Jobs in the Garden: What to do in June.

Well, so far this year and last could not be more different.

Last year we had the driest winter and spring in a long time; with a mini-heat wave in March and April. This year we have had one of the coldest springs. All through May I have been very aware of the cold nights, with hard frosts a very real threat.

Now May ends and June starts. There should be no more frosts. There should be no more snow. Famous last words? I hope not!

Last year, we had warm and wet, producing tall, structurally weak plants. This year, everything is late. The wet winter and cold spring has produced fantastic displays of Magnolia, Azalea and Rhododendron flower. But there is notable lack of buzz in the garden. Quite literally. I’ve hardly seen a bumble bee; I’m hoping they are just late, and not gone.

I should know not to tempt the weather; I always warn people not to comment on having good weather as it’s one of the best ways to break it!

So what should we be doing in the garden? Making the most of the sun? Well, there are a few little jobs:

• It should be well past overnight frosts: Get any tender bedding planted out, and your baskets and pots out to their final positions.
• Check your variegated shrubs, and prune off any unvariegated shoots right back to the originating stems. If you want to know why, look at last June’s job list.
• Tie in climbers, sweet peas etc, that have grown faster than they can tie themselves in. Also provide support for any herbaceous plants that need it. Although for the 1st time in my mind, even my Peonies don’t need supporting.
• Prune trained stoned-fruit trees (plums, cherries, apricot, peach, etc.). Take off any branches that are growing away from where you want them; espallier or wall-trained trees, take off any branches going away from or into the wall/line, or any side shoots going straight up (or down); I tend to reduce these to 2 or 3 leaf nodes. This increases productivity but keep size to a minimum. Next year these “stubs” will produce blossom and hopefully fruit.
• 1st early potatos will hopefully start to flower soon. (But as everything still seems to be 20 days behind…) Harvest as you need them from when they start to flower; I rarely dig all my potatos in 1 hit as they taste so much better straight out of the ground.
• If you are growing “cordoned” tomatoes (up string or a pole) take off side shoots as they form. This helps increase the number of tomatoes you get. It also helps reduce the occurrence of disease as there is more air flow around the plants.

Finally… Don’t forget to enjoy your garden!

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Jobs in the Garden: What to do in April

April 2013. Already. The coldest March in 50 years. Over 6″ of snow in our back garden. The remains of drifts still sheltering next to walls. Mother Nature has the ability to catch us out, to give us what we least expect. Last March was unseasonably warm, a mini-heatwave in Spring. This March there was barely a day where gardening was an option.

So now we’re in April, what should you do?

Well, first off, do everything that should have been done in March but wasn’t as your garden was buried in snow up to your calves!

Last April we were worried about a drought… How ill-founded that fear was!

April is still a threatening month… hard frosts are not unusual; last year we had snow, so cold weather isn’t unusual.

So after you’ve finished the jobs from March, what next?

For those with a mind to get some big stuff done, it’s a good time to lay turf or re-seed a lawn; it should be wet enough to establish without the need for turning on a sprinkler every evening.

do everything that should have been done in March but wasn’t as your garden was buried in snow up to your calves!

The other important, if more mundane, tasks include:

• Don’t fall for April’s promise of warm weather. Frosts will still happen. You can plant out hardy plants – pansies, violas, Primula and the likes, but don’t be fooled into putting out half-hardy plants and definitely no summer bedding yet!
• It is a good time to buy plug plants from the nurseries. Pot them on straight away and put them in a green house or on a warm windowsill.
• If you want to make fuchsias bushier, pinch out the tips of the shoots once a week from now. Each tip you pinch out will cause 2 new leaders to develop, giving you a much bushier plant.
• Plant summer flowering bulbs into pots. Keep them in a greenhouse, or a cool conservatory. I used to use the front porch of our house as it is closed in.
• Plenty of seeds to sow; fruit, veg and flowers! Check the back of the packet. We keep all out seeds in a wooden box and (usually my wife) go through them the start of each month, picking out those we need to sow. As I say, add about 4 to 6 weeks to the published earliest date if you live in The North…
• Use fleece to cover your crop plants. It will not only bring on the growth, but also keep pests off (like pigeons peeking off pea shoots!). If fruit trees are really important to you, keep an eye on the weather. If any frosts are forecast, wrap blossoming trees in fleece for the night only.
• Cut back spring-flowering shrubs as the flowers fade. Forsythia and ornamental Ribes are perhaps the commonest ones. Cut out about 1/3 of the oldest stems from as far down as you can, and shape the rest how you see fit. It flowers on last years wood, so what it grows this summer will flower next spring.
• Dead head your daffodils and tulips. It means they put more energy into the bulbs rather than wasting it on seed.
• As tulip greenery fades, pull it off the plant. As it dies the bulb draws materials from the leaves back to the bulb. This isn’t good as tulip bulbs are prone to viral build-up caused by the decay of the leaves.
• As Daffodil greenery fades it wilts, leaving you with ugly limp and (eventually) yellowing masses of long straggly leaves. Don’t cut them off! If you cut them off too early, next year you will not get any flowers. Loop the leaves around your hand and tie them off with an elastic band; a little like gathering loose string or wires. Then as they go yellow you can pull them off the plant as a single mass.

I’m sure there are other things. My lists are never exhaustive. But it’s a good starting point!

Enjoy the coming Spring!

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It’s raining again…

Half-way through cutting a lawn. Sudden downpour.

I could see 2 other gardeners in the area. One did like me, the other suited up and carried on cutting.

This is what industrial mowers do to grass in wet conditions

Industrial machines and wet soil are a bad mix… I took this a couple of weeks back.

Just some food for thought.

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Jobs in the Garden: What to do in August

The Garden Gnome has been busy this month, keeping my blog moving. It’s a handy thing to have, a helpful Gnome around the place.

But despite reports to the contrary, we still haven’t had anything I could call a summer. All advice about watering, conserving water, preventing water loss, is redundant. Protecting from too much water is more of an issue. So, what do I think should be going on right now?

• Keep dead-heading roses, dahlia, penstemon and summer bedding to keep the flowers coming up to the 1st frosts. It will also keep the roses looking healthy; the rain causes the petals to rot (go brown) before they are even open.
• For those who like tidy gardens, reshape rambling roses once they have finished flowering. Cut them back ready for winter, so you get the best display for next year. For those of us who like a little more nature in the garden, leave them till early next year so animals can get the rosehips over winter.
• Protect your dahlias from slugs: I’ve lost a pot-full of beauties in 1 garden to slugs.
• Some perennials that flowered in spring will be dying back; tidy up a bit by cutting back plants like Dicentra as they yellow off.
• Prune summer-flowering shrubs and climbers (wisteria, Weigela, Philadelphus, etc). If you’ve read many of these, you know the drill -1/3 of old stems off at the base, reshape the rest.
• Cut hardy geraniums (cranesbill) back hard. Remove all the seed pods and leaves. Fresh leaves will quickly grow and you will get a second flush of flower
• Trim lavenders and hebes after flowering to stop them becoming leggy.
• Summer-prune fruit bushes and fruit trees. This is especially important for stoned-fruit (cherries, plums, peaches, etc.), as these are prone to leaf-curl; pruning now reduces the chances of infection.
• From here on is the ideal time to start cutting conifer hedges. Growth from now to the end of summer should be minimal.
• Lawns: This year, drought-stress is not the problem. Too much water is. Aerate to improve drainage. Add river sand to the lawn as a top-dressing if the lawn is really wet, and sweep the sand in to the holes you make with the aerator.

There are loads of other stuff: green houses to tend, fruit to pick, strawberry plants to root suckers from, raspberry canes to cut out, tomato plants to watch for blight… the list is endless!

Hope your month has been as productive as mine, and watch for more posts from me or the Gnome!

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Still looking for the sunshine

I don’t know whether your weather forecast was the same as ours for today?

 Drier weather & some sunshine.

Really, not here unless you count now at about 8.15pm, I had plans my garden looks like a jungle & please do not enquire about the allotment (I am too ashamed to tell)

As I couldn’t get sunshine outside I had to create some inside using some of the herbs & veggies that have been a success this year. There aren’t many successes one of the most dramatic failures has been the french beans but the weather has been so poor I refuse to try & plant any more until next year. On the bright side I have still got peas, picked my first tiny broad beans & tiny yellow courgettes – how pretty does that plate look?

I prefer my broad beans small before their skin becomes too bitter, I know you can skin them but really I am a busy gnome with better things to do & I have not managed to find a way to con the gardener into skinning them either – so pick I small.

Decided to make a herby couscous to got with my lamb chops – I need to use more herbs.

I have harvested some oregano to dry & made fresh peppermint tea but the herbs are still filling the raised bed.

They are mainly soft herbs any suggestions as to how to preserve them for later in the year?

Apparently the pineapple mint would go well in a mojito – I will report back once I have tried this (don’t think this really counts as preserving the mint though but… would be churlish not to try)

The garden gnome

x

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Tiny triumphs in the rain

As the gardener is out (working between raindrops) the garden gnome is hijacking the blog! I tend to look after our garden & allotment so that the gardener can look after other people’s.

I had begun to think that nothing would come from the allotment this year – raspberries are moulding on the canes, strawberries decimated by slugs…but I have had a tiny triumph & thought I would share the sunshine.

 Peas quite a few peas (well at least 750g) – harvested in the rain .

What to do with them?

The head gnome from down south always avoids growing peas saying they are more work than they are worth. I agree it can feel that way, all of those pods (above) yielded this many peas (below).

It started me thinking about what to do with the pods, I had a vague recollection of pea pod soup so 5 googles later I came across a recipe I wanted to try from Riverford farm shop – didn’t exactly follow it but a good base for quantities, flavours etc.

I had to sieve mine after liquidising as the pods were quite stringy. See the results for yourself nice coloured soup, really good flavour, the little dollop of crème fraîche really added to the finished soup.

Got to go and to feed it to the soggy gardener who has been rained off… again.

So hope the sun is shining where you are (even if only in the form of peas)

The Garden Gnome

x

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Better weather for a Gardener?

Well, Sunday and the weather seems to be shifting back to sun. At least for the day light hours. But surely that’s all we need isn’t it?  The aquifers and rivers can be refilled as we sleep, then dry days for working. All told, next week looks to be promising in terms of work and of weather. But whatever the forecast may say, still the best indicator for this time of year is looking out of the window.

It reminds me of a joke from a TV show called “Mrs. Browns’ Boys”.

“You can tell the weather by hanging a dock leaf in your garden”.

“Really?”

“Yes, go out each morning, If it’s wet, it’s raining.”

Well,it made me smile. I told a friend who said it’s like the Yorkshire Stone forecasting device. Hang it in your garden… if it’s wet it’s raining; if it’s white it’s snowing and if you can’t see it, it’s foggy.

Both of which seem just as reliable as the Meteorological office.

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