Hot and Bothered

So, when did you last have some rain? In our little corner of the South East, it seems like weeks ago. Val or I seem to spend an hour most mornings on the end of a hosepipe – we water in the morning whenever we can because we find that watering in the evening tends to encourage the slugs to come out overnight and treat the borders like a self-service restaurant. If you water in the morning and the slugs come out, the local bird population form a very disorderly queue to pick them up.

You can always spot the plants that aren’t getting enough water; they usually start showing signs of mildew on the leaves and stems. So before you resort to grabbing the sprayer and applying fungicide, make sure you are giving the plants plenty of water.

We find the climbers close to the house get mildew first, because this is always the driest part of the garden (plus the back faces south, so gets very hot). Honeysuckle, clematis, golden hop and most rambler roses will soon start to look as if they’ve been dusted over with white flour unless you keep them well watered.

If, like us, you have limited water supplies, this is the time to ignore the lawn. Mow it on a higher setting to shade the roots, but save the water for other plants – the lawn will soon turn green after the next shower of rain. We lightly spike the grass with a fork when we have a dry spell, so that when it does rain, the water will penetrate better into the surface of the lawn. This is effective if the dry weather is broken by a thunder storm. Loads of water falls in a short time and it normally just runs off the dry soil, so we also water the borders lightly just before it hits. That way, the rain soaks into the damp ground.

The other downside of this hot dry weather is that we have rampant red spider mite in the greenhouse. This year, we have tried using predators to keep the pest population down, but it’s not working very well and we’re faced with having to use a spray or lose the crop of tomatoes.

 

On a happier note, we have picked most of the soft fruits, with good crops of blackberries, and both red- and black-currants. It must be the best year we have ever had for redcurrants, so there’ll be jam for breakfast soon and pies over the winter. Annoyingly, our resident blackbird did give us a good run for our money to see who would get the most from the bushes. He’s been winning with the blueberry, but Val wrapped that up in netting today to keep him off. The apples are a little worrying: there’s not much fruit drop but the wasps have started taking samples already, so we will need to keep a watch for them.

 

One job I have just started –which I personally really hate – is painting the fences with wood preservative. It’s messy, smelly and seems to take forever, but treating the wooden panels now while they’re so dry means that the preservative is really soaking into the wood. You can almost hear a slurping sound as the wood sucks in the liquid.  

Back to Work

Back to Work

At last we are finally getting back to something close to a normal life again, after the rigours of a two week stint at the RHS Hampton Court Palace Flower Show. I know the show is only open to the public for six days but with build-up (organising the transport of materials and plants) and the logistics of keeping the displays trimmed and watered, one or both of us had to be there every day for two weeks. This was our first time exhibiting at this show, although we often work there in other capacities; like representing the Sun newspaper or working for BBC local radio (usually BBC Radio Kent or BBC Southern Counties radio – or both).

 

For this first effort, we built two large vertical displays of plants in troughs at the entrance to Floral Marquee 3. One wall held 168 plants of Begonia ‘Million Kisses Romance’, while the other had over 200 plants of Verbena ‘Seabrook’s Lavender’ (discovered by the Sun’s own Gardening Editor, Peter Seabrook). Both displays were a huge hit with the visiting public, who were very keen to buy the plants we offered for sale – so much so that the Verbena sold out on Wednesday and again by lunch time on the final day.

We were also thrilled by the approval we received from our fellow gardening colleagues, particularly the Royal Horticultural Society, who were so taken with the displays that they have now been moved to RHS Gardens Wisley in Surrey, where they have been installed at the entrance to welcome visitors for the rest of the season.

 

The trouble is that while all of this is taking place, the garden has been left to its own devices and now Val and I are playing catch up, especially with the weeds. During our time away, the bindweed has climbed up and over everything within reach. Simply pulling it down is a complete waste of time (and damages the plants it is climbing over), so we are adopting a chemical approach. I spent this morning carefully untwining the end 1 metre section of each weed’s stem and coiling it up into a circle about 15-20 centimetres in diameter. I put each coil into a clear plastic bag, then added a small amount of Roundup weed killer and sealed the bag up. The weed in the bag continues to grow and absorbs the chemical, which slowly kills the entire weed (not just the bit in the bag) and the surrounding plants are left unharmed.

 

It’s not just about the weeds though. Many of our plants have been flowering well due to the sunshine and frequent showers (despite the odd torrential downpour), so we both spent the best part of yesterday removing dead heads to keep them flowering. Bedding plants, dahlias, Fuchsias, Penstemons and roses have all needed attention, although the species roses have been lighter work because we want the hips for winter colour. I must admit I do find a session of deadheading therapeutic, but I need to concentrate on the roses or I collect more scratches than flower heads!

I Need a Drink

I Need a Drink

What a surprise – Wimbledon fortnight and no rain yet! The trouble is, we do need some rain to keep the plants growing and Val and I are spending time most evenings with the hosepipe, just making sure the containers stay damp (thankfully there’s no ban yet where we are). The greenhouse plants are getting watered twice some days because, with the tomatoes, if you miss a watering session then the skins harden the next time you water, they split , leaving you with trusses of burst fruits.

If you have to water in the evening, make sure you keep the slug pellets topped up, because evening watering really brings slugs and snails out in force. To get the best results, you just have to keep at it.

Peas, beans and soft fruits all grow better and give higher yields if they are kept well watered, and leafy vegetables and salad crops will ‘bolt’ and go to seed if they get too dry.

Mulch where you can, with well-rotted garden compost, to hold as much water in the soil as possible. When you water, pull back a bit of the mulch, water and then put the mulch back. This year for our raspberries, we have laid down trickle irrigation pipes (the cheap, flat, plastic type) and mulched over the top, and we are getting one of the best crops we have ever had.

 

You may have heard that many allotment holders and veg gardeners are experiencing problems with distorted plants this year. Tomatoes and peppers have narrow, curled, fern-like leaves, poor growth and hardly any fruit production. This is being put down to batches of manure contaminated with a ‘hormone’-type weed killer, used for killing broad leaved weeds in cereal crops and grassland grown for hay. Apparently, the chemicals in the weed killer bind to the woody tissue in grass and do not fully break down, although these persistent chemicals do not seem to harm horses and cattle when they eat the grass. It is believed that these chemical residues can last for up to 2 years in composting manure, although they are broken down by soil-borne bacteria. Although this chemical does not appear to harm humans, we suggest that you don’t harvest or eat vegetables you think are contaminated, just remove and burn the plants.

 

Next week sees the start of the RHS Hampton Court Flower Show, from the 8^th – 13^th of July. No doubt the BBC will provide saturation coverage of the gardens (without venturing into the marquees unless it’s raining). If you get the chance to come along, come and say hello to us at the entrance to Marquee 3. Also, if you see the Potash Nurseries exhibit, you can take a look at the new Fuchsia ‘Valerie’, named after our own Val Bradley.