Think Clematis, Think Laurel

Perhaps you have a couple of naked fence panels you would like to cover with clematis. Here, a bit of lateral thinking will give you the best results. Instead of buying two or three plants, look for one with three or four reasonably long stems. When it comes to planting, put the roots sideways in the hole. You can lay the stems along the ground at the base of the fence and cover them with soil. A few leaves sticking out above soil level at regular intervals is good but not essential.

Before you know it, a new stem will start to grow from every leaf joint, each one with its own roots. This way, your single plant will give you a lush blanket of leaves and flowers to completely cover the fence.
If you try this at home, don’t act too smug when you see your neighbour’s clematis has a few almost bare stems with all the leaves and flowers at the top. This technique can be used with many climbers. Feel free to experiment.

Written By Alistair Ayres

Bargain Orchids

Due largely to modern micro-propagation techniques, orchids have become much more widely available and very reasonably priced. The plants are raised in test tubes from tiny fragments of tissues, enabling growers to produce them in their thousands, cutting literally hundreds of years from the traditional production cycle. Cloning may sound a bit Frankenstein but for plants it’s really just a hi-tech way of taking cuttings.

Of all the orchids, cymbidiums are by far the toughest and most widely sold. These are the ones with long strap-shaped leaves and flowers in an amazing range of colours. They are happy in quite cool conditions and do well with minimal watering while in flower.

If want an absolute bargain, watch the shops for orchids that have just finished flowering. Prices are often slashed to giveaway prices. To get them to perform again next year, put them outside somewhere as sunny as possible, keep them watered and give them an occasional liquid feed. The leaves can look quite attractive as a foil to summer flowers in a container collection, so there’s really nothing to lose.

Bring them indoors again until temperatures threaten to go below 5 degrees C and ease off the water for the winter. As long as you had a nice summer, you should be rewarded by ten full weeks of bloom.

Written By Alistair Ayres

The Gardener's Scourge

The leaves of bay and laurels all eaten away around the edges, polyanthus suddenly turn yellow and die. Chances are you have the dreaded vine weevil. It has reached plague proportions in London gardens over recent years.

The adults, which are like tiny black beetles, can only be seen if you go out with a torch at night. Shaking the plants over a sheet will give you a clue to their numbers and give some measure of control. Unfortunately, while the adults disfigure plants biting out notches around the edges of the leaves, it their maggot-like larvae that do the most serious damage, gnawing away at the roots.

Vine weevils are hard to kill because you need to get the adults, the larvae and the eggs. There are two chemicals that will do the job but they are only for use in containers. Provado Vine Weevil Killer 2 (thiacloprid) and Scotts Bug Clear Ultra Vine Weevil Killer (acetamiprid) are both mixed with water. You need to really soak the compost for them to be effective. A single treatment can give up to two months control but my experience suggests that at least one repeat application Let your guard down once and they’ll be back in force.

Never uses these chemicals for any plants you intend to eat. The organic solution is a biological control in the form of a microscopic worm that parasitizes the vine weevil grubs. It works in the garden as well as containers but the soil needs to warm and moist. Putting the worms into action is easy. Just mix some powder into to your watering can and you are away. They work in the garden as well as containers but the soil needs to warm and moist. Google biological pest controls to find suppliers.

Recharge Your Bulbs

Bulbs come with their own power pack. They stored the energy to put on a good flower display during last year’s growing season. Now they need to recharge for next year.

My parents had the strange idea that daffodil leaves should be tied in knots when they finished flowering. It’s better than cutting the leaves down but it’s still not good practice. Extensive trials by the Royal Horticultural Society have demonstrated that daffodils perform best the following year when the leaves are allowed to die down naturally. The same principle applies to tulips, hyacinths and all the other spring flowering bulbs.

Great simple advice but it’s not always totally practical. What if you planted daffodils and crocuses in the lawn for example? Try and hold off mowing for 6 to 8 weeks after the last flowers fade. Mow around the bulbs rather than letting the whole lawn go wild.

In tubs and window boxes, watching the leaves of spring bulbs slowly die is not a very attractive. What I do is to plant the bulbs in small pots in the autumn and sink them pot and all into the containers. Once they finish flowering, I can easily take them out the pots and let the leaves continue growing in a less conspicuous position. With a bit of care, most bulbs can be successfully moved in leaf. Another solution is to replant all the daffs and tulips from your window boxes in a large pot and give the leaves a bit of extra loving till they fade.

Written By Alistair Ayres

Attack of the Greenfly!

Greenfly are amazing creatures. They survive the winter as eggs and during the warmer months they give birth to young greenfly that are already pregnant with a pregnant offspring. Not only that, but they can ride the winds for hundreds of miles to find their way to your window box. The mind boggles. So how do you kill them?

My favorite method is to gently squash them between finger and thumb, taking care not to damage delicate stems. It’s cheap, organic and effective for container plans. An alternative is blast them off with a hose. It won’t kill them all but there will be fatalities. Both these methods require persistence for success.

Insecticides are the next resort. Soft soap, approved by organic growers, contact insectides (containing bifenthrin) kill greenfly and other insects they come in contact with, and systemic insecticides (imidacloprid and thiacloprid) ingested by plant and poison insects that try to eat them. My advice would be to use insecticides sparingly to deal with the first big wave attack. You don’t really want to kill the ladybirds, lacewings, ground beetles and spiders that will eat enough greenfly to prevent them become a further problem once the population is under control.

The sugary droppings from greenfly and other aphids can often be a bigger problem than the direct damage they cause to plants. This becomes covered with a black mould that blocks out light to the leaves. Don’t worry if you see this, the plants are not diseased; they just need to be washed.

Ants farm aphids for their sugar droppings and will viciously defend them against predators. A ring of Vaseline around the base of the plant stem will close down the ants’ access to their herd.

Rose Pruning Myths

I once had a dog named Ken who loved rose bushes. Every time I planted one, he’d dig it up and chew on the stems. Undeterred I kept replanting them and lo and behold they flowered beautifully, albeit a bit later than normal. This started me questioning the traditional advice on rose pruning.

Working for Which? at the time, I commissioned the Royal National Rose Society in St Albans to carry out a proper trial to compare the careful method (making a slanting cut just above a bud) with just cutting all the stems back roughly to about a third of their height. We used a hedge trimmer to simulate dog’s teeth. The roughly pruned and hedge trimmer cut roses flowered as well or better than those treated with care.

Roses in general are pretty tough plants so don’t be frightened to cut them back. The textbooks usually say March, but April, May or even June is OK. In our recent mild winters, roses can carry on blooming until after Christmas and the later pruned ones should be especially good in the autumn. If you use a rough method, be prepared for brown bits at the ends of some of the cut stems. This is not worry – just trim of anything that looks ugly as and when.

Unfortunately Ken is no more, but I hope his contribution to gardening may be remembered.

Written By Alistair Ayres

Nurseries come to farmer's markets!

I like visiting London’s Farmers’ Markets. There’s something reassuring about seeing vegetables sold in random shapes and sizes. There’s the homemade bread and scrummy cakes too. This year, gardeners are in for a special treat as nurseries have been invited along to sell their plants on selected dates through April, May and June at Farmers’ Markets throughout London.

They run from 9am to 1pm on Saturdays and 10 to 2pm on Sundays. Dates for markets with Plant Fairs are:

4 April Holly Road Carpark, Twickenham
5 April and 24 May Walthamstow Town Square
26 April Bonneville Gardens, Clapham
3 May and 21 June Salusbury Road, Queens Park
9 May Wimlbledon Park Primary School
1o May and 14 June Islington Town Hall
16 May William Ellis School, Parliament Hill
17 May Blackheath Station

Written By Alistair Ayres

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