Painting Winter Heathers

 Painted heather

I’ve been making a new bed along a wall this week. 

It’s to house my creeping thyme plants that have come on well over the summer in their small cells. Now is a good time to be setting up any new beds and borders before it gets too wet and will also spare the house and carpets getting covered in mud.

The soil in the new bed is quite fibrous as I put cardboard over the grass two years ago, but it’s full of lovely worms. I’ve sieved the top soil and any large clumps of fibre have been taken out and composted, which has left me with a lovely fine planting medium for the small plugs. I’ll keep an eye on any chickweed coming up and remove that too because like the chamomiles, thyme plants don’t really do well without us having to intervene occasionally and take out a few self-set weeds.

I’m starting small with an area of around 10’x2’ and can expand as the plants develop.  I might even get my whole lawn made from thyme just like gardens used to be a hundred and fifty years ago before lawn mowers.

Heather Sprayed with food colouring

Heathers are looking great in the shops and gardens at the moment. Winter flowering types are very popular and will brighten up a garden or planter well into spring.  One type of heather (calluna vulgaris ‘garden girls’) is particularly popular as the flowers are very bright and will last months because the actual flowers don’t open up, they stay as tidy buds. There’s plenty of colour range too from whites to pinks and purple. 

I did notice that the plants being sold at a garden centre this week were being sprayed different colours even though they were in flower. I’m not really sure why growers need to put colour on the plants; maybe they just weren’t bright enough. (They are proving to be the best sellers around our local garden centres so the growers are doing something right)

We’re used heathers sprayed with fake snow in December but colouring already colourful plants is a bit baffling. The dye used is generally a natural food colouring so it won’t harm the plants and will eventually wash off leaving you with (I presume) a dull looking plant that you can put out in the garden to fill up a gap. Either that or trim it back and get the food colouring out of the cupboard and get spraying. The only difference will be that the dye colours the whole plant-stems and leaves- as well as the flowers so they look a bit artificial, but at a glance you wouldn’t notice.

That reminds me of an experiment I used to do for the children when they were young. I’d choose a white flower, a rose or carnation, but any single stem flower will probably do. This is fun to do and usually leaves the stems their natural colour.

Colour changing flowers

What you need:

• Fresh white flowers, carnations are best
• Food colouring
• Warm water
• Several small jars to put in different colours

What to do:

Fill the jars 2/3 full with warm water.

Add 15-20 drops of food colouring to the vase. You can add different colours into each vase to see if some colours work better than others.

Cut the stem of the flower (adult stuff) at a slant. Put a flower into each of the vases and wait…

Let the flowers sit in the water and keep checking to see when the colour starts to change.  It should take about six hours, but it could take longer depending on the plant

Some colours might work faster than others and see what happens when to swap the flowers into different vases.

Salvia Artemis

I came across a Silver Sage, Salvia argentea in the garden centre and couldn’t resist stroking the soft furry leaves.  Usually sage plants are grown for their flowers but these short lived perennials or usually grown as biennials are mainly used for their foliage.  

They like dry settings with partial shade and will tolerate a mild frost in the garden especially if you keep the old leaves on the crown as they die back in the winter (like you would a gunnera).  The following year the plants flower so you can collect the seeds and grow some new plants for the borders.  If you want the plants to live longer just cut off the flowering spikes as they appear, this should keep them looking good throughout most of next summer.

Fallen Beech Tree

 Fallen Beech Tree

We’ve had a casualty from this month’s winds. The in laws twenty year old copper beech tree came down in a strong gust. 

There were other small branches flying from other trees and I didn’t really think the winds were that strong to bring down what I thought was a healthy, well-formed specimen. It’s been well looked after over the years so my fist though when I heard it toppled over was that the roots were really shallow and just gave up their grip on the earth.

On closer inspection the following morning I could see the roots were still very much in place, it was the trunk that gave way a few inches from the ground. The whole of the inside of the trunk was rotten and must have been ready to topple over for ages. There were no external signs that anything was wrong – if there were we would have taken the tree out as it could have easily fallen on a car.

I have a couple of theories, one is that the tree is on the lawn and the constant mowing around it damaged the roots so much that they no longer passed nutrients to the tree. The second theory (which is the most likely) is that tree beech trees are sometimes susceptible to root rot from a variety of fungal pathogens, including Phytophthora and this probably went undetected. Some trees can suffer from beech bark disease, caused by a combination of a sap-sucking scale insect (Cryptococcus fagisuga) and canker fungus (Nectria coccinea) but this generally shows signs on the external part of the tree so I don’t think it’s that.  Whatever the cause, the tree will need to be disposed of safely and cleanly because there are other trees around and it could be infectious. I’ll give the other trees a wobble and poke to see if they have rotten trunks too.

October in the Garden

This month it would make sense to tie things down in case another storm comes along soon. We lost all of our sunflowers and pea and bean poles in the wind and most of the pots flew to the top corner of the garden so any old annual plant displays could be composted and store the containers.  Aquatic plants might need a bit of protection too.

The autumn leaves are looking wonderful and will only get brighter before they fall so there will be a lot of chances to get out and do a bit of gentle raking to pick up the leaves before they mound up, go soggy and leave the paths slippery. It’d be a good idea to check the guttering too as the downpipes could get bunged up with clumps of leaves.

Rhubarb

If you have enjoyed rhubarb this year then now is the time to dig up the clumps and divide them with a spade to increase the stock

Chutney

A friend of ours gave us a delicious jar of pear chutney this week. It was from the fresh fruit and one of the nicest I have tasted. Other fruits like apples, grapes and nuts are all ready now for harvesting.

Climbing roses

The harsh winds can damage rose bushes as they sway in the wind. Climbing roses especially get damaged as they don’t hold on very tightly to things. Prune the back quite hard to keep them secure.

I’ve been collecting millions (I am not exaggerating) of Irish Moss seeds this week. I think the plants are becoming a bit of a problem in the garden as there are billions more germinating in every corner of the garden. There are less vigorous seeds you can collect to build up your stock for next year ranging from vegetables to annuals and perennials.

Lawn Care

It’s nearly time to ignore the lawn. I tried to do this a couple of weeks ago but it has just kept growing and growing. One or two moderate cuts left and I think we can take it easy until the festive holiday. If it’s dry we can escape for an hour or two and give it a quick trim. Keep the leaves off the lawn if possible but don’t worry if they stay as worms actually take a lot underground for you if you leave them. If you have a moss or thatch problem on the lawn this can be addressed now as well. Feeding isn’t necessary as this will just promote lush delicate leaves vulnerable to the oncoming frosts – They are not far away now.