{"id":3268,"date":"2017-05-12T16:40:42","date_gmt":"2017-05-12T15:40:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodvale.com\/?p=3268"},"modified":"2017-05-12T16:40:42","modified_gmt":"2017-05-12T15:40:42","slug":"may-in-the-garden-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/may-in-the-garden-2\/","title":{"rendered":"May in the Garden"},"content":{"rendered":"

With April, so far, having been peculiarly dry and bright, I am loathed to second guess how May will behave. Apparently, we\u2019ve just had the driest winter for many years so, if this month proves hotter and drier than normal, it begins to store up problems if the lack of soil moisture becomes a limiting factor on plant growth. It may not be good for our, \u2018post-Broadchurch<\/em>\u2019, tourist industry but I\u2019m hoping for a good spell of rain to redress the balance (sorry).<\/p>\n

With clear skies, bringing sun by day, there is always the danger that the night time temperature may drop low enough to produce a ground frost. With that caveat, in the relatively mild southwest, it should soon be safe to plant out tender bedding plants, having grown them to a suitable size under the protection of glass. Keep a \u2018duvet\u2019 of horticultural fleece to hand just in case overnight temperatures take a tumble.<\/p>\n

If you buy your bedding plants, or tender perennials, from a garden centre then it\u2019s always a good idea to acclimatise them first, by bringing them in at night before final planting out, as the chances are they will have come straight from a nursery\u2019s heated glasshouse, via the garden centre. The shock of a cold night, in the cold ground, will stress them even if it doesn\u2019t completely kill them.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been experimenting a bit with overwintering \u2018one hit\u2019 bedding plants. Last year I grew a white Antirrhinum<\/em> (\u2018Snapdragon\u2019) from seed and it produced good, almost woody, plants by the time the summer bedding displays were dismantled in the autumn. I had noticed previously that Snapdragons often survive the winter, albeit somewhat weakened, so it was logical to pot up the best mature specimens and keep them in a cold frame over winter. These plants are currently already trying to flower and will be weeks ahead of any raised anew from seed. Success all round I\u2019d say.<\/p>\n

The Cleome<\/em>, \u2018Spider Flowers\u2019, that I grew last year proved to be really good gap-fillers, in the main border, so I\u2019ve sown more but shall deploy them earlier this time as they spent too long suffering, in tiny pots, last year because I didn\u2019t entirely know what to do with them! In fact, this annoyingly dry April has reminded me just how time-consuming it is to keep plants, in pots, well-watered if Dame Mother Nature isn\u2019t doing her job by providing natural overhead irrigation.<\/p>\n

The garden I work in is blessed with an ample quantity of garden taps and hose-reels, so there is no part that cannot be reached if watering becomes a necessity. When I used to \u2018Design and Maintain\u2019 London gardens, straight after leaving Uni, the first thing we always did, with a new client, was to ensure they got a plumber to install an outside tap, if there wasn\u2019t one already. There is absolutely no point in spending hundreds of pounds on lovely new plants if they end up dying because watering becomes too much of a chore.<\/p>\n

It goes without saying that, where at all possible, you should be collecting and storing rainwater, there are loads of products available for this, rather than using good, clean, mains water on plants that, frankly, don\u2019t appreciate the effort that has gone into making drinking water safe for we delicate humans. Also, most of the fancy orchids, along with other exotic plants sold as houseplants, are poisoned by the water that comes out of our taps.<\/p>\n

The reason for this was explained to me recently, by an impressive young plant expert from nearby Chideock. Even though I remember it was due to microscopic pores getting clogged, by the stuff in tap water, the precise mechanism of damage went a little over my head. It\u2019s been a long time since I sat in a lecture room learning about active and passive solute movement on a plant cell level!<\/p>\n

Back to the macro level; shrubs which flowered in the spring should be pruned this month, now that their flowers have faded. Employ the \u2018one in three\u2019 method; prune out the oldest wood \/ flowered stems so that established shrubs never get the chance to become senile. This maintains the best balance between vigour, flowering capability and youth. Good, old-fashioned, \u2018Woolworths shrubs\u2019 (weigela, deutzia, philadelphus etc.) soon become dull great lumps if not kept invigorated by this routine maintenance.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a good maxim to remember, while gardening, that a vigorous plant is a plant more fit and able to fight off pests and diseases. This is why you do all the boring stuff like feeding, weeding, mulching and watering. If the soil is kept healthy then it follows that the plants that rely on it, for their every need, will grow better if that soil is improved and nurtured on a continuous basis. Again, in a similar vein, I feel that I should mount a campaign against soil compaction…<\/p>\n

I really do think the most gardens suffer much more than we realise simply because the soil has had all the life squeezed out of it. Spiking and gently lifting the soil, to a fork\u2019s depth, gets air back into the upper root zone and allows water, plus surface applied nutrients, to enter the soil structure.<\/p>\n

I was always taught, as a volunteer in National Trust gardens, to keep a border fork handy at all times and to \u2018lift out\u2019 EVERY footprint made when walking on cultivated ground. I still endeavour to do this, or at least make a mental note that, having stepped into a border, I must return and aerate the areas that I\u2019ve stepped on. It\u2019s just \u2018good horticultural practice\u2019.<\/p>\n

As it warms up, ponds and water gardens can be tidied by removing overgrown aquatic plants and re-establishing the balance between the amount of plant cover and the area of open water. Vigorous water plants, irises, reeds, rushes and the like, may need to be decimated, every now and again, to keep them in check. Do not dump these in the wild, where they may become a pest of natural water courses, but chop them up and compost them.<\/p>\n

My own, \u2018tiny but deep\u2019 (i.e.not child friendly), formal pond has matured nicely to the point where there\u2019s been a frenzy of newt activity going on in recent weeks. I love all the indigenous aquatic life, but it does take a toll on my \u2018White Cloud Mountain Minnow\u2019 fry. The minnow population is self-sustaining, in a good year, but new adults must be added, in high summer, if not enough fry survive to maturity. Bigger fish, like the ubiquitous goldfish, would survive without needing to be replenished but they would wipe out the smaller aquatic life. \u2018WCMMs\u2019 ensure midge larvae can\u2019t get established but at the expense that they themselves get predated by dragonfly larvae, et al, if not the newts. It\u2019s all part of \u2018life\u2019s rich tapestry\u2019 I guess.<\/p>\n

May is the month that the garden tapestry gets rich and saturated. If you are not privileged enough to have your own pleasure ground, it\u2019s a good time to get hold of the \u2018Yellow Book\u2019 (\u2018National Garden Scheme\u2019 guide to garden openings) and plan to visit gardens open for charity over the summer. You get all the loveliness of a well-tended garden\u2026 with none of the back-breaking work \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n

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With April, so far, having been peculiarly dry and bright, I am loathed to second guess how May will behave. Apparently, we\u2019ve just had the driest winter for many years so, if this month proves hotter and drier than normal, it begins to store up problems if the lack of soil moisture becomes a limiting […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[19],"class_list":["post-3268","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-gardening","tag-russell-jordan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3268","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3268"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3268\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}