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Month: October 2011

Autumn Sunshine for Gardeners

Autumn Sunshine for Gardeners

Leaves Autumn 049

Make the most of the autumn sunshine it is warming and creates warm colours in the leaves of our plants and trees.
Chlorophyll is leaving the leaves of plants and only background colouring caused by the remaining chemicals is visible until the leaves fall.

Leaves Autumn 065

What Happens in Autumn Sunshine

  • A green leaf is green because of the presence of the pigment chlorophyll.
  • During the growing season chlorophylls’ green color dominates and masks out the colors of any other pigments that may be present in the leaf. Thus the leaves of summer are characteristically bright green.
  • The green helps capture the sunshine and convert the energy into plant sugars and thus growth. This is called photosynthesis.
  • During winter, there is not enough light or water for photosynthesis.
  • In Autumn the shorter days signal winter and trees begin to shut down their food-making factories.
  • The trees will rest and live off the food they stored during the summer.

Leaves Autumn 018

Why do Leaves Change Colour

  • Loosing leaves is one way of a plant disposing of waste chemicals.
  • It has been suggested that autumn colours may be a warning signal towards insects that use the trees for food.
  • Trees need some sort of protection to survive freezing temperatures and harsh winters. Stems, twigs, and buds are equipped to survive extreme cold so that they can reawaken when spring heralds the start of another growing season. Tender leaf tissues would freeze in winter so plants must either toughen up their leaves (evergreens) or dispose of them.
Funny Garden Signs

Funny Garden Signs

Some funny signs at our local allotment – Elder Stubbs, Florence Park, Oxford

Giant Leek Mankind

“Giant Leek for Mankind”

“Spuddau Ballet”

“That’s One Small Spud for a Flan”

~

The Peatles

“The Peatles”

– I’m Dried,

– I’m Sweet

– I’m Musy

– I’m Frozen

– I’m Ringo

~

Thanks very Mulch

“Thank You! Thank You Very Mulch”

~

…

Read More Read More

Help with Garlic Growing

Help with Garlic Growing

Garlic

You will not need a lot of help growing Garlic if you select UK Garlic bulbs that are appropriate for our climate. Buy from seed merchants rather than use the greengrocers supply which may be a tender overseas variety. Plant separate cloves in rich soil from now until January but sooner the better.

There are two main types of Garlic with either hard necks or soft necks both are fine with many varieties and flavours.

Help Growing Garlic

  • Garlic should be planted in a sunny spot during October or November so that they form a good root system before winter.
  • Garlic will stand at least 10 degrees of frost and needs cold weather to help it form cloves next year.
  • Garlic needs plenty of phosphate for root growth before planting, a little nitrogen in March to develop the leaves and help it photosynthesise and plenty of potash to harden off.
  • Break up the bulb into cloves and plant each one 1-2″ deep ‘nose up roots down’.
  • Leave 5-6″ between each planted clove.
  • When planting use the outer cloves with one rounded and one flat side from each head. The inner cloves, which are square or triangular should be used in the kitchen.
  • The best crops will be produced on light well drained soil.

 

Help Gathering Garlic

  • Water the plants regularly from spring. Stop watering a month before harvesting
  • Gather the crop in June or July.
  • The garlic with soft necks will bend over like an onion when raedy to be cropped. Hardnecked garlic should be picked when the leaves start to change colour.
  • Snap off any flower spikes as soon as you see them. Eat them in stir fries as revenge for taking energy from your plants.
  • Store Garlic in the dry. They are fine in platted ropes like the old French onion sellers.

Help Am I too Late to Plant Garlic

  • You can plant Garlic in frost free soil until January.
  • If you need to plant them later than January then, according to the National Vegetable Society, ‘the early root system can be enhanced by a form of chitting. Half fill a cardboard toilet roll tube with damp compost and set a clove on top. Stand the tubes indoors on capillary matting for a week or two, so that the roots start into growth. Once the roots emerge from the bottom plant the clove, tube and all, as soon as soil conditions permit.’

Help Selecting Garlic Varieties for the UK

  1. Solent Wight – a heavy cropper with large cloves
  2. Albigensian Wight – spring or autumn planting good keeper
  3. Purple Wight a ‘hard neck’ best used fresh as it is a poor storer
  4. Long Keeper large white bulbs to harvest in July from autumn planting.
  5. Early Wightanother ‘hard neck variety’ with AGM in purple variety
  6. Luatrec Wight fat pink cloves with white outer skin and a good keeper.
  7. White Pearl autumn planted will store reasonalble well.
  8. Pink Lady a pink skinned bulbs and gloves that can be eaten raw.
  9. Germidore softneck variety that is well adapted to British conditions. Produces large, white bulbs with a mild but rich flavour.
  10. Chesnok Red a hardneck variety from Georgia with attractive purple striping and a lovely, full-bodied flavour. Lovely choice for baking as it has a lovely creamy texture. Great for garlic bread!

Elephant Garlic would be in many best top ten lists but is closely related to the Leek side of the allium family see Gardeners tips

Note  Bulbs of various varieties are from available from Thompson & Morgan

Credit photo ‘Garlic, food, roadside market, farmer’s market, culinary, cooking’ by mullica, on Flickr

Snap Dragons Den for Antirrhinums

Snap Dragons Den for Antirrhinums

Antirrhinum

Invest in some Antirrhinums but ignore the cynical dragons on the BBC TV programme ‘Dragons Den’ who are yet to invest in a garden business.

Ways of Growing Antirrhinums

  • Grow from seed using the sowing instructions on the packet. Generally they recommend sowing in March or April although I have some overwintering plants sown in September.
  • Buy young seedlings from a garden centre in spring. You do not need to worry about damping off if you buy a pot full of seedlings.
  • Buy plug plants that will save you the job of pricking out and some seedling losses. The jumbo plugs can go straight into the ground.
  • Antirrhinums are short lived perennials and will probably return to flower next season. Trim them before winter to avoid straggly growth and encourage new branches in spring.
  • Allow your plants to set seed and they will self sow or you can collect the prolific seed for your own sowing. Setting seed is a sign for the plant to stop flowering so an alternative is to deadhead to get more flowers than seed.

Antirrhinum siculum

Antirrhinum siculum (Above) is a more exotic breed of snapdragon growing in warm dry conditions.

Comment
Six ways to grow Antirrhinums and confound the snapdragon fraternity with colourful, scented, cut and garden flowers.
Seeds are not a big investment and you get a good return for your money without needing outside investors.
Being a natural gardener you wont need to give away 50% of your plants for an investment of half the price of a packet but may be willing to do so.

Air Filtering Plants for Home

Air Filtering Plants for Home

Pot Mum

Modern homes and modern materials can have an effect on your health. Plants that filter the air or react with pollutants can make your home a better place to live in several well-being ways.

Why Homes Need Air Filtering Plants

  • Formaldehyde can be released from household furnishings, carpeting, foam insulation, upholstery, curtains, and furniture made from MDF or composites. Formaldehyde can cause sore eyes, nose, and throat or nausea, coughing, and even skin rashes.
  • Smoking consumes oxygen as it created carbon dioxide and monoxide. Plants reverse this process by consuming carbon dioxide and releasing Oxygen. Plants will not achieve a reduction in the particles left by smoking.
  • Xylene, toluene and benzene are volatile gases which can effect sore eyes and stimulate potential allergies.
  • Trichloroethylene is an industrial solvent which has anesthetic properties that can lead to depression.
  • Some house plants are more efficient in filtering out toxins than others

Best Air Filtering Recommendations

  • There are numerous lists of plants that have air filtering properties. Nasa conducted a thorough study of both plants and the chemicals that they remove. This list is the best I have come across and I recommend you check it out on wikipedia
  • NASA recommend growing a good-sized houseplant for every 100 square-foot 10 m2 within the house.
  • Air fresheners are not to be relied upon. They may mask smells but give off chemical pollution.
  • Some house plants are more efficient in filtering out toxins than others
  • Gardeners tips recommends you grow a good variety of houseplants and Pot Mums to look good and help pollution control

Other Plant Filtering Benefits

  • In the home Chrysanthemum plants offers colour, tranquility and are one of the best pollution controls according to the NASA table.
  • Outdoors Bioremediation uses plants that mitigate environmental problem without the need to excavate the contaminant material and dispose of it elsewhere.
  • Phytostabilization uses plants to reduce wind erosion or the plant roots to prevent water erosion and offers long-term stabilization and containment of pollutants.
  • Phytotransformation uses special plants for specific problems such as pesticides, explosives, solvents, industrial chemicals. Cannas and Sunflowers can render these substances non-toxic by their metabolism.
  • Phytoremediation consists of mitigating pollutant concentrations in contaminated soils with plants able to contain, degrade, or eliminate metals, pesticides and solvents in a soil.

Houseplants 018

More Benefits of Air Filtering Plants Outside the Home

Air filtering plants in an office can help reduce air conditioning energy consumption according to a study by K Meattle.
Better blood oxygen supply increases productivity.
See video

Help With Plant Photography

Help With Plant Photography

Hypericum
Photo A
Please help with my plant photography!
Which of these Hypericum – St Johns Wort photographs looks best and why.

Hypericum
Photo B
The West Yorkshire branch of the Alpine garden society had Peter Cordall as speaker on Saturday. The title of his talk was ‘Photography in the garden – garden landscapes to close-ups’.
Whilst I listened carefully I am painfully aware that I have breached many of his rules of thumb from the very start.

Hypericum
Photo C
I should have had a title and know what I was photographing before I started.
‘Hypericum’ is not a great title but ‘Hemispheres and Hypericum’ may have worked better.

St Johns Wort
Photo D
I did take several shots and tried to use my favourites, the rest wont see light of day again.

Other Photography Failings

  • I failed in composition even though I tried hard to divide the frame into thirds and place the interest on a crossing point. This is harder than I thought.
  • So is picturing the main subject as though it was moving into the frame rather than facing out.
  • Crystal sharp focus on the critical part of the photo has been sacrificed to an extent in favour of decent depth of field automatically without engaging brain.
  • I have done no cropping or editing – I very seldom do.
  • Some backgrounds are a distraction but fortunately I have no unintentional lamp posts in view

I should have read up on Related posts

New Oriental Poppies

New Oriental Poppies

Opium Poppy

New Oriental Poppies are being bred to satisfy the gardeners demand for more and easier to grow plants from this flamboyant species.
Some outstanding new hybrid Oriental Poppy varieties were on show at Chelsea in 2011. see below.
The flowers are huge and brightly coloured with velvety fringed and frilled petals.
They are fully double with bold markings and designs.

Information on Ruffled Oriental Poppies

  • These hybrid Poppies bloom in May and June each year on vigourous plants up to 3 feet tall.
  • Plant them in groups of 3 or 5 and in the perennial border.
  • They are plants that are fully hardy and can last for a lifetime.
  • Oriental Poppies do well in the sun or light shade in well-drained soil.
  • The new generation of Oriental Poppies have shorter flowering stems that over come the wind swept images of the past. Plant 12-15 inches part.
  • Oriental poppies are at there best upto July after which they retreat and can be cut back.
  • To fill the gap created by this disappearance use companion planting with annuals such as Baby’s Breath or Dahlias, or Asiatic Lilies.
  • For use as cut flowers cut in early morning when the buds are just unfolding. Sear the stem’s cut end with a flame.
  • You can acquire or just admire plants as part of a collection

New Varieties of Oriental Poppy to Select

  • White Ruffles is a low growing variety 16″ high. The flowers are white with a dark base and the petals are serrated to look frilly.
  • Ruffled Patty related to Patty’s Plum, has large round lilac flowers streaked with red at the base. It grows a foot higher than White Ruffles.
  • Pink Ruffles is semi double and opens wide to display black stamen.
  • Traditional favourites include Brilliant, Picotee, Prince of Orange, Raspberry Queen, Royal Chocolate Distinction, Royal Wedding and Türkenlouis Oriental Poppies.

poppy

101 Gardener’s Resolutions and Plans

101 Gardener’s Resolutions and Plans

Wild meadow

Plant and Floral Resolutions

  • Grow the plants and flowers you like.
  • Grow more flowers for cutting.
  • Grow plants for shape, texture and form.
  • Tie to supports Clematis, Chimonanthus and Climbing Roses to prevent wind damage and improve flowering.
  • Increase the planting of scented Witch Hazel (eg. Hamamellis x intermedia Jelena).
  • Sow Sweet Peas in deep pots and pinch out the tips when they have 5 leaves.
  • Plan how the colour of flowers will look when planted. Use single colours rather than mixed seed packets.
  • Collect and replant or distribute the seed from your own star plants.
  • Grow plants that contribute over long periods of the year.
  • Select and grow a shock and awe plant.

Eco and Environmental Resolutions

  • Remember we must leave this environment for future generations.
  • Grow fewer varieties but focus on nectar and pollen rich flowers that are local and help wild life.
  • Improve soil with rotted compost and try not to compact the air out of wet soil by walking on it.
  • Increase water collection and storage with linked butts or new collection points.
  • Fumigate the greenhouse to get rid of fungal spores and overwintering pests
  • Provide a range of different bird foods to attract various species. Blackbirds love a bit of a bite of an apple.
  • Keep lawn edges neat and trimmed but have natural areas for wild grass and flowers.
  • Use natural fertiliser and non-chemical controls.
  • Reuse and repurpose old items rather than sending them to the tip.
  • Use local and natural stone for your construction work. Airmiles on Indian paving and energy used to manufacture composition paving slabs are unnecessary uses of resources.

General Gardening Resolutions

  • Reduce the size of plant clumps and shrubs and trees that are beginning to take over their allotted spot.
  • Deadhead faded flowers to extend flowering time.
  • Prune and trim when plants need it not just when you have the secateurs in your hand.
  • Sow seeds thinly and thin out. Give plants appropriate space.
  • Make succession sowings, only sow small quantities of a crop at each sowing.
  • Split clumps of Snowdrops and Winter Aconites after flowering. They split best ‘in the green’.
  • Create a low maintenance area to spend time elsewhere in the garden.
  • Take full enjoyment out of your garden.
  • Listen to advice but do as you please.
  • Work with the weather it is all you’ll get.

Houseplants and Indoor Pots

  • Check plants for pests before bringing them into your home.
  • Keep Azalea and Cyclamen pot plants moist at all times.
  • Flowering plants need bright light so position accordingly.
  • Repot plants into larger pots if have consumed the compost or are in need of space.
  • Add fresh compost to the top of pots when the houseplants are not growing as strongly.
  • Keep pots of bulbs and flowering plants cool to prolong the life of the flowers.
  • Many houseplants will benefit from some time outside in the middle of summer.
  • Water the plants not the windowsills.
  • Move plants around in the home.
  • Try the exotic not the commonplace.

Win Friends and Influence People

  • Grow more flowers and greenery for cutting and flower arranging. It should please those indoors
  • Grow pots and containers of plants to give away. It is an easy way to use your surplus.
  • Sharpen your blades and tools using a sharpening stone and wipe over with oil
  • Look at your garden from your boundary and aim for at least one crowd pleasing feature for passers by to admire.
  • Join your local horticultural society, you will get advice, make friends and may be offered free or cheap produce.
  • Use the RHS and AGS for information and join these societies if you want to use the benefits of membership.
  • Plant to visit flower shows and open gardens to see how the professionals design and execute a garden scheme.
  • Beg cuttings or advice from other gardeners, they are usually a friendly bunch. I was once told ‘Everyone is entitled to my opinion’.
  • Enter your local village show. It is the taking part that is important not the winning.
  • Keep your boundary and pavements neat and tidy. Pick up litter and kill off weeds outside your house to make the street a better place to live.

Allotment Focused Resolutions

  • Get an allotment!
  • Alternatively increase cultivated area by a deal with a neighbor
  • Mastered the art of successional sowing to avoid gluts.
  • Grow more winter crops
  • Store potatoes, butternut squashes, onions and shallots.
  • Pick courgettes and runner beans regularly.
  • Protect against carrot root fly, cabbage white butterfly and Pigeons before it is too late.
  • Get more manure to hearten up the soil.
  • Talk to other allotmenteers about successes and failures of the past
  • Grow what the family will eat.

Gardeners Tips Resolutions

  • Read Gardeners Tips regularly
  • Subscribe to gardeners tips RSS feed
  • Get Gardeners tips by email.
  • Buy from Jersey Plants or Thompson Morgan by using Gardeners tips links.
  • Comment on Gardeners tips.
  • Link your web site to Gardeners tips.
  • Advertise on Gardeners tips.
  • Tell your friends about Gardeners tips.
  • Nominate the best resolution from the list of 101 Gardeners tips new year’s resolutions
  • Did I mention Gardeners tips for the best gardening tips?

Fruit and Vegetable Resolutions

  • Grow more fruit and disbud so that apples, pears and plums grow to a good size.
  • Grow early potatoes in containers or sacks such as International Kidney or Vales Emerald for something newer.
  • Start chillie seeds early on a sunny windowsill.
  • If I grow Chard Bright Lights in a decorative bed I must remember to eat the crop not just look at it.
  • Two or three Marrow plants can provide all the courgettes a family needs. Try Defender or Green Bush
  • Reshape old Apple trees during winter by pruning to get a bowl shape that lets in air and light.
  • Divide congested clumps of Rhubarb .
  • Feed the area around the roots of fruit trees.
  • Consider more space for fruit such as Stone fruit, Bush fruit, Cane fruit, Soft fruit and Apple and Pear trees.
  • Add lime to the soil where you plan to grow brassicas and leafy greens.

Fun Resolutions

  • Give me patience but hurry!
  • Apply perspiration in the garden regularly.
  • If it dies its a flower if it lives its a weed.
  • With a flower in one hand and a cold drink in the other, tell somebody else where to dig.
  • Have pride in how bad your hands look.
  • Learn by by trowel and error.
  • The four seasons are salt, pepper, mustard and brown sauce.
  • It is knowledge to know Tomato is a fruit but wisdom to stop putting it in a fruit salad.
  • Go to the Yorkshire garden center where you can buy one – get one
  • Grow your own dope … plant a man.

Restate the Blinking Obvious

    • Do more weeding.
    • Cut the grass regularly.
    • Keep everything tidy.
    • Water deeply when needed.
    • Excel with the plants you already grow.
    • Kill insects that cause damage.
    • Stop infectious rot and disease.
    • Turf out the dead and dying.
    • Nature causes living things to suffer and die.

 

  • Do not believe all you read in lists like this.

 

 

 

Give links and credits such as this to Gloxinia

Number of Species and Plant Classification

Number of Species and Plant Classification

There is always someone recounting the number of species on Earth and the numbers usually differ! Accepting the limits of the guesstimates involved perhaps this list will give some idea of the scale.

Statistic on Number of Species (2011 estimates)

    • Total number of species 8,700,000 eight point seven million. 86% still undiscovered.
    • Land based species 6.5 million sea based 2.2 million – seems low for the sea to me!
    • Number of animals 7,770,000 three quarters of which are Arthropods (insects and crustaceans)
    • Total of all land plants including trees, mosses, ferns, conifers, flowering plants, and so on = 298,000. (I bet I have that many weeds in my garden.)
    • Fungi 611,000, protazoa and chromista 64,000 (and the dollar question is what are they).

ref Dr Camilo Mora Census of Marine Life

Biological Classification Table


Creative commons share alike license from wikipedia

Plant Classification

Species
The rank of species is an important botanical classification. Plants within a species can be very different for example consider the types of Apple or Rose.
‘A species is a group of plants with similar DNA that are capable of interbreeding and producing fertile offspring.’
The creation of genetic variation in a plant species and the selection from within that variation of plants with desirable and inheritable traits, forms the basis of one or more plant varieties.

Variety
This has two similar meanings. It is a legal term for a cultivated plant protected under UPOV
Some horticulturists use “variety” imprecisely; for example, viticulturists almost always refer to grape cultivars as “grape varieties”.

Cultivar or Variety
Cultivars are produced by careful breeding, propogation and selection for flower colour and form on plants such as roses, rhododendrons and many farm & food crops.
A cultivar name consists of a botanical name of a genus, species and taxon followed by a cultivar epithet. Cultivar names are always written in Roman letters enclosed in single quotes, like Hosta ‘August Moon’ it should not be italicized.
Rosa ‘Peace’ “Peace” is a trade designation or “selling name” for the cultivar R. ‘Madame A. Meilland’ and should therefore be printed in a different typeface from the rest of the name, without quote marks, for example: Rosa Peace.

Hybrids.
Hybrid consists of crosses between different cultivars within a single species. This meaning is often used in plant breeding, where hybrids are commonly produced and selected because they have desirable characteristics not found or inconsistently present in the parent. Occasionally plants from two different species can be hybridised or ‘crossed’. They are usually given a collective latin name or English name Quercus x hispanica or Rhododendron Lady Chamberlain x Gleam.

Common Names
Common names may be local or descriptive but are too inconsistent to be part of a plants formal name for identification purposes.
An example may be Quercus coccinea “Scarlet Oak”(common name)

Plant Names and Protections

The International Plant names index has records from three sources: the Index Kewensis 1million plus, the Gray Card Index 350,000 and the Australian Plant Names Index 63,000. Whilst needing some deduplication it ‘represents the most comprehensive listing of plant names available today’.

The Plant Varieties Act 1997 establishes rights, known as “plant breeders’ rights”, in plant genera and species that qualify for protection under that Act. British Plant Breeders’ Rights protect creators of new varieties against ;

  • production or reproduction (multiplication),
  • conditioning for the purpose of propagation,
  • offering for sale, selling or other marketing, exporting, importing, stocking for any of the above purposes or
  • any other act prescribed for the purposes of that provision without his authority.

The International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants or UPOV grants plant breeders’ rights to new varieties that meet four criteria ;

1. The new plant must be novel, which means that it must not have been previously marketed in the country where rights are applied for.
2. The new plant must be distinct from other available varieties.
3. The plants must display homogeneity.
4. The trait or traits unique to the new variety must be stable so that the plant remains true to type after repeated cycles of propagation.