Vermiculite for Gardeners
Vermiculite is a natural mineral ore that has been heat treated to expand into a light, spongy worm like, inert substance. Vermiculite is made from mica whereas perlite, a similar gardeners aid is a type of highly porous volcanic glass. Because vermiculite is permanent, clean, odorless, non-toxic and sterile and very light it has many uses for gardeners.
Gardeners Uses of Vermiculite
- Vermiculite greatly improves seed compost by promoting aeration and drainage, important for seeds and cuttings.
- Vermiculite improves germination and reduces the risk of damping off when applied as a thin layer on top of your sown seeds.
- A 50:50 mix of compost and vermiculite is ideal for the germination of seeds, because it’s aeration properties and water holding capacity make it a suitable medium for direct contact with the seeds.
- Vermiculite used alone without compost helps germination but seedlings should be fed with a week fertilizer solution when the first true seeds appear. I have some African Violet seeds being grown this way at the moment.
- Large seeds can be mixed with Vermiculite in a small polythene bag closed at the neck, and kept in a warm place until the seeds just start to germinate.
- Vermiculite can be mixed into compost for taking cuttings.
- Mixed with compost vermiculite can also store Dahlia and Begonia tubers through winter.
- Slower germinating seeds should be covered with grit in preference to vermiculite.
- For fine seeds it can be ground down finer that that shown above.
- Mix with peat or coir to make a soilless growing medium for the home gardener to promote faster root growth and give quick anchorage to young roots.
- Â Vermiculite is also used as a growing medium for hydroponics.
- Heavy sticky soil can be conditioned by the addition of vermiculite.
- Available from good garden centres
Vermiculite for Cuttings
- Vermiculite 50% sphagnum moss peat 50% compost stimulates root growth, giving quicker anchorage of the plant and uptake of nutrients.
- Thoroughly water the vermiculite before inserting cuttings.
- Do not compress around the base of the cutting.
- Vermiculite gives a very light open compost, holding more water and facilitating re-wetting, thereby lengthening the time between watering.
- Vermiculite  absorbs excess nutrients and releases them slowly to the plants via the finest root hairs.
- Use a lower proportion of vermiculite under mist irrigation in Summer say 25%.
Raised Beds
Several companies manufacturers produce raised beds kits for gardens. Marmax products make their raised beds from recycled High Density Polyethylene (HDPE) and donated this set to the library and learning centre at RHS Harlow Carr when it was new. Hard wearing, long lasting and doing its bit for recycling this use of plastic in the garden is to be admired.
Supplied in flat pack, kit form the sides are in depths of 140mm so you can also make 280 or 420 deep beds by using 1-3 levels screwed together. In old money I make that five and a half inches 11″ and 17″ or thereabouts.
Other Methods.
- The old railway sleepers took a bit of a dive when creosote was banned or frowned upon in gardens. The seepage of chemicals from sleepers seems small to me and the method is still popular if you find old sleepers.
- DIY fanatics may use log piles or build more substantial retaining walls in breeze blocks or natural stone
- Old pallets, preformed or tanalised wood and concrete blocks can be features as raised beds. ( see some more pictures for inspiration and ideas on the type of raised on these images.)
Uses of Raised Beds
- When top soil is shallow raising a bed with better soil helps plant draw moisture and sustenance.
- Raised beds help improve drainage on heavy soil.
- Raising a bed can be used to introduce a different soil type to your garden.
- Beds warm up quicker when raised and can be angled towards the sun.
- Smaller plants can be lifted for closer inspection or to get the perfume and it may avoid getting down on your knees.
- Flowers, vegetables and soft fruit can all be successfully grown in a raised bed. Often prize winners are grown with augmented levels of soil where conditions can be controlled from a raised bed.
- Raised beds can be very useful to those suffering visual impairment, restricted mobility or other physical disabilities.
Retaining wall filled with good clean compost a raised bed for primula
A brick wall to allow a slope alongside a raised bed of spring Daffodils
Seed Tray Review and Tips
The clue is in the name Seed Tray – this note is about seeds in trays and although they can double up for seedlings the issues are different. Seed sowing probably starts in February and is reaching its height by the middle of April.
Seed Tray Review
- Old wooden seed trays with slats and high sides are still in use. They need care when cleaning before new crops are sown.
- Plastic seed trays from rigid polypropylene with drainage holes can be used time and again and are easy to store and clean. There is generally a pattern of ridges to improve drainage.
- I like to use the thin plastic segmented inserts like those in the photograph inside a normal seed tray .
- It adds rigidity and makes for easy movement
- They are cheap enough to be disposable but last a couple of seasons with care.
- They vary in the number of cells, 3×5, 8×5 or 4×6 for example.
- Each cell can be for individual seeds or used for several fine seeds. It makes pricking out and planting far easier.
- The cells can also be used for growing on after pricking out. 15 or 24 good plants can be raised in one tray.
- Do not put plastic inserts in a tray without drainage holes or the compost may get water logged.
- Seed trays can be used to hold individual pots in one place. Up to 15 square 3″ pots can be put in one tray and they are a bit deeper than a standard tray.
- Disposable or disinfectable, plastic labour saving devices were not available to our parents and grandparents but take care how you dispose of them.
Alternative Seed Trays
- If you can find them old fish boxes can make good seed trays. The polystyrene variety helps to keep an even temperature. Some old fruit boxes can be adapted as seed trays. In both instances make sure there is adequate drainage.
- You do not need a tray per se, any container with drainage holes will suffice. I use a lot of old plant pots for starter seedlings.
- Rubberised plastic trays usually in black are more rigid and I find them better than the extruded green plastic shown above.
- Home made compressed capsules, rolls of paper, even cardboard toilet paper tube can be pressed into service.
Seed Tray Tips
- Take care when watering to get all the area damp. Some composts and soils are difficult to get evenly wet
- Label your seed sowing with the date and type of seed sown.
- Sterilise your used seed trays in Jeys fluid or similar.
- To water from the bottom fill a larger container and stand the tray in the water until enough has been taken up by capillary action.
- Do not leave seedlings too long before pricking out. Long roots soon become stunted. Seedlings need space to develop roots.
- Carefully push out the cell contents from the bottom if using a plastic product. Otherwise a firm tap will generally loosed to compost.
- Be careful small cells hold less soil and moisture.
- The edges and cells near to the drying sun can be hostile to seedlings.
- Exposure to sun and the elements can make some plastic brittle.
- Prick out and pot on as soon as possible (when two leaves are showing).
Special Seed Sowing Devices
- Matching the seed tray to the plant you are growing may dictate the tray you use.
- Sweetpeas need a long root run and trays tend to be too shallow. I use deep pots but you can sow in root trainers or home made paper tubes.
- Biodegradable peat pots can be used for plants that do not like their roots to be disturbed.
- Individual pots may be best for large or expensive seed.
Rhubarb All the Talk at a Local Society
Early Spring Rhubarb breaking Through
What Does Rhubarb Mean to You
- Rhubarb is a vegetable that thinks it is a fruit and has royal pretensions with top varieties called Victoria and Early Albert
- Rhubarb Rhubarb Rhubarb is an indistinct chant or none sense word shouted out in an unsynchronised manner at a public event.
- ‘A rhubarb’ is baseball slang for a fight or argument among players.
- Â “Stop talking rhubarb”. Complete and utter balderdash and b*****s.
- Stewed or in a pie it is the food of gods. Even raw with the stick end just dipped in a little sugar – gear nosh.
- Already his year I have had Rhubarb flavoured gin and a special cider flavoured as Rhubarb and custard.
- According to some ‘Its very name means “food of the barbarians†the people who live beyond the Rha, now the river Volga’.
- To some less fortunate Rhubarb is a strong purgative.
In Praise of Growing Rhubarb
- It is one of the earliest crops in the garden.
- It can be forced into even earlier cropping if kept in the dark with a bit of warmth eg from a straw wrapper in an upturned bucket. The stems will then be thin, blanched pink and juicy.
- Rhubarb is hardy and if fed and watered will produce for many years.
- The big leaves are easy to compost. Even though they contain Oxalic acid they do no harm in the compost heap.
Young Stems
Bolting and Running to Seed
Early Flowing Rheum Rhubarb
Bolting
Said of plants that are making seed prematurely. A plants purpose in life is to produce offspring usually by seed. When stressed they will trigger the reproduction button and set seed.
- Lettuce and salad crops are prone to bolt and ‘run to seed’. The heart of the lettuce is then useless and the plant only fit for the compost heap.
- Rhubarb and rheums also throw seed stalks taking energy from the good parts of the rhubarb. You can and should brake-off the offending stalk as soon as it is seen. Water the plant and hope the rest of the crop is unaffected.
- Other vegetables such as members of the onion family are affected in dry and stressful conditions. This is due to the plants keenness to reproduce before it succumbs to a problem.
- Broccoli and cauliflower whose flowers open early are not truly bolting but the cause and effect is the same.
- Flowers that turn quickly to seed will inhibit more flower production. That is why sweetpeas and annuals, amongst others, should be deadheaded to prolong flower production.
- Bolting may be an advantage when seed collection or production is the main aim.
‘……….there exist very little literature on the possibility of manipulating flowering for seed production’ but this book from amazon is an exception
Running to Seed
- If vegetable plants are allowed to set seed after flowering they may taste bitter.
- Plants that rub to seed will probably stop growing new buds and flowering.
- Regular cropping the stems of herbs like parsley, basil and mint delay their running to seed.
- This old gardener is running to seed with no new growth on the top of his bald head.
Stratification is putting your seeds in a moist material outside over the winter to allow the variations in temperature to act on them, so that they will germinate when conditions are warmer. Seed used to be put in layers (strata) of damp sand,
Cottage Garden and Annuals Triptych
This is a series of 3 photographs of my favourite cottage garden on Main Street Menston. Late summer each year will see me leaning over the Yorkshire stone wall to admire the ‘gaudy’ collection of flowers that create one enormous display.
Design Features
- The hard landscape is suitably constrained and smacks of belonging to a true plantsman or plantswoman. The red brick from the family home and a small section of slatted paneling limits the borders of this front garden.
- The garden barely needs to borrow from the surrounding landscape but the old grey Yorkshire stone walls add a timelessness to a short lived period of glory from the plants.
- Like my garden this garden suffers from a drain cover in an inconvenient spot but it is as disguised as practical with the wooden hooped barrel used as a plant pot. (How else can they get more flowers on show?)
- The central bed is designed as a lozenge rather than a more normal oval or circle. It works well and allows the gardener access from all 4 sides.
Flowers on Display
- The main feature is not of structural plants or herbaceous perennials but the selection of bright cheerful annuals.
- Wispy Cosmos and Nicotiana edge over the roadside wall on which I lean to take these three photographs.
- Good strong yellow flowers predominate and link the whole composition together. I particularly like the Tagetes, Marigolds and Rudbeckia .
- It would be churlish to mention the grass which is in fair condition towards the end of summer.
Chelsea Blue
I like a good strong blue in the garden and not because Chelsea FC play in a blue soccer strip. With the 2018 Chelsea flower show on the RHS calendar I have selected a few photographs to highlight my favourite colour.
Hydrangea Macrophylla
The faceless pansy can be a substitute for a viola it plays well as a center forward or in midfield.
In goal we must have the African with the furry edged petals in Violet
The B team Allium is just getting back into form after a long layoff. A mid season injury saw a 4 week metatarsal break disrupt his training.
Anemone and Ranunculus in defense occasionally charging down the wings
Large Scale Water Features
Moon pond water feature with pheasant – early spring at Studley Royal Ripon
Probably a bridge over a thousand years old at Fountains Abbey Nr Ripon. The Snowdrops set off another far older water feature with a bridge that was destroyed in the reformation in the 16th century. The snowdrops are probably related to the first known cultivation in 1597.
Posidon or ‘Neptune’ by Oliver Andrews standing in the middle of the Moon Pond after the restoration of the 18th century pond that had fallen into disrepair.
Pentas – Urge to Grow Five Annuals
Pentas are semi-tropical shrubs grown as annuals that will be ideal if we have a long warm summer. (What is one of those I hear you ask?) They may last through a mild winter and gradually become a woody a 3 foot high shrub .
How to Grow Pentas
- The nectar-rich blossoms grow in 3” clusters over a long blooming season in vibrant red, white, pink, and purple shades.
- Bees and butterflies are attracted to them due to the open flowers and high insect food content.
- Pentas will tolerate some shade but perform best in full sun that is also attractive to the butterflies.
- Pentas appreciate a mildly acidic soil above pH 5.5
- Grow from fresh saved or purchased seed providing light for germination. Don’t cover them with soil when sowing.
- Soft wood cuttings may be grown in a greenhouse.
- To avoid leggy growth keep in the sun and provide moisture rich soil.
Pentas Varieties to Try
- Penta lanceolata belongs to the Rubiaceae family are often called “Egyptian Star Flower†due to the flower’s shape.They are very popular in the USA where the following varieties may be acquired.
- ‘Butterfly’ series: Easy to grow from seed
- ‘Graffiti’ series: Compact mounding plants
- ‘Kaleidoscope Appleblossom’: Pale pink and rose on the same flower; an early bloomer
- ‘New Look’ series: Upright plants that don’t flop
- ‘Northern Lights’: Continues to produce pale lavender flowers in cool temperatures
- Other common names for Pentas include star flower or star cluster.
Another view of the same plant