All posts in This month in the garden

In my garden, the two months of pleasant sunny weather during March and April saw many plants come into growth much earlier than in previous years. Many of my shrubs had put on a lovely show of fresh shoots and leaves then, as it often does in our indeterminate climate, two degrees of frost on the night of 3rd May caused the brilliant red new growth on my Pieris to turn brown. I removed all the brown growth to allow more light to get into the dormant buds beneath and now fresh young growth buds are appearing. During March, most of my shrubs, perennials and young trees are first watered, and then fed with a general fertilizer, I rake this into the soil, then mulch around the plants with garden compost, or composted bark. Often on Radio Leicester, we do get the question of why plants, especially fruit trees, are not growing, flowering, or fruiting as well as they were in years gone by. When asked if they have fed them the person will say no, but I thought as they were in the ground they did not need feeding. Once plants have used all the nutrition in the soil around them they will start to deteriorate, so will need feeding to bring some youth back into their system. I have just been around my garden removing the seed heads from my Rhododendrons, if they are left, the plants will put energy into producing seed instead of the new growth, which will form next years flowers. Some seed heads are easy just to twist off, others are very sticky and I snip these off with a pair of sharp secateurs. Many people will say they cannot grow Rhododendrons; I grow 45 different species/cultivars in a soil that varies, according to where in the past, builders had spread cement and lime, from PH6.5, slightly acid, to PH7.5, which is alkaline, limey. In the first place, I worked in copious amounts of peat and old manure. Now I mulch every third year with two inches, 7.5cm of composted bark. Often you will see written, especially by so-called experts, that you should only use rainwater when watering Rhododendrons and other ericaeceous plants. When it does not rain I water with mains water, as this is better than no water at all, but lay your hosepipe on the ground against each plant and let the water soak in for a few minutes. My Dianthus, pinks are now in full flower, I have around twenty varieties varying from three  inches to twelve inches, 7.5cm to 30cm in height and in a variety of colours. Most survived the winter with little, or no damage and have a lovely fragrance. Pinks, unlike their taller cousins the Carnations, do not require stacking to prevent the stems from flopping when it rains.They are also easy to take from cuttings; the small, non-flowering shoots from around the base of the plant (pips) are gently pulled away, and then inserted in small pots containing a sandy compost. If kept moist and out of full sunlight they will root within a month and be ready to pot on into multipurpose compost. During mid April, in my cold greenhouse I used cell trays to sow the seed of runner bean ‘St George’. As the weather was so sunny, they germinated within two weeks so I potted them on into one litre pots. Within a week, I had to cane and then tie them up, and within three weeks, they were over three feet, 90cm tall, so I planted three ‘St George’ into a 25 litre black tree tub and pushed in six feet,1.8m long canes and tied them at the top to form a wigwam. Now the plants have grown to the top of the canes and are a mass of red and white flowers. I take the tub into my cold greenhouse every night until the end of May. During late April I gave my brother Ron three plants, which he planted in his garden, the frost in early May killed them, but I had two potted plants to spare so Ron is having another go.