Patience needed for gardening success

March winds and April showers befit the usual season

So the amount of rain that fell in June seems beyond the realm of reason

But if this soggy climate has stressed out your mental tether

Relax and just get used to it, this is now your ‘normal’ weather.

Now here is my prediction! Don’t hang up the barbeque tongs just yet. Come the end of the month it won’t be the cavalry coming over the hill – it’ll be the injuns. We will have our ‘summer’ after all.

A gift from Peter Watson through my contact with the Mearns Horticultural Society certainly added a bit of colour to my life. He gave me a rooted cutting of Dahlia ‘Pooh’ earlier in the year and it now flowering in all its glory. The petals look like little flames – sure to warm up the dullest day. If I can keep the flowers coming I may enter a bloom into the local flower show in early September. I still have my prize card from 1977 in a frame on the kitchen wall.

That was the year when I won first prize in the ‘long-rooted carrot’ class – a feat never repeated – but the enjoyment indirectly led me on to a career in horticulture. Forty years. Seems like only yesterday.

During that time I have seen many changes, both in commercial business and in domestic gardening. One of the most striking observations is the lack of patience that has taken over peoples outlook on all things horticultural. Everybody is ‘time poor’ these days and wants plants to be in flower all year round or six foot tall right away (and then stop growing).

Garden makeover programmes don’t help either. Wham, bam, kazzam – there’s your instant garden. Oops – forgot about the drainage. Oops again – forgot about the topsoil.

Just last week I had a customer in looking for winter vegetable plants. I thought she meant spring cabbage or late lettuce, but, no, her daughter wanted to plant radish and carrot plugs. I had to tell her that she was a bit late in the season for a fair chance of success and, to my mind more importantly, why buy expensive plugs of vegetables which do not transplant very easily?

Beetroot and carrots are easy peasy to grow from seed – a packet would cost about £1. Nice to see a youngster keen to grow her own stuff so, in short, she may be coming in for a Saturday job next year and then she can learn all there is to know about beetroot and its cultivation.

I raised half an eyebrow at the results of a recent survey (yes, another one) on how negligent we British have become in looking after plants. They are being killed off at an alarming rate either by overwatering or lack of feeding.

I have seen quite a few examples of the latter. Recently someone called me out to his ‘orchard’ where his fruit trees had hardly made any growth over the past two years. The poor things were hardly visible above a dense thicket of dockens, nettles and couch grass. Give the plant a chance and keep all competing vegetation well away. Oh yes, and give the trees a bit of fertiliser at least twice a year. Put yourself in the plants position. If you’d been stuck in a crowd of folk stealing food from your plate since 2015 you would look rather peely wally too.

It has been a bit of a trial and error year with the veg’ plot. Last season I chose Meteor as the garden pea cultivar. Not good – the whole lot got some sort of blight and withered away. This year I opted for Kelvedon Wonder, and a wonder it has been. Huge crop, I'm well pleased.

Not so much success with the runner beans. I kept the young plants under glass too long. A hell of a tangle – and even now they don’t know which way is up.

Mistake number two, was with the cucumbers. I bought seed of the Peticue variety thinking they would be strong growers but with a nice wee bite-size fruit. Wrong. The whole plant is no more than five inches tall and not much crop attached.

This is the first year I have tried Mayan Gold as a tattie variety. It looks good. Small tubers but plenty of them. Together with Charlotte we have a lot of salad style spuds to eat. I’ve got Kestrel and Desiree as main crop – if the blight stays away I may have another entry for the flower show.

There was a bit of a fuss (faux outrage) earlier in the year about dreadful members of the public taking bits off plants when walking through public parks or botanic gardens. Presumably they were taken home to propagate but I would imagine many stems had wilted and died in the pocket, or handbag, before they got a chance to revive.

Early autumn is the ideal time to have a go at putting roots on shoots. Tip cuttings of evergreens such as Cotoneaster, Escallonia and Hebe are at their best. Get a wee bag of propagation compost and a pot of rooting hormone at your local garden centre. A three inch pot will take about five or six cuttings. Water in well and cover with a polybag (clear or white) and put it at the kitchen window. You’ll know how green-fingered you are about six weeks later.

HAPPY GARDENING

GENERAL POINTS

Cut off the old flower stems on herbaceous perennials like Delphinium and Lupin. The plant will do better with the energy being diverted away from seed production.

Take the growing tip out of tomato plants and reduce feeding. Strip some leaves off at the base to assist fruit ripening.

If you’re happy with the growth on the tatties then cut the shaws down and remove to prevent diseases creeping in.

Keep picking sweet peas on a regular basis. Don’t allow them to develop pods otherwise flower yield will fade fast.

Good choice of Hydrangeas at garden centres right now. Some exciting new varieties. Also likely to find Begonia planters on offer. Worthwhile for colour at the front door right the way through to October.

Bell Heather in full bloom now. A useful addition, in acidic soil, to follow on from Azaleas.