LAMONTEE

The planting of walls, pergolas, arches and trellis work with suitable plants is an important part of gardening, and deserves special consideration.

1) Planting If you are planting at the base of a wall, the soil may well be of poor quality and contain subsoil or broken bricks, and if this is so, good soil in the form of loam should be substituted. It is also important to remember that the soil at the foot of a wall will tend to be much drier than other parts of the garden, and you should not forget to water. The old fashioned method of attaching climbing plants to walls with nails looks ugly, and may well damage the bricks. The best thing is to fix a wooden trellis to the wall, but tightly stretched wires are just as good.

2) Aftercare Wall plants often need extra care during their first season. A good mulch of garden compost or well rotted manure should be given to conserve moisture, and some protection against frost may be needed.

3) Pruning and Training Climbing Plants Unless pruning and training are correctly carried out, the whole effect of your wall trellis or pergola may be spoilt. The object of training is to cover a bare surface, but not completely, and of course it is important to keep windows free. Shrub-like plants, such as wisteria, should be trained out to give cover where required, and have all shoots cut back annually to within two or three buds. Wisteria is best pruned just after leaf fall, but berrying shrubs should have unwanted shoots cut out in the early autumn in order to expose the fruits. For clematis, correct pruning and training is very important.

The early flowering ones should be carefully spaced out to give a basic framework; this will probably take at least two years. After the first year they should be cut back to within 60cm or 24 inch of the ground; this should be done in August. The later flowering varieties are pruned in February just as growth commences by cutting back young shoots to two or three buds. In the training of wall plants, care must be taken to ensure that no woody stems are allowed to grow between the wall and any down pipes, as this will eventually cause trouble.

Rambler roses are not suited to wall training, but are very valuable for arches, pergolas or trellises. Each year when flowering is finished they should be taken down from their supports, and the old flowered growths should be cut out completely. The young wood should then be evenly tied in over the space available. Both ramblers and climbers when newly planted should be cut back fairly hard in March. 4) List of Climbing Plants The ever-popular clematis.…

When tidying a rose bed, if it is too consolidated to hoe, use a small sharp spade, and just chip the soil surface, holding the spade almost vertical, and making chips close together and about 3cm or 1 inch deep. After a few dry days, the bed should hoe down nicely; and you could take the chance of putting on some rose fertilizer, and hoeing it in at the same time. Be careful, when working among the roses, not to knock them with tools, because the injuries so caused may seriously impede the flow of sap, which travels just inside the bark. They may also admit canker spores from the soil and cause trouble later on. Do not leave labels tied round the base of the plants. They are sure to be forgotten, and when found a few years later, their string (or, worse still, wire) may be strangling the plant.

Feeding Your Garden Roses As the roses grow, even their young leaves are a delight, and one’s instinct is to help them along with food. There are several good rose fertilizers on the market, and they may be applied at intervals of about a month, from after spring pruning, up to late June, when you should stop. Try to avoid doing it in dry, windy Aweather, or the fertilizer will blow away. It is best applied when the soil is damp, or just before it is going to rain. Early applications may be applied on a frosty morning the fertilizer goes down with the thaw. Foliar Feed Foliar feed is useful, because it is very quickly available to the plants, being sprayed on the leaves, which take it in at once.

Therefore it can be a tonic to any plants which seem in need, also to those which do not appear to benefit from fertilizer, as often occurs on highly alkaline soils. It may be applied when the plants have sufficient leaves to catch it, and up to late summer to help the autumn flowers. Mulches Mulches add humus to the soil, which otherwise may get very little in all the years the roses occupy it. They may be of rotted manure, compost, or peat. Manure or compost are best put on after pruning, and chipped in with a spade, as already described.

Peat Peat, having no immediate food value, may be applied when the roses are nicely started into growth, for the soil will then be warmed up, and there is no virtue in insulating cold soil with a layer of peat. There are no set rules about fertilizing by one or the other of these three methods. Rather it is a matter of suiting one’s inclination and pocket, and learning by trial which method, or combination of methods, gives the results one likes. Pests and Diseases Of the pests and diseases to watch for, greenfly is the most common, mildew and blackspot the most annoying, and rust the most dangerous. The first three are easy to see, but rust often escapes notice. Watch out for it on the lower leaves, and if you see yellow dots, like pin pricks, look under the leaf.

Rust grows there, in groups of orange pustules, which turn black when mature. Elsewhere on this website is a section on pests and diseases, to which you may refer for remedies. But so far as roses go, remember they have a strong instinct to survive, and if you think something has ruined your roses, you can usually cut it off, burn it, and find the plants will grow again. Then perhaps next year, you will put on the cure in time. A plant which consistently gives trouble should be discarded, because you can soon spend more money on spraying than on buying another rose bush! Most roses are growing on the roots of a wild rose, which occasionally sends up suckers. Do not believe the old story that they can be identified by the number of their leaflets; seven is the usual tale, and it is highly unreliable.

The surest way is the point of origin. If it is from the rootstock, it is sucker. If from the rose, it is rose. But don’t forget the stem of a standard counts as rootstock for this purpose. Suckers should be pulled or rubbed out as soon as seen; otherwise they become woody, and are more difficult to get rid of. To obtain subsequent crops of flower more rapidly, remove the old flowers when they cease to please. This encourages the plant to grow again, instead of peacefully setting seed. Varieties of Roses You Can Grow In Your Garden This guide on how to grow roses would be incomplete without giving some hint of the wonderful beauty which the genus offers. The starting point for most …

My herbs are growing in one of the so-called soil-less composts. These are peat based and have the requisite plant foods incorporated. After about two months, I shall begin feeding the plants with a soluble plant food for by this time; most of the existing nutrients will have been used by the growing plants or leached from the soil. A mixed pot of young plants. Make sure to give them plenty of water if they are in a sunny place.

If you want to grow herbs in any kind of container it is important that you begin with a good potting compost. Different types of these are on sale at all garden stores, centers and the internet. The soil-less types are light in weight, an important point for some people in certain conditions. However, where these lightweight composts are used out of doors, for instance in window boxes or tubs where at first, while the plants are young, they do not cover the surface, I suggest that it is both wise and beneficial to cover the soil surface with a layer of clean horticultural sand or with washed shingle or some similar material.

This will prevent the precious compost from being blown away on windy days or in windy places. It will also keep the roots cool by preventing too rapid moisture loss. If you feed the plants from time to time (and when you do be sure to follow the directions very carefully and precisely) you can go on using the same compost for quite a long time for the same plants. It is a good plan to rejuvenate it each spring by giving it a fresh top dressing. Remove the top inch of soil and replace with fresh. Tough, shrubby plants like rosemary originate in the hot, dry garigue areas of the Mediterranean and they can get by with little water, though it is surprising what a difference a plentiful supply makes to them.

If you want a good supply of fresh, tender herbs you must be prepared to water lavishly those which are contained, especially if they are very sunny, exposed places. It helps also to spray the foliage in the early morning before the sun hits it, and on summer evenings. Besides refreshing the plant and helping to keep it turgid, this practice also keeps the leaves clean. Remember that the softer and lusher the nature of the leaves, the more dependent is the herb on moisture. But be sure that you do not kill the plants by drowning, something much easier to do with plants growing indoors than those which are outside.

When potting soil composts are used, it is necessary to place a really good layer of some kind of drainage material at the base of the container. It should fill at least a quarter of the vessel. This ensures that any surplus water that sinks is held in this open layer so that it does not make the soil waterlogged. The soil-less composts behave differently and it is not so important to provide a drainage level for them. All containers used outside should have drainage holes in them so that water can seep away. Indoors this is not so important and where there is no hole in the container, one sh ould provide a drainage level as for containers out of doors. Often a good layer of charcoal nuggets is sufficient.…

A hanging basket overflowing with various herbs. If you have a paved area near your kitchen, you could grow a great variety of herbs conveniently near to hand. These could be in tubs, either in the modern types or in those of more traditional styles according to the setting. It is not essential to reserve one container for one type of plant. I would suggest that if you mix them you choose one upright type such as sage, rosemary, lovage or tarragon; one sprawler such as marjoram, thyme, mint or savory; and one temporary kind which can be raised from a pinch of seed sown among the perennials such as parsley, chervil or basil.

Chives can go with any mixture. On the other hand, and especially if you have a large basement or patio, a few big isolated herbs could give it great style and atmosphere. For instance, giant angelica in tubs grouped in some shady spot have great beauty of form. Rosemary can be grown on a stem as a standard, like some picture book tree. These plants revel in the sun. They could tower over a mat of carpeting thyme planted below them. Lemon verbena, Lippia citviodora, is a splendid plant for a container in a protected area. Main Part If the area in which you grow herbs is also the main part of your garden, remember that they can be alternated with showy plants.

Marigolds, borage, nasturtiums and poppies will all grow in containers. Some of the potpourri plants will grow this way also, particularly the scented leaved pelargoniums. A word of caution: If you own a dog, raise the tubs on bricks if necessary so that the plants in them do not become soiled. Small Area An attractive way of growing herbs in a small area and at the same time, to restrict those with wandering roots is to make a three-tiered bed in much the same way as used for strawberries. Aluminum lawn edging would do for this, though if the bed could be made deeper the plants would do better.

Bricks or concrete blocks can also be used and peat blocks too, so long as these are kept moist. The lowest circle is left at, say, nine inches deep, then a smaller circle is placed on this in the center and an even smaller circular bed on top of this. You can go higher, of course, if you wish, though by doing this you would tend to increase the shade on one part of the pyramid. Much depends on the style of the garden and the plants you wish to grow. Obviously those plants which thrive in dry conditions will go at the top, as well as those which are taller and upright growing. It is possible to make such a bed look quite attractive because little plants like thyme and summer marjoram can scramble prettily over the edges. Touches of creative originality such as this do much to give a garden that individual and well-loved look. They help you to establish your own personal stamp upon it.…