Gardeners Tips – Page 163 – Tips and advice for gardeners about gardening

Comfrey for Free Fertiliser

May 22, 2013 hortoris

Comfrey leaves can make good balanced organic fertiliser for free.

Since the 19th century Comfrey has been used as a fertiliser but the Henry Doubleday Institute in the 1960’s found it contained comparable amounts of fertiliser to commercial products. Comfrey contains high levels of Nitrogen for leaf growth, Phosphorous for roots and germination and Potassium for fruit and flowers.

Tips on Using Comfrey

I put a large handful of Comfrey leaves in my water butt and 3-4 weeks later the resulting ‘Tea’ is great for Tomatoes, Beans and general purposes. I mix them with a lot of water but if you make a concentrated tea it can be diluted prior to use.
Spare Comfrey leaves can go on the compost heap to provide vital nutrients and help heat up the pile to speed decomposition.
If you crop the Comfrey you should be able to get three cuttings in a season.
The first cutting of Comfrey in spring can go at the bottom of the furrow into which you are planting Potatoes.
You can also chop the Comfrey leaves and use them as a mulch before your potatoes get too much foliage.

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Edible Flowers Top Ten for Chelsea

May 21, 2013 hortoris

Eat up the fruit and veg in your Chelsea Pimms and look for flowers in your salad.

Food for Free (Collins Natural History Paperback)

There are many plants whose flowers can add spice and variety to our food. Use the petals after removing the stamen and pistils. This list of tips and a top ten is based on colour and taste.

Wild Garlic flowers can be picked in hedge rows and add a soft garlic taste to salads.
Lavender can be used to flavour sugar or dried and used in cakes.
Courgette flowers are often stuffed or battered in posh restaurants and make a delicate starter.
Nasturtium flowers make good salad or sandwich accompaniments
Legume flowers like pea and bean flowers are delicate additions to a salad or soup.
Rosemary flowers go well with fish
Calendula or Pot Marigold petals have a peppery taste and make good salads.
Violet flowers are also peppery but look good decorating a salad.
Day Lily ‘Hemerocallis’Â flowers can be used in stir fries.
Chive flowers taste fine in an omelette aux fine herbs.

Do not eat flowers that have been sprayed with insecticide or fungicide.
Always wash flowers gentley but well.

Osteospermum African Daisy & Cape Daisies

May 19, 2013 hortoris

African Daisy, South African Daisy, Cape Daisy or Blue-eyed Daisy more correctly called Osteospermums not surprisingly belong to the daisy family of Compositae – Asteraceae.
They are similar to the annual Dimorphotheca with which they can be cross pollenated.
Although most Osteospermums are labeled as annuals they are in fact half-hardy perennials
The bright sun of the African or Namibian velt helps these flower show the true colours which are some of the strongest in the garden. These plants almost look fluorescent with the purples, oranges and yellows.

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Black Geranium Cranesbill

May 17, 2013 hortoris

There are not many totally black flowered plants but this geranium gives a good impression.

Geranium phaeum is called ‘the mourning widow’ because the late spring flowers are dark maroon often sold as black. I am in mourning because the plant has been more trouble than it is worth in my garden and this morning I dug out what I hope will be the last surviving specimen. This plant grows well in shady places but the flowers I got were meager to paltry. Despite this poor flowering it managed to self sow in the most amazing places usually in the best sunny spots.
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Growing Lettuce

May 16, 2013 tejvan

Lettuce may not contain that many calories so it makes a great summer food crop.

Growing lettuce is one of the most rewarding vegetable or salad crops. If you keep the slugs at bay, you will have a rewarding crop, even from a tiny space in the back garden.

In summer, lettuce has a short growing season. It means within a couple of months, you can be cutting leaves for the salad bowl. The loose leaf varieties can be ready for harvest after only 6-8 weeks. If you sow at regular intervals and make use of cloches, you can have a supply of lettuce for a large part of the year.

Tips for Growing Lettuce

Sow directly into the ground and thin out later. Lettuce doesn’t like being moved. If you have to sow in greenhouse, use modules for easy transfer.
Lettuce do npot germinate well in hot temperatures.
Lettuce like a humous rich soil, so make sure soil is well prepared, otherwise, the leaves will be tougher and more leathery.

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Anemone in Strong Colours

May 15, 2013 hortoris

I have had a great show from 100 Anemone coronaria corms I bought in January. I only got them because they were being sold off at half price but were in individual packs of one variety.

Varieties Chosen

The double blue Anemone Lord Lieutenant (shown above)Â was planted in a large container and has given the best display. I have now planted the compost corms and all direct into the garden.
The Govenor is a deep red with a white inner ring and I planted this direct into the garden. Where I got good flowers the colour was striking but I had fewer blooms.
Admiral and Sylphide are both pinks that I mixed together – why I did I don’t know considering my comment above.
The Bride was my selected white Anemone and this did very well in its own container. Whilst I thought I watered the containers quite well I found the bottom half of the soil had totally dried out and was hard to re wet. I must remember to do something about this next time.

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Orange in your Garden

May 13, 2013 hortoris

Orange trees wont fruit in the open in the UK but you can still find the colour in flowers and plant combinations.

Orange was the colour of the 1970’s but gardens seemed to reject this colour as too gaudy and fit only for psychedelic record sleeves. Times have now changed and hot borders are fashionable with an exciting choice of plants including those from the Poppy family. Oriental poppies are big and blousy whilst the strong orange of Californian poppy on frail foliage can be startling.

Orange can be a hard colour to place but a strong purple leaf like Cotinus Royal Purple will offer a good contrast. However Geum Borisii will provide perennial blooms in any location without a backdrop. Acer palmatum Osakazuki is the autumnal orange leafed small tree variety to go for, underplanted with orange lilies Jet Fire, Orange Pixie or Tigrinum maybe.

Roses have a variety of orange colour schemes, choose from creamy pale Just Joey, floribunda Anne Harkness, clear toned Geraldine, apricot Pensioners’ Voice and patio rose Sweet Magic.

Canna lilies in pots with purple leaves and orange flowers can be titally stunning like Triomphe, Wyoming or Delibab varieties and for a Gladioli try Topaz or the reddish Hunting Song. Also amongst summer tubers you can do worse than give space to some Dahlias like Bishop of Oxford and Catherine Deneuve with dark foliage or the decorative Mrs Eileen.

Tip Winter is a good season to dream of those hot psychedelic orange colours and plan where to grow the plants that will catch everyone’s eye next summer.

Yellow and red make orange in some colour schemes.

Contrasting Grass Forms and Foliage

May 10, 2013 hortoris

Lawn, meadow, prairie or specimen grass it is all one to the sheep.

Undulating shapes and sizes in an attractive outline help to create a flourishing and sophisticated design in a garden. By varying plants and grass shapes in your landscapes you can create a lively scene.
There is no end to the combinations you could select but below is one option.

Simple Contrasting Foliage

Miscanthus sinesis Graziella is a vigorous ornamental, clump forming grass with bold narrow leaves that grow to 4 feet high. It is well behaved and will not spread and has showy white flowers at the end of the season.
Variegated foliage can add a new visual dimension and the white striped leaves of Gardeners Garters Phalaris arundinacea Picta has floppy to arching leaves that can be stricking. It is a bit of a thug spreading rapidly in damp soil but you can plant it in a buried pot.
The Solenostemon family of Coleus have a wide range of colours often on the same soft leaf.
For mobile grass try Pennisetum alopecurides the Fountain Grass with seed heads that can reach 3 feet high.

Artemesia stelleriana has silver-grey leaves through out the year.

In this selection I have avoided plants grown primarily for their flowers. However if you wanted to intersperse just one flower then a Hemerocallis ‘Imperial Lemon’ may suit the situation.

2 Ways to Kill Your Slugs

May 8, 2013 hortoris

I have always wanted a new way to kill the slugs in my garden and now I have discovered how. The ‘old mangle trick’ seems to be the one for me, put the slug between the rollers and give the handle a good old turn.
Environmentally friendly (if not in the slugs mind) this mangle uses no chemicals and causes no CO2 emissions. Slug juice can be caught in the green urn and bits removed with a pointy stick provided.

If you are squeamish or squashist then you will have to resort to the blue pill (I mean pellet). Available from slug lovers Amazon

The mangle is not yet tested on the large evil Spanish slugs that are achieving what the armada failed to do

Our Big Selection of Salad Leaves

May 8, 2013 hortoris

Eat up your greens and your other salad crops.

Salad is a diverse name covering any of a wide variety of dishes including,Â green salads, vegetable salads, salads of pasta, legumes, or grains; mixed salads incorporating fruit and fruit salads. They include a mixture of cold or hot foods, often including raw or sometimes cooked vegetables and/or fruits.
Alternatively ‘Salad’ is any green plant or herb used for such a dish or eaten raw so that is the part we will concentrate on.

Leafy Salad Plants

Lettuce is available in many varieties with popular types like Cos, Butterhead, Crisphead, Lollo, Oak leaved or loose leafed. The coloured varieties above are called Bijou and Freckles. Buy a mixed packet of seeds and eat young seedlings as a way of thinning out crops. …

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