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Gardening Ideas August 2009

Post questions, comments and answers in the Gardening Ideas section on Candis Chat

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Gardeners love to talk about their favourite pastime while nattering over the fence, or swapping tips over a cuppa on the allotment. The knowledge you build up simply by trial, error and observation is enormous and often more valuable than anything you can find in a book. Our website equivalent of the garden fence is Candis Chat, so I took a look at the gardening section the other day to see and noticed several interesting questions. Some had no replies and feeling sorry for the lonely gardeners waiting for a reply, I jotted down a few ideas and suggestions. I'd love to know whether any other website visitors have interesting methods of deterring magpies or dealing with ants. If so, pass them on! Favourite winter interest plants are called for and one gardener is fascinated by tiny creatures spotted in a garden pond. So do visit Candis Chat. Someone out there might just have the answer you're looking for.

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Jobs for August

......in the kitchen garden

• sow a range of winter hardy salads into modules to plant out later. I find they grow well as clumps of four or five small plants, set 20cm//8in apart in their rows. Rainbow chard, land cress and salad rocket are hardy enough to grow without cloches.
• lift your potatoes to use or store as soon as they are ready (after flowering or when the foliage has died back). They keep ok in the ground, but are prone to damage from keel slugs, whose numbers have increased in recent years.
• prune summer fruiting raspberries by removing the old, fruited canes to ground level. Tie in the new ones (they will flower and fruit next year) and if they are very abundant, thin down to about eight per plant, choosing good, well-spaced canes.

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......in the flower garden

• feed containers of colourful bedding plants once a week for the next three weeks using a well-balanced liquid formula, to encourage healthy new shoots. Then change to a high potash fertilizer (like a tomato feed) to encourage a fab late show.
• take cuttings of summer flowering plants like fuchsia, pelargonium and osteospermum (South African daisies). These will be kept over winter as young plants in a frost free greenhouse to be planted out next May.
• look out for colourful butterflies which should be on the wing in gardens. If yours is not on their map, make a list of plants they like (Buddleja davidii, Verbena bonariensis and marjoram are favourites) and plant them this autumn.

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......and in general

• cut meadow areas of long grasses and wild flowers if not done last month, using shears for small patches and a cord or brushwood trimmer or robust rotary mower for larger areas. Leave a different patch long each year for grassland insects.
• check ties on young trees and climbing plants. After a summer of growth, you'll be surprised how much stems have swelled in girth and many a prime specimen has been ruined by constricting ties biting into the bark.
• swap plant care with your neighbours when you go on holiday, by promising to water their garden in return. Make life easy for them by organising hosepipe and cans and grouping potted plants together. Ask them to pick beans and courgettes too!

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Q and A

Q: Annette Ferguson from Peterborough has asked how and when she should prune a large and beautiful 12ft tall Fremontodendron that gave a beautiful display of yellow flowers. Some of her friends are telling her to wield her loppers after flowering and others are saying spring.

A: First, a warning. Fremontodendrons are covered in bristly scales which come off when you disturb the plant. They are extremely itchy and you definitely don't want them in your eyes and down your throat. So first, put on protective clothing including goggles and a dust mask. Both your friends are right. If the plant is large and overgrown, prune after flowering. If it grows against a wall allow your plant to keep its framework, but reduce the side stems leaving 2-4 buds or leaves behind. Shrubby plants are thinned out and flowered stems shortened. But if the plant is neat and well-behaved, you can enjoy a few late flowers and leave pruning until spring.

Q: Another website visitor would like to know what to do with her 25ft tall, 17 year old Cordyline australis after its eight flower heads have gone over. Should they be left on or cut off?

A: Cordylines have flowered spectacularly this year, so there will be lots of old flower spikes around. I tidy up by cutting them away from our plants after they've finished. Remove old dead leaves, too, or they blow all over the garden come autumn.

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Post questions, comments and answers in the Gardening Ideas section on Candis Chat