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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PUMPKINS

                                                             PUMPKINS

Pumpkins

Pumpkins belong to the cucurbita family, which also includes vegetable marrows, cucumbers, butternut squashes, gourds, courgettes, shark fin melons, melons and several other variations which differ according to the country where they are grown. Outdoors the courgettes, gourds, vegetable marrows, mildew which spreads very rapidly. They all need a warm summer and a favourable autumn to help ripen them up. The summer of 2018 was perfect for them but this year the continual wet weather and lack of sunshine has done them no favours. My two Zucchini courgettes only gave me six courgettes to take home, although the plant had great vigour. The flowers just did not set. My three pumpkins planted nearly four feet apart only produced four large fruits.
However my four pumpkins will keep Anna happy in the kitchen for several months as they go a long Butternut squash has become very popular as the main ingredient in creamy soups, ravioli filling, and risotto. It is quite sweet and has very few seeds. Pumpkins are a great plant to get the kids involved in nature and growing from seed sowing, planting, watering and feeding, and then you will need them to help in the harvest. Unfortunately they will want the biggest one for carving up into a lantern, though all the flesh scraped out can still be used for a sweet pumpkin pie, cooked of course by the kids.

Squashes

way. My favourite is roasted pumpkins, but they also make a great soup, or used as a side dish or added to numerous other recipes. Pumpkins as well as the other cucurbits are all a good source of potassium and vitamin C and rich in the antioxidants alpha and beta carotene, which are both

Roasted pumpkin slices

There were a few more but they all rotted away in the wet weather. However, vigorous shoots started running all over the place, even trying to climb up my Autumn Bliss raspberries and blackcurrant Big Ben. I had let them roam free hoping that at some point the flowers would produce a pumpkin. To get really big pumpkins give them a weekly feed with a high potash liquid feed like tomato fertiliser.


precursors to vitamin A, a vitamin that is important for keeping eyes healthy.

Auralia with her shark fin melons

butternut squashes, sharks fin melons and pumpkins are all relatively easy to grow provided they get fertile soil and a constant supply of moisture. Usually a mulch will help them through any dry spells in summer, and keep an eye out for
They have been a source of food for over 7000 years growing in their natural environment from southern Canada down to Mexico, Central America, Argentina, Chile and Brazil, but are now so popular they are grown all over the world. The USA is a massive importer of pumpkins mostly grown in Mexico. Gardeners in UK grow melons and cucumbers under glass and courgettes, marrows, squashes, gourds and pumpkins outdoors. As people on holiday see other types grown

Yellow courgettes

abroad we are now all experimenting in growing something different and then trying out new ways to cook them. The Shark Fin Melon seems to be the latest to appear in allotments. It is very vigorous and can soon take over large parts of the plot if allowed. It produces an abundance of large green and white spotted fruits which can be used in soups and stir fry dishes. Cucumbers and melons need warm conditions in a glasshouse and although the cucumber is relatively easy to grow and very productive, melons are far more challenging. They can take up a lot of space in the greenhouse, so if you grow tomatoes and a grapevine you will need a big greenhouse to accommodate a melon.

Wee jobs to do this week

Pansy hanging basket

Make up hanging baskets for a spring display. Pansies are always favourite. Use an old compost bag

inside out (black side outside) with a few slits around the side and cut to shape. Fill with a mixture of potting compost and some good garden soil and add a dusting of fertiliser. Plant up the sides first then add compost up to the top and finish the planting. To give an early start to the display, plant a few crocus bulbs amongst the pansies. I keep my hanging baskets in a cold greenhouse perched on top of a large flower pot to give them some shelter over the winter and an early start in spring.

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HEALTH BENEFITS OF BLACK FRUITS

HEALTH BENEFITS OF BLACK FRUITS

I can remember getting my first allotment up at Stirling Park on the Law Hill in early 1960s. I had a plot of land to grow fruit, vegetables and flowers and it also had a greenhouse for a few tomatoes. As a young apprentice gardener I was very eager to

Anna picking chokeberries

learn all about my trade. The plot had a row of blackcurrants which I knew were full of vitamin C so they just had to be good for you. However it was a long time after before the health benefits of fruit began to sink in as I experimented with a whole variety of fruit bushes and sought information on

Chokeberry jam

cultivation and use on the internet. All of a sudden the world becomes a small place as the internet opens up and you can reach all for information from around the world. In my early days it was the blueberry that got all the attention, and I can remember picking a range of new varieties on trial at the Scottish Crops Research Institute (now James Hutton) in the mid sixties. They are still grown up at Mylnefield but a lot of research is going into blackcurrants for commercial use. Two other black fruits grown there were the saskatoons and chokeberries (Aronia melanocarpa Viking) but they never received much attention as no-one was growing them and after many years they got grubbed out. I took an interest in saskatoons after a trip

Aronia wine fermenting

to Canada in 2004 where they are very popular and with a huge demand for them as fresh and processed fruit. When I found out that the Saskatoon was the fruiting form of the Amelanchier which is grown all over UK as an ornamental shrub, I knew they would be easy to grow here, so I started growing them about fifteen years ago.

Their popularity was helped by the fashionable custom of looking for a superfood with more health giving qualities than normal. The blueberry was very popular and had high levels of vitamin C and antioxidants, but the Saskatoon levels were even higher giving it superfood status. Its demand in Canada and the USA far exceeds its production, but in UK it has yet to find much

Aronias washed and dried

attention, apart from one grower in Pershore growing it as an additive in gin which at present is very much in fashion. A lot of research in USA and Canada has been given to the health benefits of these black fruits and while checking them out I came across the chokeberry which had been identified as the next superfood as it had more antioxidants and vitamin C than any other fruit. I had grown them before as a shrub with great autumn colour but never realised the fruit was edible, but after doing a bit more research I had to find and grow my own chokeberries. It seems that black coloured fruits have more health benefits than other fruit so I now add black grapes, blueberries and blackberries to my fruit collection. The dark skins are a rich source of vitamin C and anthocyanins, an antioxidant which may help prevent heart

Brant grapes

disease, strokes, cancer, cataracts and other chronic illnesses associated with ageing. However the fruit is a bit astringent when eaten fresh so it is usually processed and added to numerous recipes.

During my research as well as Anna’s looking for chokeberry cooking recipes we came across the Midwest Aronia Association based in Iowa which has a high concentration of Aronia growers. Their website, www.midwestaronia.org and videos were a real treat and very informative. So now Anna after acquiring the Aronia Berry Recipe book regularly creates her Aronia crumble bars, makes jam with a mix of aronia, apple and raspberry. It also goes into cakes, compote and sauces, and I use just over ten pounds for three demijohns of a fantastic wine with great health giving properties. Now that canna be bad, and should help to keep me in good form for many more years.

Lifting gladioli corms

Wee jobs to do this week

Lift and dry off gladioli, tuberous begonias and dahlias before frosty nights arrive as these plants are not hardy, though with recent mild winters I have seen both gladioli and dahlias left outside come through the winter unscathed. However I would not risk it just in case The Beast from the East pays us another visit. They can be left outside on sunny days to dry off, but then clean them up and store inside in cool but frost free building. Make sure you tie a label on the Dahlia stems so they don’t get mixed up.

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A DAY UNDER GLASS

A DAY UNDER GLASS

Crops in the greenhouse, may be well protected from the worst of the weather, so the incessant rainfall did not worry grapes, cucumbers, peppers and tomatoes, but lack of sunshine has been a big problem. Sunshine is necessary to give crops

Black Hamburg Grapes slow to ripen

a decent flavour and help to sweeten up the grapes. There has been some great very warm days but they just never last very long before the rain arrives.

Outdoor crops have suffered the most. Autumn strawberries have been prolific, but botrytis rot has affected a lot of them, and many are not very soft or sweet. Some outdoor grapes are just shrivelling up. They have had enough. Last year I got enough for a couple of demijohns of wine, but crops this year will not be producing vintage wine. However my Solaris and Seigerrebe in the greenhouse were ready for picking in August so I picked a great crop and all now sitting happy in a demijohn, with fermentation completed at 14% alcohol, though I did have to add a few ounces of sugar. Black Hamburg grapes are normally ready in late

Cherry tomatoes

October but poor weather is holding back ripening and some grapes have gone mouldy. These get removed immediately before the disease spreads, and ventilation is also very important to prevent dampness building up.

Tomatoes have given very good crops, but now damp atmosphere due to lack of sunshine and too much rain has encouraged botrytis rots on fruit, leaves and some stems of Alicante. However all my cherry tomatoes (five varieties) have cropped well except Cherry Baby. It produces trusses with well over a hundred flowers, but most of these fall of so number of fruits ripening is very poor. Supersweet 100 is my best red cherry for flavour and cropping, (over 100 tomatoes per truss and most ripened) and Sungold my best orange cherry. Sugarglass is also a good cropper but flavour

Pepper Trinidad Scorpion

and texture not as good as Supersweet 100. Hopefully tomatoes will continue to crop for a few more weeks depending on weather, but then it is time to harvest all remaining fruits and ripen them indoors. The old plants can then be removed and the soil or growbag get tidied up. However ahead of this operation you can sow a few salads for planting in this space once it is available. Use winter hardy lettuce like Hilde or Winter Imperial and some spring onions and rocket.

Hydrangea cuttings

Cuttings of fig Brown Turkey and Hydrangea Charme taken in September have rooted and can now get over wintered in the cold greenhouse. They are both hardy, but some shelter will help to get them off to a good start next year. Other cuttings of geraniums and Impatiens taken earlier to keep good varieties going for another year are better taken out of the greenhouse before frosts arrive as they are not hardy. A windowsill in a warm room is the best place for them. You can let them flower to give an attractive house plant, but in mid winter it is best to remove all flowers to keep growing shoots sturdy.

Peppers sown in early January indoors in a propagator soon germinated and were then potted up and

Rooted fig cuttings

kept on a windowsill till early May before planting in pots in the greenhouse, as well as in garden planters and hanging baskets outdoors. They are quite successful outdoors in Scotland even with our unpredictable climate, but need starting off indoors, and for good plants they need a long growing season. Keep an eye on the outdoor varieties as snails are quite fond of Pueblo chillies from Mexico. Most garden centres now stock a wide range of peppers as plug plants from mild to searingly hot, such as the Trinidad Scorpion (third hottest on record) If you wish to try out the hottest go for the Carolina Reaper, but be careful !!! For storing peppers, they can be dried and ground into flakes in a food processor, pickled, and my favourite frozen.  

Wee jobs to do this week

Snails, caterpillars and mealy aphids on sprouts

Look after the winter vegetables to keep the kitchen supplied over the coming months. Sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower and kale are still prone to attacks from slugs, snails, caterpillars and mealy aphids. Check the growing points, right into the centre and destroy any pests found. They are all easily found as they nibble young leaves. Plants are now a few feet tall but start to drop older leaves. Remove these from the ground as well as any weeds as they give shelter to slugs and snails.

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FLOWERS FOR THE SPRING

                                               FLOWERS FOR THE SPRING

Autumn is a great time to look ahead to next year and make plans for the spring flowering displays.  Bulbs play a massive role in spring displays from snowdrops and crocus to tulips and daffodils and numerous other wee bulbs with massive impact.

Tulip Red Emperor

In tubs, baskets, troughs and borders we can plant wallflower, primroses, polyanthus, pansies and myosotis to provide the main show but these are greatly enhanced by planting bulbs in between the

Aconites pushing through the snow

plants. With wallflower the tall Triumph, Darwin Hybrid, single early and Fosteriana tulips are the perfect match and come in a huge range of colours. We all have our favourites and some have been with us for many years such as Red Emperor (also known as Mme Lefebre) an early scarlet to be followed a bit later by Apeldoorn another strong red, and its partner Golden Apeldoorn. To add variety try some of the bicolours in the Rembrant tulip range and Happy Generation is a brilliant white with red markings. Purissima is a brilliant white and Purple Crystal a deep burgundy purple. Polyanthus, pansies and Myosotis are all better with tulips a bit smaller so use the dwarf double early varieties such as Showcase (deep purple) Peach Blossom (pink) Sun Lover (yellow with red markings) and Abba is a great red. The dwarf early tulips are also a perfect size to

Red polyanthus

grow in amongst roses, then later when the young rose buds need the space the tulips are ready to die down.

I like to plant up a hanging basket for spring flowers, but use pansies under planted with crocus. I usually keep them in my cold greenhouse over winter as this gives them a bit of shelter and they then come into flower a bit earlier, but keep an eye out for greenfly and leaf spot disease and spray if necessary. Pansies need regular dead heading to keep them in flower, but you can save these seed pods and sow them in late summer to provide fresh plants for the next year.

Snowdrops are always the first flowers of the New Year and with our mild winters and a sheltered location some varieties start to

Doronicum Little Leo with tulip Abba

flower in December. A drift of these close to a window is essential to raise spirits with knowledge that winter is on its way out. Even when we get a layer of snow they are tough enough to rise above the snow and open up their flowers. Then in February it is the turn of the aconites to flower. These grow and spread very easily from seed gathered and scattered wherever you want to see them flourish, so you can create large drifts and as it is a time of year when most other plants are still dormant they will not bother other plants.

Crocus follow the aconites and again they give

Crocus Pickwick

a great display when planted up in large drifts. They are perfect amongst most deciduous trees and shrubs. They will spread very slowly so I always buy a few new bulbs every year and it is easy to find a space that needs brightening up.

Daffodils also give their best display when mass planted in borders, lawns and even in gravel paths under a wall, provided you excavate poor soil, replace it with good soil plant the bulbs, and then replace the gravel. This keeps the weeds down and the daffodils will easily grow through the gravel.

White crocus

As with all flowering bulbs you need to let the leaves die down naturally (at least six weeks after flowering) before you cut back old leaves and tidy up the drifts.

Hyacinths are often used in tubs, troughs and borders, then once the flowers are over they can be planted in borders where they can continue to flower in the years to come. I like to put them in pots around house entrances and on patios where you can appreciate their perfume.

Impatiens cuttings in water

Wee jobs to do this week

The summer bedding flowers have had a good run, but now as colder weather replaces the warm

summer days geraniums and Impatiens will soon stop growing and flowering. Now is a good time to propagate them from cuttings to provide stock for overwintering and flowering again next year.

Snap out the top three inches of geranium shoots and put three around the edge of small pots full of well drained compost, water them in and place in a cool greenhouse but out of the sun. Impatiens cuttings are best placed in small jars full of water where they will root after a few weeks. They can then get potted up to flower on a sunny windowsill as a house plant.

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AUTUMN FLOWERS

                                                             AUTUMN FLOWERS

The garden is beginning to go into its autumn phase as berried plants such as the rowan, and cotoneasters are starting to steal the show and

Dahlia Thomas A Edison

summer flowers start to fade away. Although the summer has been warm, there has been so much rain that flowers have been sulking a bit so the wee bit of warm weather in the middle of September was very welcome. All of a sudden the flowers decided to go out in a blaze of glory and the garden lit up with dazzling displays of colour.

Begonias, petunias, lobelia, Impatiens and geraniums in tubs and hanging baskets sent out a bright display of flowers that we normally see in mid summer but they had been held back by constant wet weather. Geraniums were looking very weak with poor growth in summer and I was left wondering if I would be getting enough young shoots for my autumn cuttings to overwinter, but now both growth and flowers are back to normal. However a few tuberous begonias were not too happy with the wet summer as they wilted and died, though the rest are all full of flowers, but as I bought my tubers well over twenty years ago, maybe it

Pale pink Phalaenopsis

was old age. Some Impatiens (Busy Lizzies) were getting crowded out in tubs and baskets due to excessive growth of other bedding plants, but others are a mass of colour and I can see that I will still be able to get plenty of cuttings in the next few weeks to grow plants to flower in the house as well making young plants for next year.

Californian poppies are having a revival and make a great drift around the outdoor fuchsia, up at City Road allotments and pansies planted in our large communal flower border to create some spring colour, must be enjoying the new border as they have been a mass of colour the whole year. The council gave us a huge

Rose Arthur Bell

trailer load of Discovery compost to help establish this flower border and this seems to have helped our brilliant show of pansies.

On the allotment plot plants grown for cut flower such as chrysanthemums and dahlias have never been better and may well keep going for many more weeks, but gladioli are now all finished and sweet peas are also well past their best.

Roses have struggled this year as both mildew and blackspot infestations have been very serious and as soon as any young shoot appeared it was a target for the plagues of greenfly. Some spraying and pruning away infected shoots has been necessary so we are hoping for a late display of colour.

The white Anemone Honorine Jobert and pink Nerine bowdenii always put on a great display at the beginning of autumn no matter what weather is thrown at them. The Nerine grows from spring till the

The last roses of summer

end of summer then just as the leaves start to die down the flowers appear in a large drift of brilliant pink blossom. Down at ground level my Cyclamen hederifolium is in full flower. It shares the ground with the spring flowering Aconites but as both grow and flower at different times they work well together. The Cyclamen flowers ahead of any foliage (opposite to the Nerines) then as they begin to fade the leaves appear and remain till the end of winter, and just as the Aconites appear and need the space the cyclamen leaves die down; very convenient.

Tubs with summer flowers

Calluna H E Beale is a great late summer/early autumn heather with very bright pink flowers. I have always grown this plant since I first came across it about forty years ago, and once established it is perfect for keeping weeds away as the foliage is so dense.

At home it is the phalaenopsis orchid that catches the eye and this year it has one stem with nearly thirty flowers all out at the same time. It gets watered once or twice every week and is kept in a light place but away from direct sunlight otherwise damage may occur to the leaves.

Amaryllis in bloom

Wee jobs to do this week

Looking ahead to the festive season now is a good time to sort out some plants for flowering at

Christmas. Poinsettias and cyclamen are always in plentiful supply in supermarkets nearer the time, but most people like the challenge of getting an Amaryllis bulb and getting it to flower for Christmas. Now is the time to pot them up in the smallest pot and leave at least half the bulb above the compost. Keep it on a sunny windowsill and keep it watered. It may need staking if it grows tall.

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ALLOTMENT LIFE

                                                             ALLOTMENT LIFE

I got my first allotment when I was a mere young lad of sixteen, not long started as an apprentice gardener and looking for ways to learn all about gardening. The plot had a greenhouse and as it was on the Law Hill the views were brilliant, and

Break time for works team

at weekends pop music was played from Dens Park before the match began. Other plot holders were all very helpful and I was in my element. As horticulture took me all over the UK I still longed for an

Grandad helping Scarlet plant her pumpkins

allotment so when I went to Darlington I got a huge plot at Barmpton Lane, twice normal size at 600 square yards. My ambition was to become self sufficient all year round with fruit, vegetables. Eventually my career took me back home to Dundee when I took an interest in growing Saskatoon fruit bushes and needed some land to grow them on. So I ended up at City Road allotments about ten years ago. The site has over sixty plots of varying sizes on a south facing slope with good soil. We have communal sheds, a shop open at weekends, toilets and there is plenty parking on City Road. The site is leased by the Council and managed internally by a committee. Over time all the plot holders get to know one another as they seek information on growing something new.

Fresh garden produce for sale

People lead busy lives so they need to wind down by getting back to nature growing fresh fruit and vegetables. Today many folk live in flats and modern houses tend to have had the gardens paved over with slabs, concrete and granite chips, so they need an allotment. Plot holders get plenty fresh air and exercise, and there is a strong social side as we keep the communal sheds well stocked with tea, coffee and milk and someone always brings in a few savouries or some home baking. However it sometimes comes as a bit of a shock with new plot holders as their wee bits of garden need some hard graft to dig them over and keep those weeds down. Then just when you think you are winning, the pigeons, caterpillars, mice, greenfly and numerous diseases arrive when your backs turned and start

Time for a wee break

to chomp away at your prize fruit and vegetables, and that’s not the end of problems down on the land. Gales, thunderstorms, occasional snow flurries, drought and tropical temperatures all arrive to test your temperament. But we keep on trying as the rewards more than make up for it. For older folk it is a means of keeping in touch with the gardening community, and for the younger folk with kids a great way to let them see where their food comes from.  Our plot holders come from all corners of the globe bringing with them plants from their native countries. It is interesting to see sweet potatoes, kiwis, Chinese cabbage, saskatoons, figs, chokeberries and many plots have grapes growing outdoors as well as under glass.

New flower border in spring

The social side of allotment life has developed as work party volunteers get together to tackle overgrown plots, path repairs, hut repairs and painting, burst water pipes and recently the creation of flower borders near the entrance and along City Road so our site is an attractive with flowers in bloom from spring till winter. Then we have our Open Day in summer and participate in the Doors Open Event in autumn so the public are invited in to see how we look after our plots. We have recently gained charity status so now we can apply for grants to improve our site. Our next project once we get funding will be to create a plot suited for disabled gardeners so there will be raised beds and good access, and improved toilet facilities. The social side of allotment life often ends the growing season with a party with good food, a wee drink and a fair bit of singing and dancing where space permits. We must have impressed the judges when we entered the Dundee City Council Allotments competition. Our site took the top award and one of our plot holders won the best plot in town for the second year running.

Hydrangea Charme

Wee jobs to do this week

Hydrangea Charme is looking great this year and is easy to propagate with young shoots used as cuttings, taken about four inches long and cut across the stem just below a pair of leaves, and then remove all large leaves. Place about three or four cuttings around a pot filled with free draining compost and water in. Place cuttings in a warm but shady place and cuttings should be well rooted towards the end of autumn and ready to pot up.

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