Monday 31 October 2016
Sunday 30 October 2016
Friday 28 October 2016
Planting. Sowing bulbs.
Thursday, 6 October 2016.
Wednesday, 5 October 2016.
Saturday, 22 October 2016.
Wednesday 26 October 2016
Tuesday 25 October 2016
Lakemont Grape Vine.
Monty Don's choice of Lakemont!
Lakemont Grape Vine - Vitis vinifera - Seedless
Monty Don's favorite grape, Lakemont is a sweet table grape, produces tight clusters of yellow-green grapes if grown in an unheated greenhouse or conservatory. Fruits well from late September if grown outside against a sunny wall in the south. Avoid alkaline (chalk) soil and provide good drainage.
Mildew resistant.
- How to Take Care of the Seedless Lakemont Plant | Home Guides | SF Gate
- Opening Hours | Groves Nurseries
- Gardens: grapevines | Life and style | The Guardian
Pruning advice
Buy bare-rooted plants while they are dormant.
Dig a hole a couple of feet across and the same depth, and mix the excavated soil with a good dose of organic matter before backfilling and firming down, planting the vine at the level at which it was originally grown.
Water generously for the first year.
Bates suggests cutting back hard in the spring after the first year of growth to promote root growth.
Shirley suggests spur pruning if you have a wall or structure to cover.
Train the main stem up the wall, tying in side shoots (laterals) horizontally to the nearest wire as they grow, one per wire.
Cut extras off.
Once the laterals have grown as far as you want them to, cut off the ends of the branches.
Sub-laterals will be formed off these and should be cut back to two buds.
Prune back to this framework every autumn.
- Seven vineyards you have to visit - right here in the UK | Travel News | Travel | Daily Express
Lakemont Grape Vine - Vitis vinifera - Seedless
Monty Don's favorite grape, Lakemont is a sweet table grape, produces tight clusters of yellow-green grapes if grown in an unheated greenhouse or conservatory. Fruits well from late September if grown outside against a sunny wall in the south. Avoid alkaline (chalk) soil and provide good drainage.
Mildew resistant.
- How to Take Care of the Seedless Lakemont Plant | Home Guides | SF Gate
- Opening Hours | Groves Nurseries
- Gardens: grapevines | Life and style | The Guardian
Pruning advice
Buy bare-rooted plants while they are dormant.
Dig a hole a couple of feet across and the same depth, and mix the excavated soil with a good dose of organic matter before backfilling and firming down, planting the vine at the level at which it was originally grown.
Water generously for the first year.
Bates suggests cutting back hard in the spring after the first year of growth to promote root growth.
Shirley suggests spur pruning if you have a wall or structure to cover.
Train the main stem up the wall, tying in side shoots (laterals) horizontally to the nearest wire as they grow, one per wire.
Cut extras off.
Once the laterals have grown as far as you want them to, cut off the ends of the branches.
Sub-laterals will be formed off these and should be cut back to two buds.
Prune back to this framework every autumn.
- Seven vineyards you have to visit - right here in the UK | Travel News | Travel | Daily Express
Gardens: Monty Don.
- Gardens: Monty Don gives a tour of his Herefordshire garden | From the Observer | The Guardian - 6 August 2000
It is difficult to know where to start describing the garden that Monty and his wife, Sarah, have created together since moving into their rambling 15th- to 16th- century farmhouse and adjoining stables in 1992.
For a start, the pathways that link the formal topiary garden at the front of the house with the interlocking herb, vegetable, flower and spring gardens at the back, run through the house.
Looking out from above, you see that it is designed almost as a series of rooms, each one with its own flavour.
There's the long corridor lined with noble alliums on either side.
There's the herb patch, the vegetable garden, the greenhouses, the Jewel Garden at the centre and the orchard trailing into the distance with its perfectly spaced trees - there are 36 varieties of apple.
As well as flowers, there are herbs - great clumps of basil, thyme, marjoram, lovage, parsley, tarragon, sage - and a well-stocked kitchen garden of fruit and vegetables, including broad beans, onions, sweetcorn, strawberries, potatoes, peas and big, juicy marrows.
There are frames crammed with cabbages, broccoli and Brussels sprouts, all ready for planting out.
In the greenhouse, there are leeks, radicchio and peppers.
- Monty Don on Chelsea Flower Show and the "nonsense" of Brexit - Page 2 - May 2016.
The presenter believes Britain leaving the EU is "complete nonsense"
He met his wife Sarah at Magdalene College, Cambridge, and there can be no doubting their rock solid union.
In the 1980s they ran a costume jewellery business with a Knightsbridge shop whose customers included Michael Jackson and Princess Diana, and at weekends tended their Hackney garden.
When the business faltered they took a bridging loan on a derelict Herefordshire farm, where Don gardened so furiously that Sarah told him he was “married” to it.
By the time their three children were born, the business had crashed, the farm was sold, and everything they owned with it.
For two years life was an endless winter of unemployment, before the season began to turn for Don with a gardening segment on breakfast television.
His two sons, Adam and Tom, and daughter Freya are in their mid-to-late twenties now.
Usually Don refuses to speak of them in interviews, but on this occasion serenity takes charge, his face flooded with light.
“We’ve always had a fairly informal relationship. I work with Adam, and speak to him every day as he runs the farm.
He’s lambing at the moment.
The others – I’ll ring up, we chat, share books, music, tell each other what we’ve done and seen.
I can remember my own mother snorting: ‘I don’t want to be your best friend! I’m your mother!’ I was brought up very strictly.
I love my children, I adore them. Would die for them, kill for them. We’re very honest with each other. At times that’s brutal; at others it’s liberating and enlightening.
We are good friends.”
The brief Monty: Life story
1955: Born Montagu Denis Wyatt Don in Berlin, son of an army officer, and the youngest of five children.
1979: At Magdalene College, Cambridge, meets his future wife, Sarah, with whom he elopes. They have three children.
1981: He and Sarah found a costume jewellery business in Kensington and come to count Elton John and Princess Diana among their clients.
1989: He makes his television debut on This Morning in a five-minute gardening slot with Richard and Judy.
1992: The jewellery business folds and he spends three years on the dole.
1994-2006" Writes a gardening column for the Observer.
2003: Succeeding Alan Titchmarsh, Don becomes the first amateur gardener to front Gardeners' World.
2005: Runs Growing out of Trouble, a televised project to help heroin addicts kick their habit by working the land.
2008: Publishes Around the World in 80 Gardens, his 12th gardening title. Becomes president of the Soil Association.
He says: "I have never bought into the school of thought that says gardening is an emollient for the cracked skin of modern life."
They say: 'He was the perfect Gardeners' World presenter, bringing calm, tenderness, immense knowledge and quiet gravitas to television." Nigel Slater
Hermione Hoby
It is difficult to know where to start describing the garden that Monty and his wife, Sarah, have created together since moving into their rambling 15th- to 16th- century farmhouse and adjoining stables in 1992.
For a start, the pathways that link the formal topiary garden at the front of the house with the interlocking herb, vegetable, flower and spring gardens at the back, run through the house.
Looking out from above, you see that it is designed almost as a series of rooms, each one with its own flavour.
There's the long corridor lined with noble alliums on either side.
There's the herb patch, the vegetable garden, the greenhouses, the Jewel Garden at the centre and the orchard trailing into the distance with its perfectly spaced trees - there are 36 varieties of apple.
As well as flowers, there are herbs - great clumps of basil, thyme, marjoram, lovage, parsley, tarragon, sage - and a well-stocked kitchen garden of fruit and vegetables, including broad beans, onions, sweetcorn, strawberries, potatoes, peas and big, juicy marrows.
There are frames crammed with cabbages, broccoli and Brussels sprouts, all ready for planting out.
In the greenhouse, there are leeks, radicchio and peppers.
- Monty Don on Chelsea Flower Show and the "nonsense" of Brexit - Page 2 - May 2016.
The presenter believes Britain leaving the EU is "complete nonsense"
He met his wife Sarah at Magdalene College, Cambridge, and there can be no doubting their rock solid union.
In the 1980s they ran a costume jewellery business with a Knightsbridge shop whose customers included Michael Jackson and Princess Diana, and at weekends tended their Hackney garden.
When the business faltered they took a bridging loan on a derelict Herefordshire farm, where Don gardened so furiously that Sarah told him he was “married” to it.
By the time their three children were born, the business had crashed, the farm was sold, and everything they owned with it.
For two years life was an endless winter of unemployment, before the season began to turn for Don with a gardening segment on breakfast television.
His two sons, Adam and Tom, and daughter Freya are in their mid-to-late twenties now.
Usually Don refuses to speak of them in interviews, but on this occasion serenity takes charge, his face flooded with light.
“We’ve always had a fairly informal relationship. I work with Adam, and speak to him every day as he runs the farm.
He’s lambing at the moment.
The others – I’ll ring up, we chat, share books, music, tell each other what we’ve done and seen.
I can remember my own mother snorting: ‘I don’t want to be your best friend! I’m your mother!’ I was brought up very strictly.
I love my children, I adore them. Would die for them, kill for them. We’re very honest with each other. At times that’s brutal; at others it’s liberating and enlightening.
We are good friends.”
The brief Monty: Life story
1955: Born Montagu Denis Wyatt Don in Berlin, son of an army officer, and the youngest of five children.
1979: At Magdalene College, Cambridge, meets his future wife, Sarah, with whom he elopes. They have three children.
1981: He and Sarah found a costume jewellery business in Kensington and come to count Elton John and Princess Diana among their clients.
1989: He makes his television debut on This Morning in a five-minute gardening slot with Richard and Judy.
1992: The jewellery business folds and he spends three years on the dole.
1994-2006" Writes a gardening column for the Observer.
2003: Succeeding Alan Titchmarsh, Don becomes the first amateur gardener to front Gardeners' World.
2005: Runs Growing out of Trouble, a televised project to help heroin addicts kick their habit by working the land.
2008: Publishes Around the World in 80 Gardens, his 12th gardening title. Becomes president of the Soil Association.
He says: "I have never bought into the school of thought that says gardening is an emollient for the cracked skin of modern life."
They say: 'He was the perfect Gardeners' World presenter, bringing calm, tenderness, immense knowledge and quiet gravitas to television." Nigel Slater
Hermione Hoby
Biennials.
BBC Two - Gardeners' World, 2016, Episode 13
Biennials
A biennial takes two years to complete its life cycle. In its first year, it grows and stores energy so that it can flower and set seed in its second. Many are easy to raise from seed – the problem is remembering to sow them in June! Here are 10 you might like to try:
Dianthus barbatus (Sweet William)
Digitalis purpurea (Foxglove)
Erysimum cheiri (Wallflower)
Hesperis matronalis (Sweet rocket)
Lunaria annua (Honesty)
Matthiola incana (Brompton stock)
Myosotis sylvatica (Forget-me-not)
Oenothera biennis (Evening primrose)
Onopordum acanthium (Cotton thistle)
Verbascum bombyciferum
Biennials
A biennial takes two years to complete its life cycle. In its first year, it grows and stores energy so that it can flower and set seed in its second. Many are easy to raise from seed – the problem is remembering to sow them in June! Here are 10 you might like to try:
Dianthus barbatus (Sweet William)
Digitalis purpurea (Foxglove)
Erysimum cheiri (Wallflower)
Hesperis matronalis (Sweet rocket)
Lunaria annua (Honesty)
Matthiola incana (Brompton stock)
Myosotis sylvatica (Forget-me-not)
Oenothera biennis (Evening primrose)
Onopordum acanthium (Cotton thistle)
Verbascum bombyciferum
Monday 24 October 2016
Saturday 22 October 2016
Welsh Onions / Japanese Bunching Onions.
- Welsh Onions / Japanese Bunching Onions (the Same Thing) | Sustainable Vegetable Gardening
Welsh onions and Japanese bunching onions are the same thing: Allium Fistulosum. They are recognisable from other onions because they have a round cross section when cutting through the leaves whereas the ordinary onion (Allium Cepa) has a ‘D’ shaped cross section.
Welsh onion is your bog standard type and can be found half a dozen in a small pot in any garden centre in the herb section. They grow big with the help of some compost or fertiliser but the bulb grows no bigger than a shallot and is eaten as a spring onion, leaf, shank and bulb.
The species in my experience (and I fell foul of this) is divided into two and not along the Welsh/Japanese thing. There are two main types, those that divide readily much like a shallot and those that grow into one bigger leak like plant that only rarely divides. For those of us who are interested in sustainability the dividing type is what interests us but the leek type is also cut and come again.
All of them are perennial but only a few will stand well over winter, even in my milder south-west English garden. Most varieties lose their greenery in winter and may rise again next Spring as long as it hasn’t been too cold or the soil too wet.
Unlike most other onions they stay green late in the summer and don’t die back.
Propagation
Division. The dividing types can be, well, divided and replanted.
Eat half and replant half.
I find they divide twice a year but then I am not the best gardener. YMMV.
By seed. It is easy to collect seed.
I collected seed from just one bunch of plants and they produced hundreds of seeds which I sowed two months later and got a very high germination rate.
The plant will put up a flower head on a hard stalk early in its second year.
Wait until the flower starts going dry and you will see little black seeds.
Shake them into a paper envelope and voila.
Varieties
Kyoto Market. One of the best. Divides freely, the greenery stands well over winter. Not the biggest though, but not small either.
Ishikura. Big Japanese leek type but doesn’t easily divide. Cut it to 1 cm above the earth and it will resprout again and again.
Welsh Onion. Divides regularly and quite big but disappears during winter. Most of them should come back early Spring but I have lost some in waterlogged soil. Plants easily bought in garden centres in the herb section.
I’m experimenting with other varieties including White Lisbon Winter Hardy which I hope does what it says on the tin.
- Onion Seed 'Siberian Everlasting' (Welsh Onion)
- Grow leeks from seed (in pictures) | gardenersworld.com
Welsh onions and Japanese bunching onions are the same thing: Allium Fistulosum. They are recognisable from other onions because they have a round cross section when cutting through the leaves whereas the ordinary onion (Allium Cepa) has a ‘D’ shaped cross section.
Welsh onion is your bog standard type and can be found half a dozen in a small pot in any garden centre in the herb section. They grow big with the help of some compost or fertiliser but the bulb grows no bigger than a shallot and is eaten as a spring onion, leaf, shank and bulb.
The species in my experience (and I fell foul of this) is divided into two and not along the Welsh/Japanese thing. There are two main types, those that divide readily much like a shallot and those that grow into one bigger leak like plant that only rarely divides. For those of us who are interested in sustainability the dividing type is what interests us but the leek type is also cut and come again.
All of them are perennial but only a few will stand well over winter, even in my milder south-west English garden. Most varieties lose their greenery in winter and may rise again next Spring as long as it hasn’t been too cold or the soil too wet.
Unlike most other onions they stay green late in the summer and don’t die back.
Propagation
Division. The dividing types can be, well, divided and replanted.
Eat half and replant half.
I find they divide twice a year but then I am not the best gardener. YMMV.
By seed. It is easy to collect seed.
I collected seed from just one bunch of plants and they produced hundreds of seeds which I sowed two months later and got a very high germination rate.
The plant will put up a flower head on a hard stalk early in its second year.
Wait until the flower starts going dry and you will see little black seeds.
Shake them into a paper envelope and voila.
Varieties
Kyoto Market. One of the best. Divides freely, the greenery stands well over winter. Not the biggest though, but not small either.
Ishikura. Big Japanese leek type but doesn’t easily divide. Cut it to 1 cm above the earth and it will resprout again and again.
Welsh Onion. Divides regularly and quite big but disappears during winter. Most of them should come back early Spring but I have lost some in waterlogged soil. Plants easily bought in garden centres in the herb section.
I’m experimenting with other varieties including White Lisbon Winter Hardy which I hope does what it says on the tin.
- Onion Seed 'Siberian Everlasting' (Welsh Onion)
- Grow leeks from seed (in pictures) | gardenersworld.com
Japanese wineberry.
- How to grow Japanese wineberry - Telegraph
- Alys Fowler: Japanese wineberries | Life and style | The Guardian
- propagating japanese wineberry | Out of my shed
Japanese wineberries fruit on the previous year’s growth.
Which means I planted the canes in autumn 2009, the stems grew last year (2010) and this is their first fruiting season (2011).
Achingly simple to propagate, these arching stems will start forming roots as soon as they hit the soil.
After all the fruit has been picked, cut the stems on which the fruit formed down to the ground in late August/September, leaving this years new growth for the plant to fruit on next year.
These very attractive fruit canes will grow in sun or part shade, so a real winner for any part of the garden, potager or allotment.
Best planted bare- rooted in autumn, I bought mine from Ken Muir Fruit Nursery and see they’re also available at Victoriana Nursery.
- Alys Fowler: Japanese wineberries | Life and style | The Guardian
- propagating japanese wineberry | Out of my shed
Japanese wineberries fruit on the previous year’s growth.
Which means I planted the canes in autumn 2009, the stems grew last year (2010) and this is their first fruiting season (2011).
Achingly simple to propagate, these arching stems will start forming roots as soon as they hit the soil.
After all the fruit has been picked, cut the stems on which the fruit formed down to the ground in late August/September, leaving this years new growth for the plant to fruit on next year.
These very attractive fruit canes will grow in sun or part shade, so a real winner for any part of the garden, potager or allotment.
Best planted bare- rooted in autumn, I bought mine from Ken Muir Fruit Nursery and see they’re also available at Victoriana Nursery.
Tuesday 18 October 2016
Trained Fruit.
- Trained Forms Index | An Englishman's Garden Adventures
- Trained Fruit | An Englishman's Garden Adventures
- Current Fans | An Englishman's Garden Adventures
White and red currents lend themselves readily to this kind of training, because unlike black currents they fruit well on ‘old wood’.
Hence, they can be trained to make a permanent framework of branches (in this case in a fan) from which they will produce short fruiting side shoots.
Black currents, on the other hand, will only fruit on relatively young wood – they need a third of their main stems removing every year to rejuvenate them, so could not be pruned to a permanent framework.
- Standard Currant Bushes – how do I grow them? | Fruit Forum
- Buy our Fruit and Ornamental trees from these Garden Centres
- Trained Fruit | An Englishman's Garden Adventures
- Current Fans | An Englishman's Garden Adventures
White and red currents lend themselves readily to this kind of training, because unlike black currents they fruit well on ‘old wood’.
Hence, they can be trained to make a permanent framework of branches (in this case in a fan) from which they will produce short fruiting side shoots.
Black currents, on the other hand, will only fruit on relatively young wood – they need a third of their main stems removing every year to rejuvenate them, so could not be pruned to a permanent framework.
- Standard Currant Bushes – how do I grow them? | Fruit Forum
- Buy our Fruit and Ornamental trees from these Garden Centres
Monday 17 October 2016
Sunday 16 October 2016
Подзимний сев на огороде.
Подзимний сев на огороде - Садовое обозрение
В первую очередь под зиму сеют пряные травы, включая многолетние (мяты, душица, мелисса, бораго и т.д.), многолетние культуры (ревень, спаржа, щавель, черный корень и овсяный корнень, шнитт-лук, слизун и другие многолетние луки).
Важно посеять семена культур, которых содержат большое количество эфирных масел: морковь, пастернак, петрушку, укроп лук-чернушку.
Лучше специальные сорта, но и любые раннеспелые дадут дружные всходы и хороший урожай.
Хорошие результаты дают подзимние посевы свёклы, мангольда, кориандра, шпината.
Отлично всходят листовые салаты, салатная горчица, рукола, редиска и листовые капусты.
Впрочем, капуста всякая хорошо всходит и дает крепкую рассаду.
Вот только кочанные капусты сею на теплую грядку, чтобы как можно раньше весной ее накрыть и получить мощную рассаду уже к началу мая.
Сейчас самое время запастись семенами для подзимнего сева.
Ищите свеклу сортов Северный шар, Подзимняя, Полярная плоская, Холодостойкая-19, морковь Каротель, Нантская, Витаминная, Шантане 2461, Шантане 14.
Семена всех остальных пригодных для подзимнего сева овощных культур выбирайте по принципу скороспелости, а семена чернушки только тех сортов, что способны давать луковицу за один сезон.
В первую очередь под зиму сеют пряные травы, включая многолетние (мяты, душица, мелисса, бораго и т.д.), многолетние культуры (ревень, спаржа, щавель, черный корень и овсяный корнень, шнитт-лук, слизун и другие многолетние луки).
Важно посеять семена культур, которых содержат большое количество эфирных масел: морковь, пастернак, петрушку, укроп лук-чернушку.
Лучше специальные сорта, но и любые раннеспелые дадут дружные всходы и хороший урожай.
Хорошие результаты дают подзимние посевы свёклы, мангольда, кориандра, шпината.
Отлично всходят листовые салаты, салатная горчица, рукола, редиска и листовые капусты.
Впрочем, капуста всякая хорошо всходит и дает крепкую рассаду.
Вот только кочанные капусты сею на теплую грядку, чтобы как можно раньше весной ее накрыть и получить мощную рассаду уже к началу мая.
Сейчас самое время запастись семенами для подзимнего сева.
Ищите свеклу сортов Северный шар, Подзимняя, Полярная плоская, Холодостойкая-19, морковь Каротель, Нантская, Витаминная, Шантане 2461, Шантане 14.
Семена всех остальных пригодных для подзимнего сева овощных культур выбирайте по принципу скороспелости, а семена чернушки только тех сортов, что способны давать луковицу за один сезон.
Sunday 9 October 2016
Friday 7 October 2016
Monday 3 October 2016
Sunday 2 October 2016
Why Helen Dillon in Dublin has the best walled town garden.
- Why Helen Dillon in Dublin has the best walled town garden — FT.com
- Helen Dillion recommends planting your flowers in pots and moving them centre stage | Life and style | The Guardian
- Helen Dillon bids farewell to her Ranelagh garden
Helen, now 78, and her antiques dealer husband, Val Dillon (80), have reached that point where many people in possession of a sizeable home and garden arrive. It’s time to downsize. So there’s no weeping and gnashing of teeth over leaving the wonderful Sandford Terrace garden that thousands have visited since Helen opened it to the public 25 years ago.
- Helen Dillion recommends planting your flowers in pots and moving them centre stage | Life and style | The Guardian
- Helen Dillon bids farewell to her Ranelagh garden
Helen, now 78, and her antiques dealer husband, Val Dillon (80), have reached that point where many people in possession of a sizeable home and garden arrive. It’s time to downsize. So there’s no weeping and gnashing of teeth over leaving the wonderful Sandford Terrace garden that thousands have visited since Helen opened it to the public 25 years ago.
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