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| Go greener |
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| With a growing number of gardeners eschewing chemicals in favour of natural alternatives, we can suggest some effective products from our organic gardening selection |
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| Relax and refresh |
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| Good food freshly prepared daily, aromatic coffee, chilled wine and a grassy play area for the children. What more could you need? |
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| Food heaven |
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| Our Farm Shop is heaven for food lovers! Delicious handmade food, top quality groceries, fresh fruit and vegetables and stylish cookware and gifts. |
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| The Discovery Walk |
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| As thousands of daffodils herald the spring, stroll or stride around our Walk while the youngsters enjoy the Nature Trail |
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The absentee gardener!
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| Thursday, 17th July 2008 |
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IN THE GARDEN WITH PETA MARSHALL
The summer of 2006 was the hottest on record. Many of us were melting in the heat, and there was a national shortage of water butts. The summer of 2007 however was the wettest on record.
Many of us were beginning to grow webbed feet, and that made us venture off to the sunnier climes in droves.
And it’s coming up to holiday time again…but this year will you be raising a fist to the skies exclaiming: “Wash out” or “Gosh, drought”?
It’s a sad fact that families with school-age children need to be away at just the time when our gardens need us the most. If there aren’t lawns to be cut, or baskets to be watered, there are weeds to be weeded and tomatoes to be picked.
The moral for those of us without school-age children is….don’t go away when there’s lots to be done. Take a winter holiday instead!
But if you do have to go away now, what can you do to minimise the devastation you’ll see on your return?
Here is my blueprint for keeping the garden in great shape while you’re on your hols:
1. Maintaining moisture
• A fortnight before you go, hoe the soil to remove weeds. These weeds compete with your garden plants for moisture. Hoeing also has the benefit of loosening the soil surface to enable any rainfall to be absorbed, rather than running off, which it will do on a hard-crusted, compacted soil. Weeding should be in your normal gardening regime anyway, but it’s even more important before a holiday!
• Make sure that your most precious plants are thoroughly watered each day for at least three days before you set off. Moisture will accumulate in the soil around the roots, and will penetrate deeper as well, so the bottom-most roots will be able to suck it up, even if a hot period of weather dries out the top part of the soil.
• Apply a mulch. If you can’t do this all over the garden soil, then do it just around your most precious plants. A 2-3in. (5-7.5cm) deep layer of garden compost, grass cuttings or bagged compost over the soil surface will both prevent weeds from germinating, and water evaporation from the soil.
• Consider installing a drip watering system – either to water your vegetable or flower garden, or the greenhouse, or the entire lot. This system can be rigged up to an outside tap and be controlled by a timing device which can be set to come on and go off at certain times. Hozelock have even brought out a controlled water timer with a moisture sensor, so it will water your garden when you’re away at pre-destined times, but only if the weather is dry! That really is intelligent thinking.
2. Plants in pots
• In terms of plants in containers, obviously you should water them thoroughly for a couple of days before you depart, but don’t add liquid feed at these times, as it will make the plants grow and use up more water while you’re away.
• Cut off flowers – yes, really! Remove all flower heads – dead or alive – from plants in hanging baskets and containers. You won’t be around to enjoy the display, so help to prolong the lives of the plants by stopping them from ‘wasting’ energy in producing flowers for no one to see! You’ll come back to bushier, sturdier and better flowering plants as a result!
• The drip watering systems previously mentioned were originally designed for use on plants with containers, so this is an area that will really benefit from them.
• Take down hanging baskets, and stand them in a shady corner on a bucket filled with water. It’s not a bad idea also to place other moveable containers into a shady spot to keep them out of the worst of the sun! Group them closely together, to create a humid atmosphere between them, and to keep out drying winds. And stand as many of these pots as possible on large, shallow watering trays. Fill all the trays just before you go.
3. House and greenhouse
• Indoors it’s a good idea to group house plants together in the bath, placing them on thick wads of wet newspaper. If you’re clever, you could also fill the bathroom basin with water and drape several strips of capillary matting (available from the garden centre) with one end of the strip submerged in the water, and the other end in contact with the newspaper in amongst the house plants. As the plants use the water, they will ‘suck’ out the basin water via the capillary strips! It usually works!
• If you have a greenhouse, leave the door and vents open wide, to give the maximum air circulation. Professional plant growers sometimes use sophisticated air conditioning units and air-cooling fans in large greenhouses, but opening the doors and windows is all you can sensibly do to keep potentially high midday temperatures at bay.
• Give your conservatory and greenhouse plants relief from the sun by putting up some form of shading. With a conservatory you need to employ rather more sophisticated and aesthetically pleasing blinds or shade netting. With a greenhouse this could be the type you paint on (packets of white, wettable powder are sold in garden centres).
4. Love your lawn
• Cut the lawn thoroughly, and edge it properly, the day before you leave. This may seem obvious but it’s surprising how many people forget to do it, just remembering an hour before they’re due to go and then deciding they haven’t got time!
• Don’t worry about watering the grass to keep it alive while you’re away – it won’t die. Even following a four-month drought you’ll generally find that the brown cork matting once again turns to lush green after a couple of downpours – so two weeks while you’re on the Costa Packet shouldn’t cause too much of a problem!
And finally, don’t forget your neighbours. As long as you’re on good speaking terms with them, beseech them to do whatever they can to keep everything hunkydory. They’ll usually be more than happy to be paid for their troubles with a few tomatoes and a handful of runner beans. Cheap at half the price! Happy gardening – and holidays!
Picking your own
Priory Farm was an early pioneer of the Pick Your Own phenomenon, and whereas a number of PYO operators have given it up, we still have some fantastic crops for visitors to come and get themselves. There is nothing better than gathering your own fruits and vegetables fresh from the fields – even if you haven’t actually grown them yourself. We welcome children to the farm, too, to show them that crops don’t actually originate in the freezer cabinets!
This year we’re offering plums, raspberries, strawberries and runner beans, but it’s a good idea to ring the PYO hotline on 07754 188824 before you set off.
This week in your garden
Collect seeds from annuals like love-in-a-mist (Nigella), poppies (Papaver) and English or pot marigolds (Calendula). This can be sown next spring for a summer display in 2009.
Carrots need at least 10 weeks of frost-free weather before harvesting, which means that now is the last safe sowing time for most varieties.
Trim lavender flowers back once they have faded, but delay pruning until early autumn.
Peta Marshall is the plant centre manager at Priory Farm in Nutfield. Website: www.prioryfarm.co.uk
NEXT WEEK: Encourage wildlife
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