Gardening – Page 39 – Gardeners Tips

Secrets of Geranium (Pelargonium) Cuttings

April 22, 2015 hortoris

I couldn’t resist this double pink rose bud Pelargonium ‘Something Special’ which is looking really good at the moment. I intend taking some early cuttings of this plant next month and growing them on forÂ specimen plants. August to October are good months for taking cuttings to flower the following year.

Tips on Pelargonium Cuttings

Plants flower best when they are mature, full of leaf and well grown. Geraniums need time, usually 10-12 months from cutting to flowering to be at their best.
A 3 inch cutting should have several leaf joints (nodes) for potential branching. Some gardeners recommend non-flowering stems but I find it isn’t significant.
Take the cutting with a razor blade or sharp knife just above a leaf joint from your stock plant. Trim off all bar one or two leaves and any flower buds. trim back to just below a node.
I use 3 inch pots but smaller pots may be suitable or 4-5 cuttings can be put around the edge of a larger pot. Cuttings can also be planted in a hole close to the parent bedding geranium and lifted with soil for potting on for winter.
Gritty compost or soil with added sand is a suitable medium. The sand can stimulate root growth. I do not use rooting hormone it isn’t worth the cost as Geraniums root so easily.
Pinch out the growing tip to encourage roots and branches.

Dwarf and miniature plant cuttings can be proportionately smaller but the method is the same.
Water the pots from the bottom. Bottom heat will only be needed for late October cuttings
Dwarfs, Ivy and miniature Pelargoniums root quite well. I find Regals a bit harder as cuttings.

A nodal shoot cutting above is taken by trimming by branching stem into two cuttings.
Other than Regals which need nodal cuttings, they can be taken from theÂ most suitable point of the host plant.
A leaf Axil cutting below can be taken if the plant has no other suitable cutting material.

Easier Gardening as You Age

April 18, 2015 hortoris

Expert gardeners can spend 50 years learning, sometimes just about one species or family and then they die!

You are never to old to start gardening, nor are you too old to learn easier and simpler ways to enjoy your gardening.
Bending and kneeling may get a bit harder as you age but there are ways to overcome these restrictions like padded kneelers with good handles.

Tools as You Age

You are not going to double dig acres of ground so get a spade to suit. A small stainless steel blade will not over tax the muscles but still get most jobs done at a steady pace.
I have very useful forks and a trowel on long handles. They are easy to obtain and save your back. You can also fashion your own dibbers and gadgets
A two wheeled barrow is lighter for pushing than a traditional one wheeler.
Use large pots and containers to reduce watering and put them on casters for moving around.

The Illustrated Practical Guide to Gardening for Seniors: How to Maintain Your Outside Space with Ease Into Retirement and Beyond by Patty Cassidy from Amazon

Easier Gardening as You Age

This new American book shows how easy it is for seniors to carry on gardening, into and way beyond retirement.
It looks at different kinds of homes and the gardens they provide, assessing the location, local climate and soil type and evaluating problems such as arthritis and loss of balance.
The book also outlines the importance of taking care of your body, summarizing the safety issues, what to wear, warm-up exercises and equipment to make the garden easy to access for unsteady feet or wheelchairs.
Included is a directory that profiles the many planting choices available, each with a difficulty rating and a hardiness category.
Gardening for Seniors is packed with projects, garden plans and step-by-step sequences.
Easier gardening will appeal to active gardeners in their early retirement through to those with more limited abilities, showing how, by adapting garden activities and the tools employed, the joy of gardening will remain undiminished.

Plants and Planting as You Age

Avoid fast growing shrubs that need pruning and regular spraying. I prefer small rhododendrons to roses for this reason.
Aim at your senses placing plants where you will get the best reaction from those you have in full working order.
Design and implement your gardening to impress others and they will stop and talk. Easier gardening can still recognise you are up for a challenge despite your age

Funs, Puns, Quips and Snips for gardeners

April 16, 2015 hortoris

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

April 15, 2015 hortoris

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.Â Large shrubs are over 10′ but less than 15′,Â 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.

What is an Herbaceous Plant …

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Green Euphorbia & Wisley Handbook

April 8, 2015 hortoris

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.

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Best Shade Loving Plants

April 6, 2015 hortoris

round-tulips

Beth Chatto believes you can transform a shady spot with easy-care planting that includes foliage and flowers for a brighter Spring garden. Illuminate a shady spot under trees with a range of flowers and plants.
Beth Chatto has an extensive list of plants for shady areas for all year round interest

The Shade Garden

Top Ten Spring Shade Lovers

Honesty purple or white forms are good when in flower but also produce airy white seedheads
Forget-me-nots are flowering all over my back garden at the moment from self-sown plants.
Bluebells can be white as well as blue or even pink. They normally grow in shady woodland and will flower without sun. They also spread quite quickly particularly the thuggish Spanish variety. Do not take wild bulbs from there natural habitat.
Hellebore the Lenten Rose is another shadeÂ loving plant that is happy under trees although the flowers tend to hang down and be hard to inspect.
Tulips can brighten the darkest spot. I plant them in pots so I can move them to where they will have the greatest impact. I can then replace them with other plants later in the year.

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My Top 10 Sweet Pea Varieties

April 5, 2015 tejvan

	Sweet Pea – Antique Bouquet Traditional varieties of sweet pea colours with great scent.
	Sweet Pea – Blue Ripple Delicate light blue frills on the end of white flowers. It is a lovely blue reminiscent of delphiniums
	Sweet Pea – Grandiflora Strong bold colours in fashion of Union Jack. Great contrast between colours
	Sweet Pea – Melody Rose Very charming colours with a light delicate touch. Great fragrance
	Sweet Pea – Sugar and Spice – bicolor Like traditional old fashioned varieties. Shorter stems, but wonderful old fragrance – evocative of cottage gardens.
	Sweet Pea – Sugar and Spice – basket variety. Makes intense display of flowers
	Sweet Pea – Cream Southbourne Delicate wavy flowers. Great large frilly blooms with extravagant scent to give a great allrounder sweet pea
	Sweet Pea – Firecrest. Uniformity of red, eyecatching colour on strong stems
	Sweet Pea – Fragrant Ripples A long strong stem, with wonderful wavy colouring. Also provide beautiful smell
	Chatsworth Lovely lilac flowers and fragrance

Photo Credit
Sweet Pea Harvest by Baha’i Views / Flitzy Phoebie CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Sweet Peas: An Essential Guide by Roger Parsons
The sweet pea is a favourite flower of the gardener because of its delightful scent and diverse range of beautiful colours as this Top 10 Sweet Pea variety selection shows. The book by Roger Parsons looks at the genus in detail and explains how the novice gardener or the seasoned grower can get the most from their sweet peas.

Growing Scabious – Scabiosa

April 1, 2015 hortoris

Scabious is a UK native perennial plant that is available in many forms and species for growing in your garden. Grown in damp areas it is popular with insects bees, moths and butterflies. Known for powdery blue pincushions of flower on the top of long stems makes this plant is a useful cut flower.

Description, Cultivation and Growing Tips

Scabious is a hardy perennial well loved for cottage gardens.
Scabious grows well on dry, sandy soil in a sunny position or partially shaded location.
You can acquire or just admire plants as part of a collection

Common Names and Varieties to Consider

Scabiosa is generally known as Scabious or the Pincushion Flower.
Our UK native Scabiosa columbaria is compact with wiry stems topped with tiny Cambridge-blue pincushion flowers
Scabiosa caucasica is the Caucasian Scabious first grown in the UK 200 years ago. Generally pale blue there is a white form called Miss Willmot.
Scabious atropurpurea is available in pink (Beaujolais Bonnets) and purple (Ace of Spades).
A new compact Scabious is now on the market with a height of 20″ and a spread of 16″ enough to use as ground cover.
Scabiosa ochroleuca or the Yellow scabious has cream pincushions
Varieties for growing Scabiosa; Clive Greaves (light Blue), Miss Wilmott (white), and Pink Diamond

Unusual Facts about Scabious

Scabious is a member of the Teasel family Dipsacaceae
Scabiosa species are also used as food plants by the larvae of some butterflies.
Devilâ€™s-bit scabious and field scabious are UK natives but what the Devil?.
Giant Scabious isn’t really Scabious it is Cephalaria gigantea which has primrose yellow flowers on a 6′ stem.

Old & Odd Tips From Gardeners Tips

A top dressing of grit before winter will help surface drainage as Scabious dislike cold, wet poorly drained soil conditions.
Deadheading will prolong flowering and if you trim flowers down to the next bud you should get two new flowers from the axil bud.
As a black flower Scabious Ace of Spades has fragrant blooms that attract bees and butterflies whilst making impressive cut flowers.

Credits
Scabious sp. 2 by the justified sinner CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
Small Tortoiseshell ‘It was feeding on Scabious at Ubley Warren near Cheddar’ by Annies Pics CC BY-NC 2.0
Scabious by Mike Legend CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
devil’s bit scabious by Facing North East CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Serendipity in Nature and the Garden

March 22, 2015 hortoris

I like the way the insects wings have veins that are replicated in the crocus petals.
Also the shadow of the bee caused by the early spring sunshine gives another dimension to the photograph.
I can’t claim any special skill or patience when I took this picture but put it down to serendipity.

Serendipity can play a big part in our gardens. The happy harmony of two colours working well together, the apparently random self-sown seedlings that appear in the right place or even the new seedling that has characteristics not previously noted are all part of serendipity, sometimes you just need to look for it. Many variegated leaved plants were discovered and propagated after acute observation.

Be alert, (Gardens need Lerts).

‘The Lucky Buggers Case Book’ the harder you Garden the luckier you get.

I am trying to become alert having discovered the way to white wash my greenhouse for shading is to paint the inside. For years I have struggled to clean the windows from the outside after whitening them to provide some shade.

Tips for Weeding a Garden

March 21, 2015 tejvan

March is a great time to sort out any weeds that are showing after winter. Perennial weeds need to have the root sorted whilst annuals like bitter cress can be hoed off and starved of moisture.

weed
Some tips for weeding a garden.

Firstly – Is It a Weed?

One of the most common questions in gardening is – what is a weed? Well one answer is that a weed is a plant that shouldn’t be there. This may differ from gardener to gardener. In fact, I like to tolerate daisies in my lawn because I think they look attractive. However, to others they may appear weeds. Of course there are some weeds that nobody would want in their garden like bindweed, Japanese knot weed e.t.c

Be Thorough.
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Tips on Pelargonium Cuttings

Other links and information on Pelargoniums

Tools as You Age

Easier Gardening as You Age

Plants and Planting as You Age

Top Ten Spring Shade Lovers

Sweet Pea – Antique Bouquet

Sweet Pea – Blue Ripple

Sweet Pea – Grandiflora

Sweet Pea – Melody Rose

Sweet Pea – Sugar and Spice – bicolor

Sweet Pea – Sugar and Spice

Sweet Pea – Cream Southbourne

Sweet Pea – Firecrest.

Sweet Pea – Fragrant Ripples

Chatsworth

Description, Cultivation and Growing Tips

Common Names and Varieties to Consider

Unusual Facts about Scabious

Old & Odd Tips From Gardeners Tips