Pests, infections, disease, cultivation and growing problems
frost can strike when gardeners least expect it. Like boy scouts ‘be prepared’.
Frost is not all that bad particularly when it happens at the right time of year. It can play havoc at the wrong time of year but first we will look at what good can be achieved with frost.
A hoary old chestnut or an updated post from 2012?
What is Hoar Frost
Damage and Treatment After Hoar Frost
Don’t let pH be a mystery, it is easy to get the soil you need for a small contained area or even garden wide if you know the science.
Acidity and alkalinity are measured on a pH scale. Below pH 7.0 is verging towards acidic so pH 4.5 is very acid. Test kits are available from many sources.
Increasing Alkalinity.
For vegetables a pH of around 6.5 is ideal and to achieve this it may be necessary to add some lime into the top 6 inches of your soil.
Garden lime is available from most garden centers. Builders lime or quick lime is more aggressive to plants.
If your soil is around a pH of 7.0 (neutral) I would not bother to try adjust it. Above that it is limey soil and less suitable for acid lovers like rhododendrons and blueberries.
Adding lime helps vegetables take up nutrients. It also suppresses club root in members of the brassica family.
Manure then a couple of weeks later lime your soil during winter, it helps to break up the soil.
For lawns, shrubs, roses, fruit or trees, apply lime before planting.
Calcified seaweed and ground chalk or powdered limestone are other forms of calcium carbonate that will help reduce acid soil.
The RHS has a table of lime quantities needed to correct different levels of acidity read more
Acidifying Soil
To change the pH of the top 6inches of soil from neutral pH 7.0, or slightly alkaline pH 7.5 to slightly acid pH 6.0-pH 6.5 sulphur powder may be required.
Aluminium sulphate or Ferrous sulphate can also be used as a soil acidifiers. The effects are rapid, but large quantities can interfere with phosphorus levels in the soil and may also reduce pH excessively.
Soil-acidifying materials can be applied at any time of the year but products containing sulphur take longer to work when the soil is cold so are normally best applied from spring to autumn.
Slugs will feel blue after this diet.
This gardener has found a new way of killing slugs using pellets. I think it is called saturation bombing. Those slugs not hit on the head will die long before they have gorged on the little blue devils that have been broadcast around and over the Pansies.
If you use slug pellets I recommend little and often – two or three pellets near a small plant will be enough. Slug pellets work by being more attractive to slugs than the juicy green leaves. Except in heavy rain they should remain effective for a couple of weeks.
I have lost upto half of my Runner Bean seeds to mice and will have to sow again. A shame the mice won’t eat slug pellets.
On the bright side my sunken beer-laced slug traps are catching many slugs so I do not think the beer is totally wasted (and nor am I totally wasted).
Some of the first shrubs to flower, each year, produce the best show
Magnolia buds are just bursting on the top picture. This single Camellia has a vibrant colouring but has dropped some buds. The Rhododendron is a shocking pink for this time of year but what showy flowers.
The Magnolia society promotes this astounding flowering shrub.
Dirty great clumps of greenfly can infest your Lupins.
Lupins can be grown from the seed you collect.
If buying a potted plant see what the colour and spike is like before you buy. A good plant will last several years with little fungal problems.
If you want a second flush of flowers it is best to dead head the spires of blossom. Deadheading saves energy in the plant.
Do not water your plants! Water the soil your plants have to live in.
Readers Question: I would like to ask if there are specific times of the day that you can only water the plants to maximize their growth. Thanks for being open for questions about gardening because I really want to grow more of our own plants in the next few months. from: Gardeners Questions
The best time of the day to water plants is in evening or early morning. This is mainly because the watering will be more efficient. Away from glare of sun, the water has time to seep into soil before evaporating.
The main thing is getting the right amount of water to the plant, the time of watering won’t really affect growth. Though in greenhouses, watering during the day, can help keep temperature down (dampening effect)
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Credit
water is unfit for human consumption by woodleywonderworks CC BY 2.0
The dry spell may have stopped your moss in it’s tracks but beware once mossy always mossy.
After a wet winter it is a good if your lawn has no moss but it is unlikely. The yellower green patches on the photo above are where the moss is beating the grass.
Back in 2009 I reported on my failure with impatiens. now I am tempted to try again. So far so good no of them have died but nor are they a run away success.
I had a disaster with New Guinea Impatiens 4 years ago. Rather than grow from seed I bought a pack of half a dozen plants to grow on. The only trouble is they haven’t grown on but got sickly and hardly survived.
I gave some of the lilac flowered plants away so am interested to see if they have done any better. I also put some of my sickly plants in a plastic zip up greenhouse outside so I am now off to see how they have done.
New Treatments
I corrected the above issues but watering still gives me nightmares.
I potted the plug plants on into 3″ pots and they are more robust.
I like the plants when well grown as a summer houseplant.
Roses are very susceptible to fungal diseases. Whilst you can cope with a bit of mildew a bud that fails to open is somehow more annoying. These buds had been hit by a lot of rain and a long period of humidity and nothing was going to help them.