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How to vegetable garden in January, garden ideas for the month of the year when the weather can be dark, bleak and cold. Let us be honest, the inclement weather of winter gardening does not encourage us to do much in the vegetable garden.
The garden soil may be frozen or too wet to work and [...]
How to Vegetable Garden in January is a post from: How to Vegetable Garden
I sometimes wonder whether we gardeners ever live in the present. In the winter months we are looking at seed catalogues and dreaming of the results in summer and autumn. Early spring we are sowing seeds and again dreaming of things to come. Here we are in July with everything coming to fruition after the hard work and what are we doing? Looking at what we need to plant to give an autumn show.
When you walk around the garden every day it is easy to miss the new things happening, they sort of creep up on you. This week we had three days of cool wet weather that only really encouraged me to quickly water the hanging baskets and containers.
Read more about Living in the Future and Enjoying Surprises
The petunias planted into the hanging basket and containers are coming on well, bushing out nicely from the base and should provide a beautiful show as the season progresses. The dahlias suffered a little slug and snail damage when first put out but, fingers crossed, they seem to be coping well now.
The hardy Geraniums or Cranesbills are still providing much colour in the garden as are the [TAG-TEC]Roses[TAG-TEC]. My very large hardy Fuchsia is wonderful again this year and will be flowering for months to come. I admit that it has grown much larger (more like a tree!) than I imagined but it is in a spot where it does not matter and looks really good. The day lilies are beginning to bloom, they put on such a great show each year and their strappy leaves add so much to the texture of the border.
Perfume is so important to me in the garden and the Philadelphus (Mock Oranges) and Roses are doing a fine job.
Read more of this week’s garden diary – The Taming of the Shrew | It Is a Good Job It Is Summer
It is June and everything in the garden is starting to flourish, especially the weeds!
Spring Flowering Plants and Bulbs
If you have not already done so cut back dead bulb but do wait until the foliage dies down naturally as cutting back too early can lead to no flowers next spring.
Lift and divide overcrowded clumps of bulbs after they have finished flowering, overcrowded bulbs may stop flowering.
Cut back clumps of spring and early flowering perennials. Hellebores and Pulmonaria produce new and attractive foliage and stay more compact.
Cut back the flowered stems of Euphorbias back to ground level leaving the more attractive foliage. Take care not to get the milky sap on your skin as this can result in blisters.
Summer Bedding Plants
A great way to produce a good show of bedding is to sow hardy annuals directly into the ground. There is the possibility of your garden landscape scheme not turning out as you have dreamt as there is always the danger that one of your sown varieties fails. It is a good idea to have back ups sown in trays whether that be hardy or half hardy annuals.
The hardy annuals sown outdoors should now be thinned out. Do this if practical in two or three stages at fortnightly intervals. Final spacings should be between 4-8in (10-20cm) using the higher figure for tall or spreading plants and the lower figure for smaller plants.
If you have not sown under cover and the weather has not been perfect for early sowings it is not too late to direct sow for the garden seeds of a few fast growing, late-flowering hardy annuals such as Clarkia, Calendula (pot marigolds) and Godetia. I did this in my first ever garden and was very pleased with the result.
Use annual bedding to fill gaps in herbaceous borders.
Plant out dahlias and cannas and if there is no longer a danger of frost.
If you have not already done so it is time to plant out your summer bedding and seed-raised plants. Always make sure they are well watered in, keep moist during dry weather and try to water an area wider than just where you have planted your young, succulent and delicious to eat youngsters. It can help to put slugs and snails off the scent where just damping the area where your plants have just gone in gives them excellent conditions to slide in and munch.
Containers, window boxes, garden pots and tubs can be planted up with summer bedding. They may sulk but if well watered in and covered with horticultural fleece on a cold night and they will soon establish and race away.
For more timely tips read The Flower Garden in June
It is June and the vegetable garden is beginning to burst forth. Promises of things to come.
Peas
Early sowings of peas may be ready for harvesting depending upon your location. Gently press the pods to check if the peas have swollen to a size ready for picking and after cropping cut off the top of the plants but leave the roots in the ground to fix nitrogen from the air into the ground.
Peas need staking and this can be achieved with pea sticks, netting, or pruned twigs from the garden. Netting is practical but somehow does not look as natural in my opinion as twiggy supports.
Maincrop peas can be sown now.
Potatoes
If you have planted early potato tubers they may be ready or almost ready for harvesting. As a guide many are ready when the plants come into flower. When digging them up take care not to damage or skewer your potatoes with your fork. Avoid this by inserting your fork some distance away and lifting the soil carefully.
For maincrop potatoes Keep a close and regular check and earth them up as required which should result in 2 inch or 5 cm of shoot showing above ground or the compost in your container.
If planting through black plastic check regularly for slugs, the cool damp conditions under the plastic are an ideal home.
Celeriac
Celeriac can be planted out in June. It is many years since I discovered this vegetable and started to grow it regularly. Easy to grow and excellent in soups, a vegetable on its own or mashed into potato.
More Vegetable Garden in June tips
I had a shrub given to me this weekend, an Elaeagnus that was growing in a concrete container but outgrown its situation. All I had to do was collect it, simple. Off I went with my wheelbarrow with the shout of “back in 30 minutes”. It would not come out of its pot. I tried tipping the container over but it seemed a lot heavier to move than I expected, brute force was called for. The reason suddenly became clear as I heard a tear.
The anchor root had found its way through the drainage hole (no drainage crocks had been put in) and through a crack in the paving. Obviously this container had not been moved for years. As the pot had been sitting directly on the paving the root had become flatted and bulbous, the only way to release the shrub was to hack off the root.
The next problem was getting it home on the barrow when a gale force wind came up, unfortunately a side wind, from behind would have been great. Seeing me pushing a wheelbarrow angled sideways at 45 degrees trying to keep this shrub on board must have provided much amusement and enjoyment for the locals! Anyway it is in its new home and we will have to hope it does not sulk too much.
More of this weeks Garden Diary
So you have discovered the delights of having a wildlife pond and would like to have one in your own garden or back yard. We can greatly improve our garden’s biodiversity by including a pond and what is more it does not need to be large. If we can only accommodate a small pond we will be providing a lifeline to many creatures and give ourselves a wonderful opportunity to observe nature in action and close at hand.
During the past century many ponds have been lost in the countryside and it is important to preserve those left. It is just as important for us gardeners to provide ponds wherever and whenever it is possible and safe to do so.
What Can We Expect To See?
Pond favourites have to be frogs, toads and newts which can breed in quite small amounts of water as long as the pond has at least 24in or 60cm at its deepest end. At first glance it may seem that a pond is devoid of life but look closer and you will see little eyes just above the surface of the water weighing you up. Those eyes belong to the same creature that will be causing the dense planting in your garden to move, frogs searching out slugs to eat. Unfortunately fish have a habit of feeding on many other forms of pond life so their introduction in ponds for wildlife is best avoided.
Larger ponds quite possibly may attract mallards, moorhens and coots, as well as swallows and house martins which pick off insects from above the water surface and use muddy areas for nest building. Ducks are entertaining but can make quite a mess around the pond and garden. Grey herons can also visit small ponds and will soon polish off any fish you have in there unless you provide protection.
Then there are the smaller and numerous inhabitants that are crucial to the biodiversity and health of your pond will. This may include pond-skaters, water beetles, snails and caddis flies and if you are lucky the beautiful damselflies and dragonflies.
The next steps when considering Wildlife Ponds and Water Garden Ponds
The hole in the lawn mystery, some long lost book by Agatha Christie or one of Enid Blyton’s Famous Five adventures? No, something has been digging little holes in my front lawn, not deep, not that big but each morning there are more. Opening the curtains one night before heading for bed, there was the culprit just visible in the filtered light coming through the hedge from a street light.
It is hard to know where to start this week writing about the garden, so much is happening.
In the greenhouse I have nipped out the leading shoots of my dahlia seedlings so that they bush out, the cucumbers are taking off and the peppers have germinated at last. The petunias and alyssum that I pricked out have started to move on at a rate but the basil is very slow.
Outside in the garden the Exochorda The Bride is still starring, over 6 feet tall and wide it is stunning. The first rhododendrons are in flower, light pinks that were here when we arrived over 20 years ago and Rhododendron Luteum which has to be one of my favourites with its yellow and beautifully scented flowers. The tiny sweet scented violets are everywhere, again they were here before us and seed themselves everywhere but are a joy rather than a problem. Bluebells in their full glory and blue mists of forget-me-nots that seed themselves every year, I know some that think this a problem but for me they seem to complement all around them and if in the wrong place they are so easy to pull up. The same can be said for Bowles Golden Grass or to give it its proper name Milium effusum ‘Aureum’. The late Geoff Hamilton brought this to my attention many years ago and I struggled to find a specimen way back then when I suppose grasses were not such a design item as they are now. I would not be without it as it is an absolute ray of sunshine in the garden and goes well with most colours, one exception being yellow. I let mine seed and transplant it to wherever I think appropriate or just leave it where Mother Nature decided it would look best. The magnolia is still in flower and the pink apple blossom with its delicate scent has shown itself.
More on the garden and The Hole in the Lawn Mystery
Saturday at last I was able to cut my lawns. How many times have I written “get your mower serviced during the winter months because come spring there will be a long waiting time”? Did I take my own advice? No, do as I say, not as I do!
Saturday was a beautiful day and I was able to start catching up on a few jobs as my muscles are telling me this morning. I had a small patch of ground that needed tidying and planting where a shrub had died back. Continuing my policy of dividing or transplanting self sown plants instead of buying I filled the space with geraniums and golden grass. I have a hosta that I am bringing on in a pot that will look good there too.
Read more of the Garden Diary
Spring Flowering Bulbs
Dead-head or remove any fading flower-heads from primroses and pansies to encourage further flowers.
The foliage of daffodils and other spring flowers should be left intact but faded heads should be picked off. Do not be tempted to tie up the leaves of flowered daffodils to make them look tidy as was once the fashion, leave them to die down naturally so that all possible nutrients can feed the bulbs and help good flowering next Spring.
Keep a keen eye on the compost in pots of spring bulbs to ensure they stay moist, water well if it has dried out.
Clumps of spring-flowering bulbs benefit from a sprinkling of fertiliser. Bulbs naturally “clump up” and compete for any nutrients available in the soil. A bit of help will help them perform better for you next year.
One thing to plant is a buddleja or buddlia which is also known as the butterfly bush because the little beauties cannot resist the taste of the sweet, honey scented flowers. You have choice of shades of blue, red and white and they should be cut back hard in early spring, you will be surprised how much growth they put on in a season.
Another plant I have grown for years is Sedum Autumn Joy which is a late flowerer to follow on from the buddlias. This herbaceous perennial provides a long period of interest with its blue green foliage developing light green flower buds that in autumn burst open to reveal a mass of salmon pink flowers that turn bronzy as they age. Small Tortoiseshell butterflies especially love the flat headed blooms. I have grown this for 30 years and the plants I have now all came from the original one that I bought mail order all that time ago. As a plant clumped up I split it and transplanted elsewhere in the garden, even potting some up to bring to my new garden. I think I just might have got my monies worth!
Michaelmas Daisies are another species favoured by butterflies and Aster Monch which has large yellow centred lilac blooms over many weeks is one of the earliest. Verbena bonariensis with its many small heads of purple blooms became the beloved of many garden designers, and perhaps overused, but will grow quite tall bringing height and an airy feel to a border and is popular with Tortoiseshells.
Also try Echinops, Hebe, Ceratostigma and Heleniums, Aubrieta, Yellow Alyssum, Primroses, Forget-Me-Not, Marsh Marigold and Lady’s Smock, Honest, Sweet Rocket and nettles. Nettles, but we gardeners spend so much of our time weeding out these stingers. Not all of us have the room to leave a small corner to run wild with nettles, I am lucky enough to have a field next to my garden and there is a small patch just over the hedge that is so close it might as well be mine, but if you have a patch of stinging nettles provides a nursery for the caterpillars of Comma, Painted Lady, Peacock, Red Admiral and Small Tortoiseshell. Cut the nettles down at midsummer before they flower and set seed to give soft, new growth for late caterpillars.
Read more about The Butterfly Garden
I sowed the seed of Dahlia Coltness Hybrids a couple of weeks ago and they were ready for pricking out. If you have not tried dahlias from seed then do have a go. A packet of seed will cost you less than a corm or potted up corm from your local garden centre and you will get about three dozen plants from your sowing that will flower this year. The bonus of course is that you can lift the resulting corms in the autumn ready for replanting nest spring.
Mrs Speckles has given birth. I saw her making a nest in our large rhododendron and I noticed that Speckles was coming as usual to ask for his dried fruit but when he had his fill he was taking a beak full round to the front of the house. I layered a dogwood last year and it had produced a very health root ball. I lifted the little shrub and carried it around to its new position at the front of the house and as I passed the rhododendron I spotted Mrs Speckles sitting on her nest in her “you really cannot see me” pose. I will avoid that route for a while, not wishing to cause her unnecessary stress. Speckles is going to be a very busy blackbird again.
This week my anemones have burst bud and the first forget-me-nots and grape hyacinths have shown themselves, not to mention more magnolia and rosemary flowers.
There just seems to be an air of optimism everywhere in the garden at the moment.
Flower garden ideas for garden maintenance are many for this time of the year. Many gardening questions are asked about what needs to be done with perennial flowers at this time of the year.
Of course it is not just flowering plants that need attention, when it comes to maintaining a garden in readiness for spring and summer, and autumn for that matter, we have to consider the requirements for ornamental grasses, bulbs and climbers.
Put in the work in the garden in March and you will reap the benefits later and realise how worthwhile all that effort was.
List of tips in Gardening advice for the flower garden in March
If you are totally lacking a garden or balcony, you can use more decorative pots or containers.
If you place your vegetables correctly in your flat, they can act as decorative pieces as well as great food. The key for decorating with vegetables is to get creative. Wrapping a vine from a vegetable plant around a post or railing can make a nice accent.
Just be sure indoor plants are getting plenty of direct sunlight. Just remember, instead of concentrating on how your small space limits you, think of the fun and creative things you can do with vegetables in the area you do have.
For those with a larger garden, planting up containers enables you to move them around to fill places in your borders when early bulbs or spring plants have died back, or in fact where plants have unexpectedly died off and a temporary solution is required.
Container gardening should come with a health warning. When you plant up one or two containers for your small space and love the result you will have the desire for more and more. There is nothing wrong with that apart from the fact that containers are high maintenance. They need watering. Even in the wettest of summer months they need you to provide water. The foliage has a tendency to act as an umbrella so you must make sure you get the water underneath the foliage and onto the compost.
These are your babies and they rely on you for food and water. You will be rewarded for your care and kindness. If you plant small shrubs in your containers you will probably have to make good use of your secateurs to keep them in shape and restricted to their allocated space. See the full article at My Garden is My Space…
