are really going to brighten up the cabbages and carrots, and look gorgeous in the house too.
The gardener in me loves to plan for the next season.
The nurserywoman thinks of next summer. Cool June days are the best time to take cuttings of perennial herbs. Rosemary, sage, lavender and thyme cuttings can all be taken this month. They will root quickly and can be potted up well before autumn, overwintered in a cold frame and kept on the dry side of moist. In spring give the young plants a haircut and plant them out in a sunny spot with well-drained soil.
And planning for three years hence, June is the month that hellebore seed ripens. If I have gone to the trouble of hand- pollinating the flowers earlier on, I pop little muslin bags over the ripening seedheads and pull the drawstrings tight. They will catch the falling seed as the pods spring open and all those birds, mice, slugs and snails will be deprived of their favourite snack. The seed is then sown into shallow pots, covered with a thin layer of grit and placed by the tap so that they are watered regularly. Then nothing happens.
Until one cold December morning after the frosts when the seedlings emerge. And in three years’ time they will reveal their faces to me.
I can’t wait.
Without time spent weeding, the borders would be full of seedlings
A few years ago I realised they were cuckoos: they were far too big for the space they occupied at the expense of other, better plants. So I spent an entire winter’s day forking out every little piece of root. And still they come. But in much smaller numbers now and proportionate to the whole border.
I firmly believe that half an hour’s hoeing in the vegetable garden when rain is not forecast saves hours of hard work later on. It’s important not to hoe perennial weeds but to insert a small ‘ladies’ fork deep down alongside and extract the whole root system. In the paths I draw the line at hand-weeding gravel so I use a translocated weedkiller such as ‘Roundup’. This works through the green leaves and into the entire plant down to the tip of the root. In theory. In practice I suspect that it’s not entirely thorough and I have to repeat the process once or twice more during the summer. It’s not strictly organic but the alternative would be to lay a membrane along the paths and cover that with gravel or pavers. However I dislike the use of plastic in the garden. Very little is bio-degradable and it tends to disintegrate into long plastic streamers that catch claws, beaks and feet. I confine its use to the standing beds on the nursery.
At the beginning of the month I planted the dahlias I grow for cutting in a well-manured bed in the vegetable garden. I love the strong vibrant colours of varieties such as the velvet red ‘Arabian Night’, magenta-purple ‘Englehardt’s Matador’ with black leaves, and the old variety ‘Murdoch’ with double red mops. Last summer I was very much taken with ‘Honka’. It has single flowers with narrow lemon- yellow petals that surround the darker stamens like a windmill. The sharp colour relieves the richness of all those Venetian reds. And among the dahlias I have planted lime- green, red and murky blue-mauve gladiolus. Together they
Sally Gregson runs Mill Cottage Plants at Wookey.
www.millcottageplants.co.uk Photographs by Kate Lewis
Planting dahlias for cutting in a well-manured bed in the vegetable garden
Country Gardener 13
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56