GARDENER'S WORD - IDEAS AND TIPS

The dreadful wind that we are having these past two days has blown a red raspberry or more over the fence into the neighbour's jungle.  If only I had picked them.  Still, there are plenty little green ones left, if the sun will only come out.  If only.

Despite the terrible gales which are drying out my hanging baskets and pots like crazy, and trying to rip plants of the fence, everything is stubbornly hanging on in.  So far. Arthur Bell has been flowering since May Arctic Queen clematis Delicate begonias coping well Unwins Sweet Peas Soleil F1 Hybrid courgette - still churning them out David Austin's 'Wild Eve' still flowering in shady border Gardeners Delight tomatoes - green, still

I thought I'd seen the last of summer fruits in my garden but Polka the wonder raspberry just keeps on coming.  Amazingly, it produced raspberries in early summer - just the usual size although they had a lovely flavour.  But now it is producing whoppers.  Mind you, I'm not complaining.  Polka is a primocane type of raspberry which means that the fruit appears in autumn on canes that emerged in spring.  Other types are floricanes which make fruit on canes which appeared the previous year. Polka raspberries  I'm not getting them by the basketload but there are lots and lots of ripening ones on the plant still. And what is also great about this twice fruit-bearing raspberry is that the canes are thorn free.  This is what the Royal Horticultural Society website has to say about Polka: "Position: full sun Soil: fertile, well-drained soil Rate of growth: fast-growing Other features: large, delicious raspberries from mid summer until the ...

I always have a fear in winter that I am going to lose plants that I cherish and so I propagate them so that, even if I lose some, I might not lose all.  Last year the parsley didn't fare too well even though it had been a massive plant when I put it into my little plastic greenhouse for the winter.  Even so, one stalk survived and I planted it and it went on to produce a lovely display of little green flowers - rather like a green gypsophila.  In spring this year, I bought another parsley and that too is now massive and I expect that too will succumb to our terribly cold and snowy winters that we get here, high up on the Pennines.  This year I went a bit mad, buying all sorts of herbs and today I propagated rosemary, lavender, applemint, lemon mint, lemon balm, and lemon verbena.  I like lemon.  Did you guess?  I divided the huge clump of chives into one big pot and two smaller ones, and I took cuttings from the low hedge of pelargoniums tha...

It's a sad thing when you have to get rid of a plant that is established and doing well but Albertine had to go.  Albertine is a rambling rose with thorns like fish hooks.  One got well embedded under the skin on my forearm the other day, when I accidentally fall into the rose, and that made my decision.  Albertine makes a glorious show of roses in summer but it is not a repeat flowerer and it is a savage thing, taking much pruning to keep it in shape and control as it can grow 12ft high and spread 15ft at least!  I shall have to look for something more gentle to take its place, something without thorns, a repeat flowerer, with a great fragrance.  Sorry Albertine. Albertine has vicious thorns Albertine When you've gotta go, you've gotta go.

I know I keep banging on about roses but I cannot help it - it's an addiction of kinds.  I bought such expensive David Austin roses and while they are wonderful, they seem, somehow, unable to beat the beauty of Ice Berg and New Dawn.  Take a look... Ice Berg (the climber,but there is a shrub version) New Dawn New Dawn grows quite well on the shadier side of my garden.  I understand now that The Generous Gardener (a David Austin rose) could also be grown on the shady side, although mine is in the sun. The Generous Gardener

While pesky pests such as slugs and caterpillars have had a go at my plants, things are still coming up lovely.  If you haven't yet grown Apple Mint, I can recommend it.  I use it to make a refreshing change from coffee.  I do wish I liked ordinary tea, but it isn't going to happen.  Apple Mint It grows wonderfully, as do my chives.  I cannot eat them fast enough!  Chives And the new carrots, red lettuce and Rocket (in pots), are doing fine. Carrots (with a garlic clove), bergamot, and lettuce in pots

If there is one thing I resent in my garden, it is the caterpillars gnawing on my hanging baskets' sapphire lobelia and pooping purple on my wonderfully divine marble table top.  Stop it or be squashed! I've had to move the table out from under the hanging baskets.  I know it is the purple poop that is doing it and not just the flowers themselves as the problem has only just started.  Million Bells on marble table I bought an expensive marble cleaner and a marble sealer last year from http://www.sealer-seal-sealant.co.uk/ .   The products are actually made by Tikko  http://www.tikkoproducts.com/ )    When you are lucky enough to find yourself a table so pretty, (Marks & Spencers, 2007) it is a pity to let it spoil.  At the cost of about £30-40 for two 1 litre bottles, it is a good thing that the products do a really good job.  You only need to use a little bit so it will last for years - hopefully! I am really pleased with the M...

I think roses will always be my favourite garden plant but I do love sweet peas - they give so much.  For the past couple of years, they have not grown very well in my new garden but that is probably because the soil was not all it could be back then.  Now it is getting richer with the addition of compost and leaf mould, and this year my sweet peas are doing wonderfully.  The more you pick them, the more they flower.  I have them in the kitchen and in the living room. They have grown very tall!  Might have to borrow a ladder to get at them! 

This year I grew Cosmos at the front of my border.  I thought it would grow to maybe 12 inch high or so.  I'd seen it at the Royal Horticultural Society gardens in Harlow Carr, near Harrogate, and there's were quite weedy specimens, about a foot high. Not mine.  Mine are huge, dense bushes, filled with glorious flowers all reaching for the sky.  What is more miraculous is that the soil in which they are planted is hard, rocky, clay, and I could not dig deeper than about six inch.  I shall grow these again, but not at the front of my borders! You can see how big they are (there are two side by side).  They are burying the heuchera and inbetween, somewhere underneath all that, is a dianthus. 

When all else fails, you can always grow runner beans.  For the last few days we have had nothing but rain and grey skies and the garden is starting to look miserable.  The tomatoes are not ripening, the sweet peppers look as if they are freeze-framed, the courgettes are begging for sunshine (as am I) and the lettuce look to be shouting 'slugs, here I am'. But the runner beans are lapping up the rain.  I grow them as a small hedge, and I grow them tall up my back fence.  They are bursting with pretty pink and white flowers, and dripping with beans.  My only problem, can I eat them fast enough.  Sure I can, if I pick them young.  My first pickings this year   Grow them tall   Grow them small  

My garden is small and it  has to be versatile.  I don't want heaps of flowers without the joy of eating my own garden produce; nor do I want loads of vegetables without the beauty and fragrance of flowers for picking or just enjoying in my garden.  Sometimes we miss things, I think.  When I take a photo and get real close, it is funny what the camera sees that I initially missed.  There is a spider in this hanging basket begonia.  Cheeky little beggar, pinching the bees' pollen.  I think begonias are lovely in a hanging basket and, of course, they tolerate partial shade.  One of my favourite things to grow is sweet peas.  This year I have sacrificed a little of the scent of the old-fashioned type by growing a mixture of a more modern kind.  They are still fragrant and so it is a happy compromise.

Wonderful how rain can invigorate plans in a way that tapwater never can.  Must be all the nitrogen or something.  I grow everything for a salad except cucumbers. Lunch I haven't really grown carrots before - not successfully.  This year I bought a cheap packet of economy carrot seeds and put them in a pot.  They are wonderful, when picked young, with my salads.  I now have other pots of carrots growing, at different stages.  I plant a garlic clove in the centre.  The idea is to keep away carrot fly.  Don't know if it works or not but the carrots seem healthy enough. Young Carrots with a garlic clove in the centre To be honest, I cannot remember a time when things have grown so well.  This year we are getting plenty of sunshine here in West Yorkshire (UK), I think, as well as rain.  The temperatures are decent, and everything in my garden is quite happy.  Especially me!  My lettuces are growing so fast that ...

Apart from dead-heading, weeding, and watering, there is little to do at this time of year.  I am always happier when there is something to occupy me and so I am thinking of taking some lavender cuttings.  I have two plants (lavandula angustifolia) and they are so beautiful and compact that I think it worth while having more.  It would seem that this is a good enough time to do that - see link. http://www.gardenersworld.com/how-to/projects/lavender-cuttings/ Meanwhile, I'll keep on cutting the sweet peas to make them flower even more, and picking the tomatoes which never cease to amaze me.  When I read about others living in warmer parts of the country and all their tomato problems - the disease and the lack of flowers - I wonder what I am doing right!  Something, I guess.  Cosmos, Unwins Special Mix Sweet Peas, and carrot tops! Tumbling Toms I often pick the tomatoes just before they are ripe because there are so many growing, that the ...

Last year I introduced the raspberry 'Polka' to my garden.  I had never grown raspberries before and, having read up on them, expected this year to just have one small crop on the two tall canes that had grown.  The fruit was healthy and fat and juicy and I must have got about two small bowlfuls out of them.  When the canes looked as if they were finished producing fruit, I cut them down to the ground as 7 new, bright and healthy canes had sprung up to take their place - some really thick and strong and already over 6ft tall!  I was amazed to see yesterday that there are flowers on the new canes.  I had thought that the new canes would only produce fruit next year on this year's growth.   Polka Apparently, (without my knowing it), 'Polka' is an award winner.  I found the following website that says so.  Fancy that!  And additional bonus of 'Polka' is that it doesn't have thorns; the stems are smooth and clean. http://www.rhspla...

There's nothing like a couple of rainy days to invigorate plants after a long dry spell.  Tap water just isn't the same.  My lettuce, Webbs Wonderful, are going berserk out there, shooting up.  I've put a few slug pellets down as a precautionery measure (I never use them by the handful, just one or two here and there) to ward off any unwelcome dinner guests although I get very few slug or snail problems in my garden.  Touch wood!  Webbs Wonderful with Solo F1 Hybrid between between the rows   The shady side of the garden has been and is a challenge.  I am growing aquilegia, honeysuckle, astilbe, geraniums, and roses that are said to be shade tolerant - New Dawn, Aloha, and Wild Eve - but it is quite frustrating waiting for the roses to get going.  Even so, they are much larger than they were when I first planted them last year and patience is said to be a virtue...  With luck and sunshine, and rain, they may reach the top of the fence next ye...