Winter Work Never Ends

WINTER WORK

We seem to be going through a hard spell for any keen gardener.  Last autumn came late and before I had a chance to gather up all the leaves the winter arrived and dumped at least two feet of snow everywhere. Many weeks later the snow melted very reluctantly, but there has been no warm sunny days to dry up the soil surface to allow digging, or other outdoor activities to proceed.

Any outdoor gardening tasks have to be planned in advance with an eye on the weather to take every opportunity to get outside if there is a few hours of dry weather.

The severe cold has taken its toll on a few plants, with my Fuchsia Mrs Popple really looking lifeless right down to ground level. She did that last year, but grew back up again from the crown. However, my palm tree, Cordyline australis has been dropping a lot of leaves and my Date palm, Phoenix canariensis, which just survived last winter looks deathly.

A garden is full of extremes as the hardier plants show their ability to survive. Aconites have started to germinate from natural scattered seeds and my Saskatoon seeds which I had to put in the cold greenhouse to keep them away from mice have also started to germinate.

The first flowers

My first snowdrops have appeared just as soon as the snow melted. It is very welcome to see the beginning of life in the garden. Aconites, Hellebores and the crocus species are all showing a bit of colour with the promise that they will open up their blooms as soon as we get a few warmer days.

Winter vegetables

The allotment has continued to provide a good supply of winter vegetables including Swedes, savoy cabbage, brussels sprouts, my last parsnip and leeks. The cold put paid to my Swiss chard and kale which I will miss in my stir fries, but I have just learnt that chopped up brussels sprouts are a very useful addition to the stir fry wok. I just have enough beetroot left for one more pot of soup, but I am amazed that they have survived unharmed underneath their blanket of snow for so long.

Onions in store are still quite firm, but all our eating apples are finished. Bramley apples stored in apple boxes in a cold garage are still very plentiful and used frequently for crumbles, sauces and pies. Any second rate apples are chopped up and simmered slowly to soften  then strained in a jelly bag to make pectin. This is used to help set strawberry, saskatoon, and apricot jams. Any other apples beginning to look not at their best are chopped up for the blackbirds.

Our last stored pumpkin will be kept a few more weeks before the soup pot comes out. I will also retain the seeds for this years pumpkin plants.

Freezer foods

The idea of a freezer is that you can have a wide range fresh fruit and vegetables all year round and to supplement any meagre winter supplies from outdoors. We have had such good outdoor crops that we are not making any serious impact to the stored crops other than to give meals some variety.

French beans, sweet corn, kale, pumpkin puree and every soft fruit grown are still ready in abundance. Jams and compote are used daily and Saskatoon pies for special occasions.

Aronias are used for jam and smoothies.

There is an awful lot to be said for growing your own fruit and vegetables. They are harvested when ripe and often eaten within minutes of picking. The flavour is intense, they have been grown without any harmful pesticides and there has been precious little air miles used up bringing them to the kitchen table.

The freezer allows us a fair bit of our fresh crops to be tasted out of season. This is a very healthy option. We get the exercise from cultivating and growing them, fresh air, sunshine, (as well as wind, rain and snow) and allotment life is a very sociable pastime.

We may not get a lot of crops out of season, but do we really want them?

I was enjoying my Scottish grapes from August to December when the last of the Black Hamburgs finally disappeared. Naturally grapes from the supermarket replaced my own crop. I then realized just how good my own grapes were compared to those imported grapes which were rather tasteless and neither juicy nor as sweet as my Scottish ripened grapes.

It is the same with tomatoes, cucumbers, strawberries, brambles and raspberries from every corner of the globe. They may look perfect, but try eating these hard, tasteless and not very sweet berries with no guarantee about which pesticides were used in their production.

Getting an allotment is the healthiest option.

Early sowings

Sweet peas sown two weeks ago are now through but I will grow them hardy in the cold greenhouse. Now is the time to sow onions and tomatoes. I grow my tomatoes on a windowsill for a few weeks hoping to transfer them to the greenhouse during a mild spell, but getting ready with some supplementary heating on any cold nights.

Soil cultivation

Continue with spreading manure and compost and getting it dug in as long as the ground is dry enough to work.

Pruning and shredding

Pruning has continued with the peach tree, roses, fuchsias, apples and pears. To make room for my new dwarf Cherry Cherokee and outdoor grape Solaris on a south facing fence, I am removing a mature Pyracantha and some shrub roses.

Many other garden shrubs are getting a prune to keep them in shape, remove old wood, overcrowded or weak shoots and encourage younger wood and flowers.

All of my prunings will get shredded and added to the compost heap. These get mixed with autumn leaves, grass cuttings, kitchen vegetable waste, old bedding plants and compost from hanging baskets, and growbags.

The compost heap will get turned at least once, or twice if I can find the energy. It is very hard work, but very helpful in producing brilliant compost. This will be ready in about  nine months.

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Roses

ROSES

My first gardening memory from childhood involved roses. It was one of those unforgettable experiences, even for a four year old. My grannie, bless her soul, sent me, complete with bucket and shovel, up Harestane Road running after the grocer’s cart, knowing that at some stage his horse would do what horses have always done whether in a field or in the street. This was an opportunity not to be missed as she had a border of hybrid tea roses that would soon be the envy of her neighbours after this tousled haired laddie struggled back with his steaming bucket.

My first gardening lesson, roses are gross feeders and a perfect rose may involve a lot of hard work but the rewards can be immense.

My horticultural career took me all over Britain and every new house came with a garden that just had to have roses somewhere. A garden for me would not be complete if there were no roses.

Hybrid Teas and floribundas can go in beds and borders, shrub roses can provide shelter and privacy and ramblers and climbers can go on walls and fences. You can even get varieties suitable for ground cover.

My first roses

I had always been very ambitious and keen to learn my craft and rose growing was at the top of my list, but they were very expensive to buy on an apprentice’s pay. It was easier for me to join the Royal National Rose Society who then gave you a book on rose growing, varieties and propagation. I ordered 100 Rosa canina briers and decided I would bud my own roses. I only had a broken pen knife to perform my budding, but the book was good and I managed to get 82 roses from my 100 rootstocks.

At college in Essex I did a dissertation on rose rootstocks discovering that Rosa canina was out of favour as it produced suckers too readily and now the favoured rootstock was Rosa laxa. Someone down south was also experimenting with Rosa multiflora rootstock which proved to be superior to all the others, but was not commercial on account of having a small neck which was difficult and slow to bud. However I had all the time in the world so I got hold of these and produced my best roses ever.

It is now difficult for the amateur gardener to get hold of rose rootstocks as they are mostly grown in Holland, so we can propagate our roses from hardwood cuttings.  They are fairly easy to root. I covered this topic two weeks ago, but you can still see it on my blog, the Scottish artist and his garden.blogspot.com where I archive all my articles.

Rose varieties

Specialist rose nurseries in Scotland, England and Ireland have been breeding new roses for years so there is no lack of choice. In the early years there was an emphasis on producing floribundas, then trying to get floribundas with hybrid tea type flowers. There has always been a demand for a good red rose with scent, a strong head and several flowers per stem. E. H. Morse is hard to beat,  but other colours proved to be a bigger challenge. Bicolours became popular such as Piccadilly, then the vermillion colour appeared with Super Star many years ago. There are now excellent varieties to be found in just about every colour.

We are now in a different environment with sulphur free clean air better for humans, but also better for all the main rose diseases. Most of the chemicals previously used to control rose diseases have now been withdrawn. Breeders need to concentrate on strength and disease resistance in rose breeding so we can grow good roses without the need for chemicals.

However we are not there yet as I see many varieties still listed as disease free which I have had to grub out due to debilitating attacks of blackspot. Both shrub L D Braithwaite and climber Golden Showers have had the chop due to die back after a blackspot attack. Margaret Merril is a lovely white scented rose that is great early in the season until mildew gets a hold, then it struggles badly.

Every one will have their favourites, so my choice is purely down to what gives my garden the biggest splash of colour.

E H Morse is my best red, Dearest, a floribunda my best pink, Miriam my best white with a pink blush.

I have grown many shrub types and now use some of them on walls and fences as climbers. Dublin Bay is a brilliant red, but has no scent unlike Gertrude Jekyll, a deep pink with the Old English rose scent. If you need a very vigorous climber, the old variety Mme Alfred Carriere, introduced in 1879, is very reliable and puts on a spectacular show of off white scented flowers all summer.

Rose Planting

Roses thrive in well manured clay loams. It is a good practice to double dig any area to be planted with roses to break up the subsoil, aerate it, improve the drainage and incorporate manure or compost. When digging deep do not bring up any clay to the surface.

Climbers planted against a house wall will need removal of any builder’s debris and replaced with some good top soil. Work carefully as there may be services going into your property. Break up any consolidated hardcore below planting depth as the plant will be very happy to grow through this and still thrive.

Planting bare root plants can be done from November to the end of March, though nowadays it is more usual to purchase container grown plants that can be planted at any time. Make sure all bushes are given a good soak before and at planting to get them off to a good start.

Give the bed a dressing of a general fertilizer as roses are gross feeders and will respond to feeding.

Spacing can be as close as 18 inches for dwarf bushes or six to ten feet or more for climbers and ramblers.

Rose pruning

Hybrid tea and floribunda roses are pruned in the dormant season from late November to mid March, though with global warming this period is getting shorter.

Start by removing weak shoots, dead snags and any shoots growing up the centre. Providing there is several strong young shoots remove some older branches. Finally prune the young shoots to an outward growing bud about six to twelve inches from the ground.

Roses can be relied on to recover from bad pruning. If you prune them very lightly they will just grow into a larger bush but still flower perfectly well. If you prune them too hard you will keep the bushes smaller, but you could kill a weak variety.

Back in the mists of time I had a three month rose pruning session covering the north west of Dundee open spaces. Roses were at the height of their popularity and all local authorities crammed them into every available space. There was no time for any finesse, forget secateurs, this was a hand shear job cutting every bed to two feet from ground level. Although I was armed with my copy of “How to grow roses” from the Royal National Rose Society my knowledge from the book got me no Brownie points, so I had to do as I was told

That summer I went back to check on all my mutilated rose beds. They were all fantastic, full of flower. We should have won Britain in Bloom. I nearly threw away my book.

Roses are very tough, they can take a lot of ill treatment and still come back with glorious colour.

Shrub roses need very little pruning, only enough to prevent them getting too straggly.

Rambling roses flower on long shoots produced the previous year, so after flowering remove the older shoots right back to the base and tie in the new young shoots. These will flower the next year.

Climbing roses flower the same as bush roses, but produce longer shoots. These are used to form a framework of both young and older branches. However keep the plant rejuvenated by removing some of the older shoots every year. Make sure there is always some young wood around the base so the climber can flower from top to bottom. If the shoots are quite long try arching them horizontally to reduce upwards vigour and encourage flowering.

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Potatoes

  POTATOES FOR THE GARDEN

 It is hard to think of any other vegetable that has had a major impact on the British way of life than the humble potato. It is eaten by most people daily as boiled, mashed, baked, as a salad or as chips.

It is a great source of food health and its cultivation gives us immense exercise.
It is a major farm crop in Scotland for both ware and seed potato production. It was even responsible for providing us with extra holidays during the tattie fortnight when school kids were granted time off from studies to help the farmers bring in the harvest. Although they are now all harvested by machines, the holiday period is still enjoyed by most people.

Howking tatties is still remembered by an older generation as a chance to escape from the housing estate to the fresh air of the country and earn a wee bit extra money. The autumn was usually cold but sunny, and it was never too wet. The work was very hard and that digger always seemed to appear just as you finished picking your bit and before you got a chance for a breather. The bonus was the beauty of the farming countryside and that bag of spuds that went unnoticed as it followed you home.

It was a way of life for many years, but nowadays it is all done by machinery and none disappears off site under the arms of a tired but happy picker.

History

Potatoes were grown in South America in Peru 8000 years ago, but it was not till the middle of the 16^th century that explorers discovered them and brought them back to Europe. At first they arrived in Spain then years later to Britain and Ireland though at this time there potential was not realized. The potato, Solanum tuberosum was still only of interest to botanists and herbalists.

Major changes to land use, industrialization and expansion of towns brought in a need for something easy to grow to feed the population. Potatoes were easy to grow, store, cook and transport. The Irish peasants took up their culture in the 17^th century followed by England in the 18^th century, appearing in fields, gardens and allotments. Scotland was slow to accept them at first as devout Scottish Presbyterians refused to eat them as they were not mentioned in the bible. Around the world they were thought off as unclean, linked to witches and the French thought they caused leprosy.

Soon populations in both Scotland and Ireland desperately depended on the potato for their sustenance, but then disaster struck when the climate changed to a wetter regime in 1845 and 1846. Potato blight thrived in the wet weather ruining the crops and leading to severe famine. The population had no choice other than to leave or face death by starvation.

Today plant breeders are still working on developing new strains of potatoes that have resistance to potato blight caused by the fungus, Phytophthora infestans. It can still seriously affect late and maincrop potatoes but earlies are often harvested before the disease can get a hold.

Potatoes are now a major food crop all over the world from Britain to USA, India and especially China.

Culture

To grow good crops of potatoes consistently every year it is necessary to be aware of the range of pests and diseases that can seriously affect yields and do everything possible to minimize the risk.

Start off by purchasing seed tubers only from Scottish or Irish sources where very strict hygiene conditions ensure the crop is clean and gets the highest certification. This information will be shown on labels on all bags purchased.

Farmers work under surveillance with plant inspectors so the crops are well rotated and always on land tested to be clean if the crop is for certified seed production. Gardeners and allotment holders should practice a four year rotation and make sure any ground keepers are removed immediately they appear. If you are tempted to retain seed potatoes from your own healthy crop, only do so for one year and only if the crop was very clean and free from blight and any other pest or disease. Never accept seed potatoes from a friend as the risks of potential infections are too great.

Potatoes are heavy feeders so grow best on land that has been well manured in autumn and left rough over winter.

It is a good practice to chit early varieties as it gives them a head start. Place the seed potatoes upright, (rose end upwards) in trays or egg boxes and leave in a light frost free position for a few weeks to get them to sprout. Some tubers may produce numerous sprouts. The smaller ones can be removed to leave two or three. This reduces the crop slightly but gives bigger potatoes.

Planting

Planting time is very much depending on weather, so in a mild period it could be the end of February, otherwise as soon as you feel there is some warmth in the ground in March.

Earlies are spaced about 12 inches apart along the rows which are 18 inches apart. For maincrops increase the spacing to 15 inches apart with rows 2 to 2.5 feet apart.

Take out a furrow six inches deep and run some well rotted compost along the bottom. Cover this with some soil and plant into this. Cover the rows but leave a slight ridge to mark the line.

Potato fertilizer high in phosphates and potassium, may be added during the covering of the tubers, but don’t allow direct contact with the tuber.

Growing on

Once the foliage emerges keep an eye on the weather and if frost threatens earth over to protect them. Continue to earth over as this kills weeds and creates a friable structure that potatoes love to grow in.

Hopefully earlies will escape blight, but watch out for blight on maincrops if wet weather predominates. You can protect the foliage with spays of Bordeaux mixture, but if rain keeps washing it off it may be better (if the crop is sufficiently advanced) to cut off and remove the foliage, but leave the crop a few more weeks to mature.

Lifting

Lifting can begin at the end of June with first earlies and continue till October for lates. Lift on a sunny day and leave the spuds to dry on the surface for an hour or so. Discard any tubers that show any greening as this contains poisons. Potatoes are best stored in the dark in hessian or paper bags in a frost free shed protected from mice. They can also be stored in the ground bedded on and covered with straw, then protected with a layer of soil.

New Spuds for Christmas

This is becoming a very popular activity to achieve fresh new potatoes for the Christmas table. Order some late stored tubers of an early variety ready for planting in June or July. Give them the best growing conditions, or in barrels, containers or growbags as they do not have a long season left to grow. Keep them watered and fed then as soon as autumn comes and the foliage dies off remove it and just leave them where they are. Do not give any more water and they will store perfectly where they are until Christmas, provided we don’t get any more early severe frosts.

Varieties

There are very many varieties to choose from in every category from first early to late and new ones appear every year. Personal likes also decide whether you like a dry, waxy or floury texture. Some have a strong flavour whereas others can be very bland. It is impossible for anyone to recommend the best range as they are all very different and personal. Read the catalogues, talk to other growers, then make your choice. Try out a new variety every year.

Research

Research at the Scottish Crops Research Institute and many other places is looking at increasing  vitamin C content and improving disease resistance, especially late blight, but also a host of others including blackleg, brown rot, ring rot and wart disease. The main pests under the microscope is the potato cyst nematode and free living nematodes. There is concern about disease in European potatoes which are being prohibited entry as seed crops but can be brought in as laboratory grown micro plants.

Glendoick Garden Centre will be holding a Potato Weekend on Saturday 5^th and Sunday 6^th February with potato grower and expert Alan Romans giving advice. They will be showing some of the Heritage varieties including Bonnie Dundee, Salad Blue and Shetland Black.

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Focus on Cuttings

  WINTER PROPAGATION

 This winter season may be severe and prolonged and all outdoor plants are well and truly dormant, but gardening is very seasonal and whilst it may not be possible to do much soil cultivations, there are many tasks that can be started now.

A lot of trees, shrubs, roses, fruit bushes and ground cover plants get pruned during the dormant season and it is these prunings that can make perfect cuttings when you wish to increase your stock of plants.

This is also the time to start sowing onions, and sweet peas if they were not autumn sown. If you have a good selection of geraniums and Impatiens which you wish to retain and have taken cuttings in autumn these will now be rooted and in need of potting up. I have kept the same geraniums going for many years as I have got really good colours for a brilliant summer display.

It is always very satisfying to produce your own healthy strong plants from seed and cuttings, rather than buy the more expensive mature plants. When training to be a gardener in the Parks Department in the early sixties the competitive spirit was always very strong and there was always someone who had bigger plants, more of them or had more flowers than the next. Propagation of all plants was a mark of your skills. Rose budding at the Camperdown  nursery sorted out the men from the boys as a high percentage take, speed of budding and clean grafting were closely monitored.

Although there is not a lot of fruit and vegetables grown in the parks, you were expected to acquire gardening skills in all topics, so training covered vegetables, fruit and greenhouse work as well as planting trees, shrubs, roses and bedding plants, grass cutting and landscaping.

It was at Duntrune Terrace demonstration gardens that I got my propagation skills honed under the watchful eye of a very skilled head gardener. My first home grown fruit bushes started off from cuttings grown from the gardens own stock of the best black currant varieties.

It was all part of the training exercise of course.

Hardwood Cuttings Fruit

Black currants, red and white currants and gooseberries are all propagated similarly as mature one year old shoots about pencil thickness. Cut them to about six to eight inches long with the lower cut under a node and the top cut above a bud. Leave all the buds on unless you wish to grow them as cordons or on a bare stem as with gooseberries. For these remove all the buds except the top two or three. Gooseberries are best on a leg to help picking as the weight of crop often pulls the branches down to the ground where the fruit gets splashed with soil.

Insert the cuttings about four inches apart in open ground in rows, leaving about one third of the cutting above ground. Leave them to grow on for a year before lifting them in the dormant season to go to their permanent spot.

If you are planting a new row of blackcurrants, you will only need to buy half the required number, as it is necessary to prune a new bush down to a few buds to get it established. Each new bush will normally have about four stems which after pruning will give you four good cuttings. Plant all four cuttings together in a square about four inches apart in the place of another bush.

After three years you will not see any difference in size of the bushes.

Hardwood Cuttings Ornamental Shrubs

There is a wide range of ornamental trees, shrubs and roses that can be propagated from cuttings very similar to black currants.

Poplar and willow trees must be the easiest and you should achieve 100% rooting almost every time. Take one year old shoots and cut to about ten inches long and insert into rows four inches apart leaving a third above ground.

Cornus, philadelphus, forsythia, buddleia and most roses can be propagated as above, but other ornamentals may need a wee bit more care.

Often the best time to take these hardwood cuttings is either two weeks before or after leaf fall or in March just before dormancy breaks.

Cuttings are taken about six to eight inches long, and some, e.g. pyracantha are better with a heel. Prepare a bed in a cold frame or other sunny sheltered spot mixing a lot of grit and some old compost into the soil to open it up, improve drainage but still retain moisture. Cuttings are lined out about four inches apart in rows six inches apart.

Commercially cuttings are often bundled up in batches of about twenty then plunged into an open frame full of sand or grit with soil warming cables underneath in late autumn. This gives cool tops so nothing breaks into growth, but the bottom heat encourages the base of the cutting to form a callus. The bundles are checked regularly, and then as soon as roots are seen to break out of the callus, they are lined out in another frame in ordinary propagation medium.

Allow all the rooted cuttings to grow on for a year before lifting, keeping them watered, and in summer protect them from strong sunshine.

For those with less sophistication it is possible to use deep boxes filled with a mixture of sand and old potting compost to take the cuttings in smaller bundles and sink it onto the top of a fresh compost heap where there is still some heat. Leave them there till mid March then line them out, when they will have callused over and some may show root initials.

The yellow flowered Jasmine is very easy to grow as long stems often fall onto the ground where they will root very readily. Hydrangea petiolaris also roots itself into soil and moist walls at every opportunity.

Stratification

Many shrubs, e.g. cotoneaster, pyracantha, rowans, and saskatoons grown for their ornamental or edible berries can be propagated from seeds extracted from these berries.

Once the berries are mature remove them and squeeze out the seeds. Wash any remaining pulp off the seeds as it contains germination inhibiting hormones, then either store them for a few weeks in a fridge, or sow them in trays and keep them outdoors. Keep them watered and protected from birds and mice. Over winter them outdoors, then in spring you should get a good germination of young plants. Grow them on for another year in soil or pot them up individually.

Greenhouse plants

Grape vines are very easy to root. I take pruned shoots about twelve inches long in January and over winter them in bundles in my compost heap. In March I cut all the plump healthy stems into one bud cuttings. Cut each one above a bud and leave two or three inches of stem below that bud. These can be inserted individually in pots, or spaced out in a cellular tray and kept in the greenhouse. By mid summer they will be rooted and ready to pot into a bigger pot. Once well rooted they can grow very strongly and as they are quite hardy grow them outdoors all summer and autumn.

Geraniums that were started off as cuttings last October are now rooted. They were inserted in wide shallow pots at five to a pot, but they soon filled the pot. I take out the tops to make them branch and let light into the middle otherwise at this time of year they would get very leggy.

They are now branching very nicely so potting them up into an individual pot and giving them more space will keep them short jointed.

I try to keep my greenhouse unheated as it is better for my overwintering grape vines, but it is too cold for geraniums. They can take a few degrees of frost, but not over a long period, so I keep mine on the windowsills in the house until March when I feel it will be ok to give them cold greenhouse conditions.

If a late frost threatens I do have a heater I can use for a short period.

Sweet peas can now be sown any time in January or February if they were not autumn sown. Last year they were autumn sown then overwintered in my cold greenhouse. That allowed me to plant them out early, but unfortunately this was followed by a cold wet spring and an even wetter summer so the display was miserable. This year I am not sowing too early. The seeds are soaked over night in a glass of water, then sown the following day at three seeds to a pot and germinated in my studio. Soon after they emerge they will be hardened off before going into the cold greenhouse. They should be ready for planting in early April on a good day.

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