Summer in the Garden

 SUMMER IN THE GARDEN

There is always an opportunity to do a bit of gardening in between thunder storms. The weather continues to keep us on our toes. We got the expected three days really hot weather at the beginning of July, (the Scottish summer), but let’s hope there is still a few more warm days left.

The extreme weather has caught out a lot of crops, but others have responded very positively. I have a very heavy crop of apples, blackcurrants, saskatoons and strawberries, but precious little plums and pears which were shredded by the gales. My figs are down to about a dozen, (last year I had over forty), and every time I check on my peach tree there are further fruit losses. Last week we were down to the last two peaches, one for each of us, then, on checking after the thunderstorms, I noticed that Anna’s had fallen off!!!

However we have no problem with drought, and now there is a bit of warmth in the sun, a lot of plants are beginning to put on a bit more growth.

Checking last year’s diary, we seem to be running at least one week earlier this year, especially for soft fruit. Gardens in England are a lot further ahead as they have had some very hot weather, though not a lot of rain. Those that can irrigate their crops have a huge advantage.

Flowers

The Delphiniums are stealing the show this month. The spikes are very big and the colours strong, but there was a fair bit of damage after the July thunderstorm. I bought a packet of seed about fifteen years ago from Blackmore and Langdon who specialize in Delphiniums and got about thirty plants. I still have six of the best left producing intense blue spikes every year.

My lilies are now coming into flower with Lilium candidum, the Madonna lily, coming into bloom first. I like this variety as the scented flower heads are held upright.

Annual Shirley poppies have started flowering, though the Californian poppy has been out for weeks and the Iceland poppies which flower in spring continue to bloom.

Fruit

Late strawberries Florence and Symphony are at their best in mid to late July and my perpetual variety Malling Opal has a terrific flavour, but it is not producing any runners to keep the stock going. Black and red currants and saskatoons are a week ahead of last year with huge crops. There is too much to eat, freeze, make jam and compote, so I have started to use them for wine making. I look forward to trying out my Saskatoon wine.

I have also started a batch of Aronia (Chokeberry) wine. Interesting times lie ahead.

Saskatoon netting is now in place to protect the crop from birds, much to the severe annoyance of my local blackbird, who really gave me a piece of his mind, but soon realized that no amount of charging at the net would work. I’ll leave him the late berries after I pick the crop as there is plenty for all of us. My cherry tree is now recovering from the blackfly infestation, so I hope it will push out some fresh young shoots.

Outdoor grape Brant has recovered from the gales and is putting out shoots ten foot long. There is an excellent crop of young grapes, but to encourage the plant to put its energy into the fruit, the long shoots need removing by cutting back to two leaves after every bunch.

Vegetables

Planting has continued with cauliflower and leeks getting transplanted, as well as pumpkins and courgettes now that all frost risk has gone. The latter two crops got a lot of garden compost added to the soil to increase fertility and retain moisture.

A row of early salads under low polythene tunnels have now all been used, so the space has been used for a late sowing of carrots, hoping that they will miss the attention of the carrot fly.

Harvesting continues with early cauliflower, lettuce, radish, spring onions, baby beetroot, swiss chard and golden ball turnips.

Brassicas have not had a good start this year. They were all netted against pigeons, but caterpillars have been a constant nuisance, and clubroot has been a major problem in strong summer sunshine as there was not enough roots left to take in moisture. Rotation is the only solution, as chemicals are no longer available, but as I grow wallflower and radish and sow green manures with mustard, it is hard to keep a strict rotation. Clubroot spores can remain in the soil for up to twelve years.

House plants

Spare Busy Lizzies left over from the summer bedding make excellent house plants but need good compost and regular watering and feeding. Another short lived, but good house plant is our cactus, Chamaecereus sylvestrii. It gets ignored for most of the year, but as long as it gets left in a sunny window sill, with a wee bit of watering every second month or so it will cover itself in flowers in early summer. At that time give it a bit more water and a wee feed.

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Festive Thoughts

FESTIVE THOUGHTS

The Christmas week was never a time to be thinking about jobs around the garden.  The mind is occupied with getting those last Christmas presents, stocking up with plenty of food and some quality liquid cheer. Selecting a nice wee dram is now a lot easier with excellent advice from Brian of Amber Lights on the previous page. Then of course there is the social side to organize as family and friends get together.

This year winter arrived very early, so there is a good chance for a white Christmas if it is still on any ones wish list.

The allotment

My allotment activities have been about capturing snow scenes with the camera for winter landscape paintings. I was instructed to bring back some leeks now that they have been sweetened up with a bit of cold weather, but I just could not find them under a drift of snow two feet deep. Hopefully by the time you read this there will have been a wee thaw and my leeks will appear.

However this year I tried Brussels sprouts variety, Wellington. They have been terrific with large hard buttons and very sweet to taste. Just a pity they are so tall as they were still visible above the drifting snow and an easy target for our ever present resident flock of hungry pigeons.

The severe winter weather was well predicted so it gave us ample opportunity to gather a couple of large savoy cabbage Traviata, some Swedes and beetroot.

I am hoping my beetroot will be quite happy with a couple of feet of snow protecting it from the frosts. After a few hours of continually clearing snow from the drive it is very welcoming to see a plate of hot home made beetroot soup on the dinner table. Our best recipe uses fresh beetroot roughly grated with some onion, garlic, carrot and a potato. It is cooked with chicken stock, olive oil and some sugar, then served with a swirl of yoghurt or sour cream, and some lightly toasted garlic bread. It soon warms you up.

Outdoor plants

The deep snow has buried my coloured stemmed border, but the yellow winter Jasmine continues to flower through frost and snow. Christmas rose, Hellebores are wanting to flower, but are buried under deep snow.

The golden berried rowan Sorbus Joseph Rock has been spectacular with large bunches of bright yellow berries topped with snow standing out against the clear blue winter sky. At first the black birds were not too fussy about eating them until a flock of twenty waxwings found them and within three days the berries were gone. These are winter migrants from Scandinavia who swarm here in huge numbers when their own supply of berries is finished. They love rowans, pyracantha, hawthorns   and cotoneasters and will quickly strip them in a short burst of frenzied eating.

Feed the birds

Birds and wildlife are just as much part of the garden’s attraction as plants and they are particularly welcome in winter when most of the garden is at rest. Every garden will have their own resident robin and blackie, but it is nice to see the range extended with a wren, blue tit, great tit, coal tit, chaffy and occasionally a greenfinch and bullfinch. The latter may be a very attractive bird, but he can be a proper vandal when he picks off flowers and buds in spring with no intention of eating them.

My bird feeders go out when I think their own natural food supply is getting hard to find. This year frost and snow have come a bit early so birds go looking for some human help on bird tables. Fortunately there is a wide range of bird food available. I supplement this with some bread, old bramley apples from store that are not keeping too well, bacon fat and keep the bird bath replenished with fresh water.

Indoor plants

It has become a festive tradition to have a good colourful pot plant to decorate the living room during the Christmas period.

Poinsettias are very popular, easy to grow and will be quite long lasting as long as you don’t over water them. Give them plenty light, keep them warm but not near radiators. In its natural environment it will grow into a small tree, but for the house plant trade they are kept young and treated with growth retardants so you receive a compact plant full of coloured bracts. Thus once they are finished it is not worth keeping them for another year unless you are happy with a taller plant and are prepared to give them special growing conditions.

Once the coloured bracts are finished, adopt a drier water regime to encourage dormancy to give the plant a rest. Restart growth in late spring, repot if necessary with good free draining compost, and cut back the plant to a few inches. Once growth starts give a fortnightly feed and in summer grow the plant outdoors in a sunny spot. Keep growths pinched back to allow up to five shoots per plant and cut back any shoot that gets too big. Poinsettias require short day treatment to bring them into flower.

Thus from early October for the next ten weeks they will need to be kept in the dark for at least fourteen hours every day. Black them out from 5pm to 8am. Once the bracts begin to show colour bring them gradually into the light and continue to water and feed.

Christmas cactus is also a favourite that I find very reliable and quite easy, but again it has its needs. They come in a range of colours from red, pink, mauve and white. Mine have now finished their flowering so they will be allowed to go quite dry but not shriveled and kept in a light cool but frost free spot. They can be cut back at this time and the cuttings used to grow more plants. Once growth starts in summer restart watering and feeding to encourage growth. However this growth needs to ripen to encourage flower buds so I start to dry them off again in September. This helps to initiate flower buds which will appear in early winter. As soon as the flowers show, usually in November,  restart watering and bring them into the warmth.

The plants should last for very many years, and often they will provide two shows per year.

Last of the grapes

Although 2010 will go down in my diary as yet again another very wet year, there was enough sunshine to ripen up most of my grape vines. I have three varieties in the greenhouse and a very large outdoor vine, Vitis vinifera Brant covering a west and a south facing walls.

My earliest variety, Flame is in the cold greenhouse. It is a red seedless grape which has some fruit   ready at the end of August and continues till the end of October. It is very sweet and juicy but as with all seedless varieties some of the grapes can be small. It is the grape seeds that produce the growth hormones needed to swell up the fruit. Commercially, growers solve this problem by applying several sprays of gibberellic acid growth hormone. The first spray in spring causes the bunches to grow bigger thus spacing out the trusses with less overcrowding. The next spray at flowering causes some of the flowers to fall off reducing the need for thinning. Further sprays later on encourage berry growth so the end product is large seedless grapes well spaced out so they will not be troubled by diseases.

My organically grown, gibberellic acid free grapes, may be smaller, but they are still delicious.

I planted a white seedless variety called Perlette last winter so hopefully it will fruit in 2011.

My Black Hamburg greenhouse grape starts to fruit in mid September and I have now just finished off the last of then in early December. These have seeds so each grape is quite large and sweet and very juicy. It is easy to grow and is very reliable.

The outdoor Brant fruits from September to mid October, but our local Blackie is quite fond of them so as soon as I see a bit of damage they get harvested and made into juice. This will keep for two weeks in the fridge but can also be frozen in plastic bottles. The grapes are quite sweet so the juice does not need sugar.

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