies and polyanthus.

Now is the time to sow crops for this year’s vegetable patch and greenhouse. These need warm

conditions so windowsills facing south are very handy. Cabbage Kilaton, cauliflower Clapton and sprouts Crispen (all clubroot resistant for my soil), kale, lettuce, spring onion, can all be sown in shallow seed trays

then pricked out later into cellular trays. Beetroot has to go in

Putting polythene tunnel over early strawberries

cellular trays as you cannot prick them out without damaging the roots. Tomato Sungold and Sweet 100 were sown in cellular trays with seeds (only five per packet) left over from last year. Very pleased to see all ten seedlings came through. Tomato Alicante have plenty seeds so no problem with numbers. Tuberous begonias dried off last autumn have now all been boxed up to bring them back into growth.

Greenfly on roses

Wee jobs to do this week

Greenfly have come through the mild winter in top form and now we are seeing some warm dry days they could not wait to get started. Roses have also made an early start with plenty new young soft shoots emerging. Greenfly spotted these and quickly build up to plague proportions. At this early stage it is easy to rub off small infestations, but if they become a real nuisance then it is out with the sprayer and some rose insecticide.

END

PLANT FRUIT SHRUBS AND TREES

                                               PLANT FRUIT SHRUBS AND TREES

The dormant season from November to March used to be the time to buy in bare root trees, shrubs and fruit bushes, but today container grown plants have become the norm, so buying in and planting can continue well into spring.

Anna samples early strawberry Mae

However early purchasing is still recommended in case the best and most popular varieties get sold out. In past times we found good gardening advice from television gardeners, gardening magazines, catalogues and visiting nurseries and garden centres, but today we can add on the internet as it is

Apple Discovery

packed with information on everything you can imagine. Yesterday, while erecting a fence around my steep garden I purchased metal brackets to secure fence posts to a stone wall. Mr Google was full of ideas and videos to inform me how to do this task for any size of post. No need to travel around hardware stores, and only a £5 delivery charge.
Do plenty of research to find the best varieties of fruit bushes, trees and other garden plants. Many plants are available locally, but there are plenty plant specialist around UK for all kinds of plants and with internet access mail order purchasing has become normal.

Fig Brown Turkey

Prepare the ground well in advance of planting by digging over and adding tree planting compost or well rotted garden compost. Although recent periods of wet weather has hampered soil cultivations, there has been a few dry days when you got the chance to catch up. Ground for permanent planting of any tree, shrub or rose bush left in the ground for six or more

years should be double dug to help drainage and allow roots to penetrate deep down.

Fruit trees

Cherry Cherokee

Good apple varieties for this area include the early Discovery, mid season Falstaff and Fiesta and late season Red Devil and the most reliable cooker is still Bramley. Apples come in a whole range of sizes and form from low trained stepover, cordons, espaliers, fan trained and standard. Where space is very limited the upright narrow form of Starline Firedance will fit the bill. What form you choose will vary with space available.

Good pears include Beth, Concorde and Beurre Hardy. Comice has great flavour but is a bit

susceptible to scab disease. Pears also come in a range of forms.

The best plum is still Victoria though other varieties are all worth trying, but remember plums can be destroyed easily by silver leaf disease so do no pruning in winter.

A good reliable cherry is Cherokee. In a good year the cherries are so big the blackbirds leave them alone as they prefer smaller ones more easy to swallow.

Gooseberry Invicta

For something a bit more exotic the Brown Turkey fig is very rewarding, crops all summer with fruit from top to bottom as in early years it grows as a large shrub. For an exotic wall trained fruit try grape Brant which does very well in Scotland. The bunches may be smaller than normal grapes and have small pips but the black grapes are sweet and juicy.

Fruit bushes

Grape Brant

Good blackcurrants include those bred in Scotland including Ben Conan and Big Ben with larger and sweeter fruit. Invicta is my best gooseberry and makes a fantastic wine.

Strawberries can fruit all summer from May till October using early varieties, Mae and Christine, mid season Elsanto, Florence and Symphony then the autumn fruiting Flamenco.

Raspberries have been bred for Scottish conditions so there is quite a few to choose from, but you cannot go wrong with Glen Ample, Glen Fyne and Glen Dee and to enjoy fruits into the autumn Polka and Autumn Treasure are hard to beat.

John sowing broad bean seeds

Wee jobs to do this week

Sow Broad Beans now as they like an early start. Aquadulce is still a good variety. Sow individually

in cellular trays at one to each cell and keep in a warm place for germination. Once they emerge and start to grow pot them up and grow on for a few weeks then harden off in early April for planting out mid April.

END

COMPANION PLANTING

                                                          COMPANION PLANTING

I first became aware of the benefits of companion planting in early apprenticeship times. As an

apprentice gardener we learned to make the best of spring flower displays as all wallflowers,

daisies, polyanthus, myosotis and pansies always got an underplanting of tulip bulbs.

Doronicums with Tulip Negrita (purple) and Abba (red)

Different heights of tulips were important as you needed the taller Darwin hybrids to accompany the taller wallflower, but the smaller pansies and myosotis and other ground hugging bedding got the dwarf double tulips. In summer the spring flowering bedding plants got replaced with summer flowering bedding plants all in flower together, and flower beds tended to be grouped together in well

manicured lawns. In spring our tutor Walter Gilmore arranged a trip to St. Andrews Botanic

Gardens.

Geraniums and Californian poppies

They had tall forsythia shrubs covered in a mass of golden yellow flowers and all

underplanted with the fosteriana tulip, Red Emperor, also known as Mme lefebre which was also in full bloom. These lessons stayed with me and I soon began to see many amateur and professional gardeners with great colourful gardens but very few had grouped plants together with the same flowering time. There may have had very impressive plants in full bloom but all at different parts of the garden. I realised the value of grouping plants with the same flowering time together to create maximum impact. Another lesson at bulb planting time was to plant daffodils and tulips in deep tubs with one layer below the other to maximise impact of flowers. I have now applied these ideas with a whole range of plants.

Senecio, Delosperma, Erigeron and Cistus flower together

The layer style of companion planting is great with bulbs. I have a bed

devoted to Oriental Lilies planted quite deep, which flower in mid summer, but this bed also has a layer of tulips planted above the lilies as well as a surface layer of grape hyacinths. This way I get a spring display followed by a summer display. However grape hyacinths can form a thick layer of bulbs so some periodic thinning is required to allow the tulips and lilies to push through. Tall

Oriental lilies are also fine amongst dwarf azaleas. Beds of azaleas have little impact once the flowering is finished, but the lilies give a great show in summer.

Woodland fringe areas are also perfect places to create a spring display with snowdrops, wood

Berberis darwinii

anemones, crocus, aconites and narcissus provided the trees are deciduous. The bulbs are happy to go dormant once the trees produce leaves and close the canopy. Aconites can smother the ground in late winter, but they are a great companion to Cyclamen hederifolium as they emerge just as the aconites die down. Other good companions have been plants selected for the top of a wall where it can get a bit dry. Senecio with grey foliage and yellow flowers is at its best as ground hugging

Lettuce crop under chrysamthemums

Delosperma cooperii with purple flowers is in full flower. These two also flower at the same time as Cistus and Erigerons. My first tulips to flower is the Scarlet Baby coming out in March at the same time as a yellow saxifrage. Then in April and May the yellow Doronicum Little Leo flowers with purple tulip Negrita and red Abba.
An unusual combination is to plant the orange Berberis darwinii beside your plum, pear and apple trees as the berberis is very attractive to bees which then help to pollinate the other trees.

On the allotment I plant lettuce between rows of freshly planted chrysanthemums and harvest them before the chrysanthemums need the space.

My climbing rose Dublin Bay with red flowers covers the wall, but at ground level I have

geraniums and some naturalised Californian poppies all flowering together.

Wee jobs to do this week

John prunes outdoor fuchsia Mrs Popple

Outdoor fuchsias are now showing young buds starting to put on some growth. They have a habit of dieing back in various degrees depending on the severity of the winter. This year winter has been fairly mild though a bit wet so dieback is not too serious, but still cut back any shoot to remove dead ends and other shoots where the bushes have been growing beyond there allocated space, especially next to footpaths.

END

TIME TO START SPRING GARDENING

                               TIME TO START SPRING GARDENING

My gardening year has always started by selecting plants and seed in mid winter and drawing up my seed sowing schedule. Last year the spring arrived early after a very mild winter and warm weather allowed sowing and planting well ahead (a fortnight) of that planned on my schedule, so this year I adjusted the schedule to allow for another early start.

Geraniums go into their final pots

Weather however is very unpredictable as climate change is erratic and although global warming would appear to benefit gardening in Scotland, you just cannot rely on it. The winter has now just about finished, and again been very mild. I have not seen one snowflake land on my garden, but torrential storms and gales have kept us off the land for a wee bit.

Casa Blanca potatoes ready to plant out

However my sowing schedule has started indoors with onion Hybound, sweet peas and pepper Early Jalapeno sown in mid February based on last year’s early start, and if we get another early spring I will be happy. This is also a great time to sow Lobelia as it needs a long growing season. My unheated cold greenhouse is too cold for seed germination so south facing windowsills are used for both seeds and geraniums rooted from autumn cuttings now growing strongly. By the end of February my geraniums will have been potted up into their final pots and in need of more space so they will get moved into the greenhouse, assuming there will be a wee bit of global warming to get them started.

Sowing seeds

Geraniums are pretty tough so no need to molly coddle them, in fact the two I left outdoors all winter are surviving, though one looks a wee bit sad. Onion seedlings, peppers and sweet peas will soon be needing more space so they will go into the cold greenhouse but I will keep an eye on the weather forecasts and if any frost is threatened I have an electric heater I can use.

The end of February is the time to sow many other crops including broad bean Aquadulce, Lettuce Lollo Rossa, Cauliflower Clapton (clubroot resistant) spring onions and tomatoes. After last year’s tomato trial I will be growing my favourite maincrop Alicante, Supersweet 100 my best red cherry and Sungold my best yellow cherry. These will all come from seed saved from last year. Making a seed packet last two years comes from time tested tradition for Scottish gardeners, a practise taught as apprentices and it has never gone away.

Chrysanthemum cuttings in a propagator

However problems arise when seed producers decide to severely limit the amount of seed in each packet. Tomatoes all came with ten seeds declared in each packet, and not one had eleven. So last year only five got sown from each packet, which was just fine, and this year it should also be just fine as long as I get good germination from the remaining five. Time will tell.

Just like last year the mild winter has allowed chrysanthemum stools to put on a lot of growth so a batch of cuttings were taken. There is no room at home so they went into a propagator in the

Tomato seedlings just pricked out

greenhouse. It is still quite early so the stools will continue to grow and give me more cuttings later on. Begonia tubers need a long growing season before they flower so dry corms got boxed up and watered in. They need warmth so I will keep them in the house for a few weeks placed on plastic trays. They do not need light until the shoots begin to grow, but hopefully by that time the weather will be warmer and they can go into the unheated greenhouse.
If the spring comes in early this year I will be on schedule to plant a row of first early Casa Blanca potatoes as the chitted seed looks ready to go into the ground.

Wee jobs to do this week

Spreading lime for brassicas

When growing a wide variety of flowers, fruit and vegetables we try to keep to a good plan of rotation. This allows us to group together plants requiring the same soil conditions of fertility and soil alkalinity as well as trying to avoid any build up of pests and diseases. The cabbage family including sprouts, kale, cauliflower, swedes, turnips and radish do not like an acid soil, so land for these gets a dressing of hydrated lime in late winter. As they also like a fertile soil it was composted and dug over in December so now is a good time to spread some lime over this area.

END