August Bank Holiday has come racing along, hasn’t it! And for many of us gardeners it heralds fading colours, waving seedheads and too much blackspot.
But wait a minute…there are autumn beauties just around the corner! And in the meantime, let’s take stock, make a few cuttings, and harvest the apples……
Softwood cuttings
The salvias have been fabulous this year, and it would be fab to know that they will still be there to provide a wonderful show next year as well. There is a way that you can make sure that even if the frosts of winter kill the parent plant, you will still have plenty of stock. Take some softwood shoots now and grow them on inside through the cold months before planting them out in spring.
Go out in the morning, when the sap is rising (the plants’ , not yours!) – and snip off about 10 cm of some soft growing shoots of your chosen plant. Don’t let them dry out (a plastic bag is best, really) and as quickly as you can, trim off the bottom leaves of each cutting, pinch out the soft tip, and push about 5 of them round the edge of a pot of gritty compost.
Make the hole with a pencil first if they are too soft to push in. Water the pot, and put it in the plastic bag, fastened with a rubber band ( or unheated propagator if you have one). Take off the plastic bag twice a week for a few minutes to give the cuttings some ventilation. Put them in a warm place but not blazing sunshine. Most will root within a few weeks.
Penstemons and pelargoniums are other good candidates for this process, but actually it’s worth having a go with almost anything whose frost-hardiness is a bit of a worry.
Note it down
Was your garden absolutely perfect this year? Everything grew exactly as you’d planned, and all of it flowered or fruited in the right place at the right time? Pardon my presumption but if you answered Yes, you are either not a true gardener, or you’re talking porky-pies!
We all strive to make our gardens precisely as we want them to be. But outdoor spaces will always be at the mercy of the vagaries of weather, environment, soil and sheer growth. Ideas that worked before will not necessarily work forever, and the reflective gardener is someone who can accept that there are ALWAYS things to try or change. If we are honest with ourselves, I don’t believe we’d want it any other way.
So I’m urging you to walk round with a notebook right now, today, and jot down your thoughts, while the summer garden is still in (almost) full swing. They really don’t have to be of Bard-quality; I’ll give you an idea from the jottings I wrote yesterday:
Pot on and plant out the Nicotiana sylvestris earlier [this year’s seedlings won’t flower till October – hopeless]
Always Chelsea Chop the white Phlox [it flowers later and makes a lovely splash at the end of July when other flowers are beginning to tire]
The red pelargoniums on the terrace look great but you need more – take cuttings
Improve the soil in the rhubarb bed – it’s horrible, and therefore so was this year’s rhubarb!
Replace the pergola posts this winter – BIG JOB
Take out that Philadelphus [now in too much shade and doesn’t flower = POINTLESS!]
Etc. Etc.
You get the idea. Make a To-Do list that will make your garden perfect next year. As if.
Gardening shorts
- Do you remember that last year I germinated some seeds from the one cardoon that I had? A cardoon is massive globe artichoke basically. (The link to the column where I talk about that, is at the end, by the way.) Well, those little plants are now eight feet tall and forming an amazing and funky ‘hedge’ – just look at this week’s feature pic. I know I’m always saying it, but just HAVE A GO – you never know when things might almost accidentally just go right!
- To check if your apples are ripe, lift them up gently. If the stalk snaps easily, they are ready to pick.
- Don’t forget that you can still learn a heap of new ideas from looking at other gardens. And remember that notebook as well as your camera when you go garden-visiting – you need to make sure that inspiration is recorded where you can find it again! Laura and I were on just such a visit very recently – click on the link below to find out more.
- Take the spent flower-heads off lilies so that they channel their energies into generating more flower-power next year, rather than trying to produce seed.
- If you grow cultivated blackberries, tayberries and the like (our lovely Japanese wineberries, for instance), cut out the fruited stems as soon as you have finished harvesting them right down to the ground. Tie in the new canes ready for next year.
The link to the article that mentions cardoon seedlings is here.
This is the link to a video about our very recent visit to Arundel Castle gardens.
Here’s a late summer perennial with a wonderful combination of strident colour and light structure. Find out here why Louise really rates it as one of her Great Plants this month:
NB Louise has published a beautifully produced book of her plant profiles – A Plant for Each Week of the Year. It costs £9.99 and is for sale in our online shop here.
More NB If you’re not already a subscriber and you’d like a bit more gardening chitchat from the3growbags, please type your email address here and we’ll send you a new post every Saturday morning.
