Browsed by
Month: April 2015

Funs, Puns, Quips and Snips for gardeners

Funs, Puns, Quips and Snips for gardeners

Gardening is no Laughing matter, the joke is usually on the gardener

Naughty Gardeners Quips
There was a young man from Australia
on his bottom he painted a dahlia
the heat of the ball
caused the petals to fall
and the scent was a bit of a failure

What is long and thin, covered in skin,
red in parts and goes in tarts?
Rhubarb

‘I think the answer lies in the soil’ Arthur Fallowfield the man who put the sex in Sussex but left Scunthorpe alone.

Clean Gardeners (I don’t believe it)
What is the difference between bogies and broccoli? Kids wont eat broccoli

The snowman asked can you smell carrots?
Does okra come from Okrahoma
What is a vampire’s favorite fruit? A: A neck-tarine
What is orange and sounds like a parrot? a carrot

The older the better unless you are a banana
Are 2 banana skins a pair of slipper
What is green in the morning, yellow in the afternoon and brown in the evening? another banana

Going to the Flicks
Who framed Roger Raddish,
20,000 leeks under the sea,
Butch celery and the sunflower kid,
The lawn ranger,
Quatermass and the Pip,
The magnificent five-a-day,
Snow White and the 7 Dwarfbeans,
Okrahoma,
Rocky soil II,

Garden Jargon & Terms

Garden Jargon & Terms

Top Topiary

What is a Tree or Shrub

There are no hard and fast horticultural rules for these perennial plants. Trees are generally larger than shrubs and bushes.

  • A tree is a woody plant that produces a single trunk and an elevated head of branches. Small trees are defined in the UK as 15-30 feet tall whilst large trees are over 60 feet tall.
  • A shrub is a woody plant which branches from the base or near the ground with no obvious trunk hence the term shrubbery.  Large shrubs are over 10′ but less than 15′,  medium 6-10′, small 3-5′ and dwarf and prostrate under 2′.
  • A bush is a shrub with stems of moderate length and is smaller or more compact than a shrub. Common parlance has currants, gooseberries and roses as bushes
  • Cordons, Espalier, Pyramids and Fans are tree or shrub shapes created by training and pruning.Topiary is pruning and shaping to a shape of the gardeners chosing.

Colour bed

What is an Herbaceous Plant …

Read More Read More

Monkey Puzzle Tree

Monkey Puzzle Tree

monkey-puzzle

This is the end of a branch can you tell what tree it is from? Well not much of a puzzle to monkey around with. With sharp edged and pointed leaves of the Monkey Puzzle Tree would impale and slice the most careful monkey that was trying to climb its branches.

Facts about Monkey Puzzle Trees

  • It grows slowly when young and picks up speed when older. It can reach 120 feet tall and become quite wide so isn’t a long term proposition for a small garden.
  • It can’t be pruned successfully as its sculptural shape is the key reason for growing the tree. …

    Read More Read More

Drought or Flood in your Garden

Drought or Flood in your Garden

What sort of summer are you expecting. The probability is that there will be no extremes but the danger of flood or drought is always around for gardeners.

Dry garden

All the weathermen seem to be forecasting further drought conditions for the summer of 2012. Gardeners should therefore be prepared for flood!

Drought Preparations

  • There is a flood of advice from government and the government in exile ie. newspapers and media. eg. plant trees for shade and wait 100 years for them to grow.
  • Val Bourne at the Daily Telegraph suggests ‘puddling in’ when planting out your brassicas and leeks and this strikes me as a good use of water. It just means filling the planting hole with water just before you pop your plant in.
  • Another Val tip is to stand watering cans of tap water around the garden until the sun’s warmth has evaporated the chlorine away.
  • Carrots and parsnips naturally grow in drier sandy soil and grow longer in seeking out water. Try several varieties if you like these vegetables.

Flood

Flood Preparations

  • Be prepared to catch what water you may need in butts, barrels and ponds.
  • If your ground is liable to waterlogging either restrict the plants you grow or improve the drainage.
  • Minor drainage improvements can be achieved with added grit, sand and gravel
  • Major drainage improvements may include a deep soak-away or a perforated drainage system.

The Low-water No-water Garden: Gardening for Drought and Heat the Mediterranean Way – A Practical Guide with 500 Stunning Colour Photographs by Pattie Barron available from amazon

Managing the Wet Garden: Plants That Flourish in Problem Places by John Simmons available from Amazon
Credits
Dry garden by foliosus CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
Flood by itspaulkelly CC BY-NC 2.0

Growing Echeveria a Succulent Succulent

Growing Echeveria a Succulent Succulent

Echeveria Glauca has fleshy curving lobes in a geometric arrangement. As you may expect the lobes or leaves are blue-grey in colour. The delicate  flowers in summer are white and extend from the base of the plant. They grow 3″ tall and need free draining soil in full sun or partial shade. The rosettes spread by the addition of new rosettes forming a circular mound. Plant 6 ” apart.

Echeveria Elegans has pink arching stems that produce dainty, yellow-tipped, red flowers. The dense rosettes of blueish white, fleshy leaves are often red tinged. They grow 2″ tall but spread more rapidly than Glauca so need to be planted 16″ apart.

Echeveria are often used in carpet bedding and floral clocks
Echeveria are generally rosette forming succulents.

Most Echeveria can be easily propagated from leaf cuttings or offsets To propagate a leaf cutting, place the individual leaf in a succulent or cacti mix and cover the dish until the new plant sprouts.

Yorkshire Echiveria
Sedum

What would you call a shop in a courtyard that sells plants and pots? In Otley Yorkshire you would call it Courtyard Planters. Years ago you may have called it the stable yard for the Half Moon Inn.

Most of the planters have very few eco-miles on the clock as the Terracotta pots are from Barnsley Yorkshire, the earthenware salt glazed pots are made in Northumberland. Unfortunately the Oak Barrels come from an other country – Scotland to be precise where they used to mature whiskey.

At the weekend I bought a couple of plants including a Dianthus Neon Star that shone out to me in the shade of the courtyard. The other plant was an Echeveria elegans with lots of extra rosettes of succulent foliage. I thought I would take the offsets and grow them as cuttings but forgot they were quite tender. Still, if I am successful I will find somewhere to over winter them.
If not Chiltern Seeds generally stock mixed Echeveria seeds that ‘mostly have fleshy leaves forming rosettes of a wide assortment of attractive, geometric designs in a range of colours from green through grey to almost white, often with markings in contrasting shades.’

Courtyard planters do not sell mail order that is not the type of gardeners they are but if you visit Otley look them up. If you are near Otley they offer free delivery.

Echeveria

Books you can’t buy from Amazon

Books you can’t buy from Amazon

These gardening books are just crying out to be written so we suggest some titles and authors.

Do not smoke your grass by Mary Wana

Turn your MP into Compost by Pete Substitute

Money saving tips add up by Alice Summ

Trollius, Yaks and other plant transportation by Dick van Bike

Daisies can be Yellow

Daisies can be Yellow

Book Cover

Daisies are a large group of flowering plants under the family name Compositae. Included in the daisy family are well known groups such as Rudbeckia, Osteospernum, Helianthus, Coreopsis, Helenium even the cornflower and Globe Thistle.The Compositaes (Asteracea) are recognisable through their compound blooms consisting of many tiny flowers. A daisy has a yellow “core” of 200 disc florets, surrounded by 50 marginal, white ray florets with a conspicuous limb (these are the petals also called ligules). A single daisy “flower” contains about 250 separate flowers! Each central floret, a flower in its own right, has a style, anthers, corolla, pappus and ovary. The Daisy is one of the “core families” on which research at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew concentrates.

Perennial Yellow Daisies

The RHS produced a bulletin on this subject and an interesting pdf can be down loaded. …

Read More Read More

Green Euphorbia & Wisley Handbook

Green Euphorbia & Wisley Handbook

euphorbia-2

The lime green bracts on this Euphorbia are looking very bright in the spring sunshine. The plants are evergreen and easy to manage and form a good clump after 2 or 3 years. This clump has 17 flowering stems about 3 feet high but is only 2 feet in diameter.

  • New stems are being formed at ground level for future years but the plant isn’t invasive. Any dead stems are pruned out at ground level to keep the plant healthy and the growth fresh all year around.
  • Euphorbia come in all shapes and sizes so choose a variety from a gardene centre that fits your planting scheme. This plant is growing in poor soil in a sunny bed raised from the surrounding garden and forms the back drop for alpine plants.

Book Cover …

Read More Read More

Sedums and Saxifrages

Sedums and Saxifrages

A pleasant mix of Stonecrop Sedums and Saxifrages or Saxifraga, as some would have it, are in flower at the moment. Stonecrop has taken my interest after reading about green roof plants.  I also have a friend who has created a Sedum Seat on an old dining chair by planting up the padded seat area to good effect.

The grand-daddy of books on the subject of Sedums is Ray Stephenson’s ‘Sedum Cultivated Stonecrops’.

Book Cover

Tips

  • Plant Sedums and other insect attracting flowers near vegetables that need pollination to set fruit. I have some near my Courgettes and Marrows and am getting a grand crop without worrying about fertilisation.
  • Do not plant London Pride  Saxifrage urbinus unless you want ground cover as, in my opinion, the flowers are weak in colour and form.
  • Borrow expensive monographs and special texts from the RHS library. It is free for members.

Other Resources

Royal Horticultural Society RHS ‘Gardening for All’
National Council for Conservation of Plants and Gardens ‘Conservation through Cultivation.’
Garden Organic National Charity for Organic Gardening.
BBC Gardening

…

Read More Read More