Amateur Gardening 6-Apr-2019

“It is said you get a real insight into the personality of someone through their garden. This was apparent during a recent visit to the gardens at Highgrove – the home of The Prince of Wales. It conjured up many impressions of the man: quirky, witty, traditional and deeply sentimental. It also showed a focus on recycling that bordered on obsessive. There was something quite spiritual about it, and I recommend a visit. You do have to book, and it is not cheap, but it is a special experience and all funds go to The Prince of Wales’s Charitable Foundation. Perhaps a great birthday or anniversary treat?”…

SPRING is well underway, and new plants and those recovering from winter dormancy should be growing well. Plants that are well fed will grow robustly, but if certain trace elements and minerals are missing from the soil they will start to look peaky. For example, calcium, potassium, magnesium and copper become more soluble in very acid soil, which means they can be easily washed away. Similarly, in very alkaline soils, phosphorus, iron and manganese become less available, which can lead to chlorosis – yellowing of leaves. This can also occur when too much potassium is added to the soil (if you are over-generous with wood ash around plants, for instance). While potash is essential for good flowers and crops, being too heavy-handed can potentially rob plants of other essentials. To keep a good…

COMFREY has been in the herbalist’s first-aid kits for centuries – it’s called ‘knitbone’ for a reason, after all! But this quick-to-flourish member of the borage family is also extremely beneficial in the garden. Because its root systems travel far and deep, the plant takes up essential nutrients to spare, especially potassium. These essential elements are released when leaves are soaked for a few weeks in buckets of water, and the resulting ‘tea’ can be diluted and used as an excellent plant food. However, while far-reaching roots are good for the plant, they can be a pain for the gardener. Most comfrey is extremely invasive and hard to remove, so if you want to grow it for fertiliser make sure you choose the sterile ‘Bocking 14’ variety. Site it somewhere out of…

GETTING to know your soil is essential for keeping your plants healthy. The pH – acidity or alkalinity – is the most important as most plants need the right levels in which to thrive. In some cases, you can tell simply by looking at your garden – we have lots of ‘free chalk’ that rise in lumps to the surface of our borders so know we have extremely alkaline soil. However, never make assumptions and always test several areas of soil as the pH can vary throughout the garden. Tests to check soil nutrient levels are also widely available and generally easy to use. Simply take a small sample of soil, add it to the liquid and chemicals provided and measure the colour of the resulting mixture against a chart. These checks are invaluable if…

For soil to work at its optimum level, it needs to be healthy and fertile with regular boosts of nourishing goodness. One of the easiest ways of doing this is to dig in lots of well-rotted organic material such as compost, leafmould or farmyard manure. This makes thin soils richer and more able to hold onto moisture and nutrients, and opens up heavy clay soils, so they are lighter, easier to work and less prone to clagginess and waterlogging. You can buy soil improvers and manure from garden centres, but it is easy and so much cheaper to make your own, or find a local farm or stables with lots of poo going spare!…

A NEW insect order, the country’s first colony of webspinners (Embioptera), has been discovered in the glasshouse at RHS Wisley. They will now join 24 other insect orders found in the UK – an ‘order’ is the umbrella under which different species sit, including beetles (Coleoptera), flies (Diptera), bees, wasps and ants (Hymenoptera), butterflies and moths (Lepidoptera), and stick insects (Phasmida). Webspinners feed on fungal and algal growth, and are the only insects that produce silk webbing from their front legs. The species found by the RHS, Aposthonia ceylonica, lives on the hanging roots of tropical plants. Webspinners live in colonies and display maternal care of eggs and young, nymphs remaining with the female until they are almost adults. RHS Principal Entomologist Andrew Salisbury said: “The confirmation of a new grouping of insects in…