Summer has Arrived

SUMMER HAS ARRIVED    

The summer must be here. The sun is shining, not too many clouds, great weather for killing weeds, but it is too hot to work. This is the time to relax on the patio with an ice cold lager and lime as the lilies, now in full bloom waft over the garden. To keep cool while still working the land, many gardeners get into their shorts and give their fair skinned legs a wee airing, but you do not want to see the photos.

Garden problems are beginning to disappear. Weeds are under control, pests have been wiped out, and diseases, mainly mildew, sprayed with a rose fungicide which worked.

Weather on the garden

Now is a good time to assess the damage on those plants that suffered from the hard winter, spring gales and early summer thunderstorms.

Outdoor hardy fuchsias are now growing strongly and are in full bloom.

Cistus shrubs are only just alive though they have been flowering, but there is now no re-growth of buds near the centre, so after a tidy up pruning, they will be monitored to see how they recover. They are not yet off the replacement list.

Cordyline had reached a height of about twelve feet but was wiped out right back to ground level. Previous experience has shown me that they do recover, so I was very pleased to see some new shoots push up from below the ground. They will recover.

Broom, Cytisus praecox, was so badly damaged in the gales it had to be removed.

My mature Eucalyptus has lost half of its foliage and the canopy looks thin, but there is a lot of new young shoots to replace them. They can grow quite rapidly in warm moist conditions.

Courgettes and pumpkins are still on the sick list, after the tops got separated from the roots in the gales, but seem to be trying to make a recovery. Fingers crossed.

Tomatoes have suffered from cold temperatures, cloudy skies and damp weather. Flowers bloom then fall off, foliage has blight, which then gets botrytis. A lot of leaves have had to be removed, weakening the plants, which were prey to an attack of greenfly. This is not their year.

Nature always has a reason to throw up the unexpected. I have no idea why my Hellebores (Christmas rose) have decided to come into flower again. It should be semi dormant as it builds up its strength for its peak flowering period in winter, but now it is trying to compete with the annual Shirley poppies. These were sown in spring from seed saved from last years display.

Summer flowers

 

The tubs, pots and hanging baskets have now all recovered from the gales and after a fair bit of watering and feeding are looking fantastic. I have a hanging basket just outside each door planted with geraniums, lobelia, impatiens and the deep blue petunias which provide a strong scent when you are close to them.

Tuberous begonias are in full bloom in a large bed at the front of the house. They have never looked better. They are in good soil and get plenty of sun beside a south facing wall.

Fruit

Maincrop strawberries are now finished, but the perpetual variety, Malling Opal has now started and should continue to fruit till the autumn.

Apple and pear grafts are growing very strongly, especially, pear Beurre Hardy and The Christie, both of which seem to be forming fruit buds along the base of long shoots. If we get a long warm dry autumn these shoots will ripen up and I may get a few fruit of these new varieties in 2012.

Fig bushes suffered a lot of die back in the winter and a lot of young fruit buds were killed, so this year’s crop will be a bit meager, but it has made a lot of growth that could ripen up in autumn for a bumper year in 2012, hopefully.

Allotment

Sowing summer salads has continued, with lettuce, radish, and golden ball turnip whenever some spare ground becomes available.

Spring cabbage April was sown in pots as club root risk is too high for an outdoor sowing in a seed bed. They germinated very quickly and will soon be potted up into large cellular trays.

Cauliflower All Year Round was planted out for an autumn crop. These were potted up to give them a better chance against clubroot.

Aberdeen Art Fair

The garden and allotment have kept me occupied during the day with planting, sowing, harvesting and preparing produce for the freezer and wine making, but evenings have seen me back at the easel preparing the last of my new paintings for display at the Aberdeen Arts Fair which runs from Saturday 13^th August to Sunday 14^th August 2011 at the Music Hall in Union Street.

As well as bold flowers on large box canvases, I will also show some of my latest figure studies including a portrait of Lady Gaga.

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Time for a Clean Up

 TIDYING UP

The early summer gales only lasted a couple of days, but the effects in the garden will be felt for the rest of the year. So much young soft spring foliage was shredded that the plants have been weakened and will now be more prone to attacks of pests and diseases. Most plants will regrow again quite strongly if the weather warms up a bit. We have had plenty of rain to keep the garden moist, but not a lot of warm sunshine.

This is also the time of year when we do a tidy up of spring bulb flowering drifts, so the summer flowers can start off with fresh weed free soil.

Time for a clean up

I had just finished cutting back dead wood from numerous shrubs that were killed off after the cold winter when along came the gale and nature had another go at thinning out my garden. More pruning is now needed for my plum tree, peach tree, figs, shrubby loniceras, and climbing roses. The gales broke the main stems from a large lemon yellow flowering broom, Cytisus praecox. It was part of a group of flowering shrubs including many Cistus varieties all enjoying a dry sunny spot, but most died out in the winter, opening up the group and letting the gales smash into the normally very hardy broom. However all of this material will be recycled through our shredder reducing it to wood chips which then get mixed into my compost heap.
The rhubarb suffered a lot of broken leaves in the gales so they will end up as compost.

Daffodils, tulips, crocus and other spring flowering bulbs have had their six weeks of rest after flowering so the old foliage can now be pulled off and added to the compost heap. Hellebores, Doronicums, Aconites, and Bluebells can also be tidied up, but don’t add any bluebell seedheads to the compost heap as they will survive and sprout up all over the place when you spread the compost.

Spring flowering wallflowers, pansies, Forget me not and polyanthus can also be composted.

Add all the kitchen vegetable and fruit waste and all lawn grass cutting to the heap, then turn it a couple of times to help it to breakdown. You do not need to buy special composting worms, as they are already present in the soil, so they will find your heap and multiply very quickly.

Home made garden compost will feed all your garden plants giving them strength to grow and fight off diseases.

Pests and diseases

Control of pests and diseases today is not easy as the amateur gardener no longer has access to a wide range of chemicals. We can, however select only those varieties known to be resistant to the main range of diseases, and remain vigilant so we can take action as soon as any pest appears.

Sawfly attacked my gooseberries and had to be hand picked off and disposed off. Similar action was necessary on all my brassicas after a visit by several cabbage white butterflies, and again it was the same story in my shrub border. I found a hundred caterpillars, give or take a few, munching their way through the nice young shoots of Salix britzensis. Control was very messy!!

I had pruned them down to ground level to encourage fresh new shoots for my coloured stem border, which were doing very nicely before the caterpillars arrived.

Peach leaf curl continues to affect some leaves on my peach tree despite two sprays of Dithane. I pick off any affected leaves and destroy them. You can be quite ruthless as the tree is very vigorous and will soon put on new growth.

Roses had a few greenfly on them, breeding furiously, before the gales came and shredded their food supply. I don’t see any now, but a plague of blackfly went for my new dwarf cherry tree causing the terminal shoots to curl up and die. These had to be cut off to let new shoots grow in and replace them.

At least this year I have no gooseberry mildew as I only grow resistant varieties such as Invicta.

Finish off the planting

Winter hardy cabbage and autumn cauliflowers are now ready for planting on the allotment, but will need netting to stop the pigeons eating them.

Cape gooseberries raised in the greenhouse have now been planted out in a sheltered spot against a south facing fence. They should do well as this area got a green manure crop of mustard, plus extra garden compost to increase the soil fertility. I just love this exotic fruit, and it is also a favourite of mine for a still life painting.

Courgettes and pumpkins would normally have been ready to plant out by mid June, but the gales shattered them, so it was back to the greenhouse for the survivors to see if I can revive them. When I plant them out it is always on well manured soil with extra compost forked into the planting areas. They really need very fertile soil that can hold moisture. Two courgette plants will give us more than we can ever eat and two pumpkins will give us five to eight large fruits. They store very well in the utility room for use as brilliant soups right through the winter.

Early harvests

The season has been remarkably early despite the bad winter and spring gales. Early salads are quite prolific, very tender and full of flavour. Lettuce, (now cutting the second sowing), radish, (now picking the third sowing), spring onions and baby beet are all getting harvested regularly.

Strawberry picking started in mid May and is now in full swing. It is strawberries for breakfast, lunch and tea and plenty left over for jam and freezing. Blackcurrants, redcurrants and gooseberries are all turning colour and the two rows of saskatoons are very heavy with young berries swelling up just nicely.

This could be a good summer if there are no more climatic disasters just waiting round the corner.

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Pottering Around

 POTTERING AROUND

Writing a gardening article ten days in advance of publication has its disadvantages. After surviving a really bad winter which killed out many plants, the garden readjusted itself as good growing weather prevailed for a couple of months. Seed sowing, planting, soil preparations and weeding were all back on schedule and I even had time to test the sun lounger. Everything was going so well that it was well worthy of a good gardening article, “Perfect Weather for Gardening”

Fate had other ideas and I now know how Michael Fish felt. The day before my article appeared the gales arrived and blew half the garden away. Good job this is Dundee, as no-one took me to task on my perfect gardening weather. Trees were blown down, my hanging baskets blew off the walls, plum trees lost half their branches, and the end of my greenhouse exploded as the winds bent the structure. Courgettes and pumpkins outside to harden off got blown out of their pots, delphiniums were flattened and any plant with soft spring leaves got shredded including climbing roses, young saskatoon plants, vegetable plants in boxes, shrubs and my new cherry tree and mature peach tree.

However, our unpredictable weather then gave us two days of heatwaves followed by a massive temperature drop turning my greenhouse tomatoes blue as they now have a well ventilated end with no glass. Strawberries are all ripening but lack of warmth reduces the sweetness and softness.

I hope that when you are reading this weeks garden adventure I will be back up to date with tasks and start my pottering around with numerous pleasant wee jobs, interspersed with coffee breaks and wee seats in the baking hot sun.

The Garden

As one display ends another begins. It is now the herbaceous border that is providing the colour with a combination of bright scarlet oriental poppies and blue flag iris. The gales had no effect on them but my new cherry tree, already suffering from an attack of black fly got its leaves shriveled, as did my plum and peach trees.

Poppy seed sown in many bare areas is germinating strongly and promises to give a good display.

My climbing roses, Dublin Bay and Gertrude Jekyll lost half their leaves in the gale, but are still putting on a decent display of flowers.

Cornus (dogwood), and Salix (willow) in the coloured stemmed winter border have both put on strong growth even after I cut them back right to ground level in March.

The Allotment

Strawberry picking is now a major task with a huge crop on all varieties. Gooseberries are also hanging heavily despite a thousand sawfly caterpillars mounting an attack when they thought I wasn’t looking. Black and red currants are also laden heavily with berries, already turning colour far earlier than normal. Nets will be needed for the red currants, but not the blacks.

Thinning turnips, swedes, chard and lettuce is at the two inches apart stage, but my thinly sown beetroot won’t be thinned till I can get thinnings as a baby beetroot crop. I do not thin leeks, spring onions or radish as they are sown thinly. Parsnips have germinated perfectly this year.

Chrysanthemums, sweet peas and gladioli planted out for cut flower and display have all established well as we have had good growing weather apart from the gales.

One area intended for a June planting of pumpkins, courgettes and cape gooseberries had been sown down with a mustard green manure crop to improve the soil fertility. This is now three feet tall and beginning to flower so it will be trampled down and dug in. It is best to dig with a trench so you can bury the green stems easily. They do not regrow once buried. It is an extra task, but has a really beneficial effect on the next crop. It is very worthwhile at the beginning of the growing period for late planting crops and also at the end after harvesting an early maturing crop such as broad beans, early potatoes, peas, salads and sweet corn.

The Greenhouse

Young vegetable plants left the greenhouse to get hardened off, then promptly returned as the gales blew in. Unfortunately it was too late for my courgettes and pumpkins which got shredded and blown out of their pots. I may be able to salvage some of them with a bit of luck.

Tomatoes were growing strongly, and flowering profusely before the gales blew out the glass. Now they are a bit cold but in time they should be ok.

Grapes now need constant pruning as every young shoot gets cut back to one leaf, as I can now see the bunches on the laterals growing from each rod.

Gardening Scotland

 

I have always attended this June event at Ingliston in Edinburgh as well as the Dundee Flower Show at Camperdown Park in September. However I now take a stand at these events to promote and sell my Saskatoon plants. They are becoming very popular as I was nearly totally sold out, only bringing back one plant. We also get the chance to look around other stands. Anna could not resist a gorgeous Peonia Doreen so it will now find a favoured spot in the garden. I really liked this Arisaema sikokianum, but was told it was a bit evil looking and a wee bit too much like a triffid, so I had to settle for a new rose for my garden hose. Life can be hard at times.

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Perfect Gardening Weather

 PERFECT WEATHER FOR THE GARDEN

Spring has been perfect this year. We had enough dry weather to catch up on outstanding tasks, complete the digging, and start the planting and sowing. Then the sun came out for a whole week and just as we were beginning to worry about the soil drying up, along came some serious rainfall.

The spring flowers were glorious and tulips have never lasted so long. The strawberries are two to three weeks ahead of last year and I have harvested my first lettuce and radish, and the sun lounger has been tested on several occasions. Well, I have to do my garden planning somewhere.

Every time I need to crack on with a bit of planting the weather turns dry, then once I’ve finished we get a bit of rain over night to water things in. This is just too perfect.

Is nature trying to make up for giving us two hard winters on the trot plus three wet summers. We lost a few plants in the winter, including some cistus, escallonias and cordyline, but those that survived are really putting on a brilliant display. My Fuchsia Mrs Popple was again frosted back to ground level, but it has survived and now has many young shoots reaching for the sun.

Flowers

The spring flowers will now be replaced with summer flowering bedding plants. Tubs, hanging baskets and beds have now all been replanted with geraniums, tuberous begonias, petunias, nemesia, busy lizzies and lobelia.

I grow some cosmos which is used to fill in any bare patches around the garden, and also sow some Shirley poppies which never fail to put on a good show.

Euphorbia polychroma has lovely lemon yellow flowers, but this year they are quite dazzling.

Azaleas are at their peak and really enjoying the moisture combined with cool but sunny weather.

Lilac is also superb with the white Mme Lemoine still favourite, and the deep lilac Michel Buchner also outstanding.

Himalayan blue poppies continue to flower, but remove the seedheads unless you wish to increase the stock. They grow fairly easy from seed if harvested when ripe and stored in a fridge for a few months. Sow them in a tray in late autumn and keep them outdoors all winter in a sheltered but shady place. Do not let them dry out and they should germinate in April the following year.

Iceland poppies also need regular dead heading to keep them flowering all summer. I also save the seed but sow them in late summer so I can overwinter small plants in trays for planting in early spring. These will then flower for the next two years.

Aconites grow quite easily from seed, so collect it as they ripen and sow it immediately where ever you wish to grow them. They naturalise rapidly.

Fruit

Apple and pear grafts are now shooting so I will soon have new varieties on two trees. I am looking forward to seeing pear Beurre Hardy and Christie and apples, Park Farm Pippin, Lord Roseberry and Pearl.

Mildew on apples overwinters in buds which open up in spring completely infected. These primary infections are quite noticeable, (they are completely white with mildew) so they should be picked off and destroyed before they spread.

Peach fruit set has been really poor. I think the severe winter did not help them. The blossom was quite late to open, (normally a distinct advantage), but never looked very strong, and although they got their regular hand pollination, assisted by a few bees most did not fertilise. They did not get any late frost. I hope to get three fruits this year and they will still be better than supermarket peaches.

Fig bushes got a fair frosting, killing back many shoots, but there is still a wee crop.

Allotment

All my fruit bushes are looking very good, but the gooseberry sawfly caterpillars have massed an attack. I spent an unpleasant moment picking them off and disposing off them. You need to be vigilant as they don’t hang about. They can chomp through the bushes at an alarming speed.

Strawberries are looking great and I may be picking my first fruit by the time you are reading this.

Planting has gone ahead at full steam. Sweet corn, cabbage, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts are all planted and seeds of Dwarf French beans, Swiss chard, lettuce, radish, spring onion, beetroot, turnip, and Swedes are all sown.

Leeks have germinated but are quite slow to grow.

Glasshouse

Tomatoes have established in the growbags and are now in flower, so feeding has started. The flowers get a daily tickle to spread the pollen which will assist fertilisation as the flower is cleistogamic. Just love that word !!! Google knows what it means.

If you are growing them as cordons, remove the sideshoots regularly and twist the growing stems around the supporting strings to keep them upright.

Grape vines are now showing the flower bunches. I cut back any non flowering shoots to a couple of leaves just to help feed the plant. The flowering shoots get cut back to two leaves after the flower bunch. Thereafter right through the growing season you must cut back all sideshoots regularly to one leaf. Black Hamburg is very reliable and is full of flower, but Flame, my red seedless variety and Perlette the new white seedless grape do not have as much flowers as I would like.

However my newly planted outdoor grape vine, Solaris has a couple of bunches on it. Gardening by the book, I should really remove them to let the new vine concentrate its energies into growing into a strong bush. I was never very great at doing the right thing and I am very curious to know if I can get a good outdoor grape to ripen in Dundee, so I may leave them alone for a bit, but keep the situation monitored. My outdoor Brant is very successful, but it has small bunches that are not very commercial, no matter how sweet and juicy they are.

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