HARDINGTON GARDEN CLUB
NEWSLETTER JANUARY 2012
Welcome to the first meeting of the fifth year of Hardington Garden Club.
A MESSAGE FROM SALLY
Best wishes from me and all the committee for a happy and healthy gardening year.
We kick off our 2012 programme with a ‘souper’ evening! Our favourite nurseryman, Neil Lovesey, is here tonight to whet your appetite for all things horticultural with another of his popular talks, and we will hearten you even more with hot soup and rolls.
Those of you who attended the AGM will know we made some decisions on that evening – namely to charge a one-off membership fee of £12 for the year rather than £7 plus a monthly £1. Visitors will be charged £3. This was voted for overwhelmingly, as was a prompt start time of 7.30pm, to give those of you who are still working a little more time to get here.
We hope you all enjoy the evening.
CLUB NEWS
There are several boards for you to look at tonight – please take a moment to look at them and also the notice board.
Don't forget we have a plant table where you can donate any plants or produce surplus to your requirements. It all helps club funds.
Plant Sale – You will see from your programme that our plant sale is to be on the 12th May. Just a request that when you are sowing seeds or dividing plants this spring, please sow a few extra seeds or save a few plants to grow on for the plant sale. This is our main fund raising event of the year so every contribution helps. Thank you.
Rachel Moulden
OUR SPEAKER NEXT MONTH
22nd February: Summer Bulbs for Colour by Chris Ireland-Jones of Avon Bulbs
GETTING INTO GEAR
Compared to last year, this winter, so far, has been a breeze. No snow, no ice, not much frost. I know there’s still plenty of time for a bitter sting in the tail, but my garden is calling for some action. The mild days, getting lighter all the while, have kick-started growth all over the place, although a great deal of that has been hidden from view under the blanket of wintry stems and seed heads. I’ve put my slothful days behind me because I’ve had to – the borders are now plain messy and I’m keen to clear it all away and start afresh.
I always intend to start in one corner and work my way round, leaving behind a clean border, but I can never keep to it because something catches my eye elsewhere – a clump of snowdrops, crocuses or primroses struggling through a mat of dead stuff – so I have to clean round them to show off their flowers. Also, I like to work in a sunny spot where possible. So a bit here, a patch there, gradually it will all be revealed again. Today, amputating the insistent thorny arms of rampant hawthorn along the back fence, I liberated my garrya elliptica ‘James Roof’, the silk-tassel bush, with its best-ever display of elegant long silver-grey catkins. For most of the year, this is rather a dull evergreen, and it’s taken a while to settle in, but, come January, it’s an uplifting sight (as long as I keep the hawthorn under control).
I’ve also made myself sort out the accumulation of plastic pots piling up next to the compost bin and take them to the pot recycling at Brimsmore. Now I can at least think about examining the contents of the bin, although I really have to be in the mood to get it all out and turn it. It’s such a muscular job!
Somewhat easier, when I need a breather, is the pleasant task of wandering and wondering, making tentative plans for replanting schemes, deciding what should be split and re-homed and what has had its day and should be composted. Last year’s photos are invaluable here, because it’s extremely difficult to remember exactly how much space the big perennials like heleniums and asters take up when in full fig. It’s always more than you could imagine, leading to overcrowded, poorly-performing plants, and it’s a mistake I make year after year. Tough love is the answer now, however mean one feels removing stuff that’s OK but not much more than that. Be ruthless and be rewarded in high summer with happy plants grown to their full potential.
Sally Norris
FAST OFF THE MARK
The unusually mild start to the year has given a welcome early opportunity to get the apple and pear trees pruned and native hedges cut and tidied.
Tempting as it may be to get all the pruning out of the way early, I shall still leave the willows and dogwoods to continue displaying their bright colours in the low winter sun until they start to bud.
The gales almost flattened my sprouting broccoli so I have tied a stout stake to each plant, hoping the disturbed roots will not affect the harvest and promising myself that this will be done in autumn in future.
The broad beans are well up but some are bending over and need a few twigs to prop them up until tall enough for their string and post support “cage”. Last year I surrounded the broad beans with feverfew plants, which I had read would deter black fly. I certainly had little trouble from this pest so either the feverfew worked or the previous hard winter decimated the black fly. Either way, I am removing feverfew seedlings from other parts of the garden where I don’t want them and planting them around the beans. If anyone else wants to try this, I am sure I can find you some spare feverfew plants.
Now that last year’s potatoes are all used up, I turn to parsnips as a substitute for “mash”, and Jerusalem artichokes as a starch alternative. The latter grow very tall through the summer, making a reasonable wind break – and I always have more than I can use, so let me know if you want some Jerusalem artichokes. Now is the time to plant them.
The disadvantage of such mild January weather is the weeds are also “getting away”. In particular, I seem to have more bitter cress around the garden every year so it is imperative that I get down on my knees on the next nice day and get them out before they flower or the problem will get worse. The other disadvantage of mild winter weather is pests and fungal diseases in the greenhouse. I usually manage to over-winter gazania off-shoots but was dismayed to find these and other cuttings afflicted by grey mould. So check out your stored plants including dahlias, cannas etc.
If the weather holds, you can get on with mulching and feeding fruit trees and bushes and finish planting bare root shrubs and trees (but not in frozen or water-logged soil). If it turns freezing or foul, that’s a good opportunity to finalise your vegetable plot rotation plan, research and list the seeds and varieties you want to buy – and don’t forget to keep the birds fed and their water defrosted.
It is also time to get to Brimsmore to use our discount cards for seed potatoes, onions and other seeds – the early bird gets the best.
I have tried many different potatoes and found Charlotte and Sarpo Mira give me good, usually blight-free, early and main crops.
As for onion sets, the latest Gardening Which (GW) trial resulted in the following Best Buys: ‘Autumn Gold’, ‘Centurion’, ‘Forum’ and ‘Red Baron’ (red onions!)
Both the RHS and GW have recently done shallot trials and both found the best performers were ‘Golden Gourmet’, ‘Red Sun’ and ‘Mikor’. I have also had good results with banana shallots grown from seed.
Rosemary Richards
The Garden Club’s month by month guide to jobs to do can be found in “A Year in the Garden” which is still available if your copy is too dirty and dog-eared to use or you can’t seem to lay your hands on it!
Members would like more on vegetables in the newsletter and I would like more help with this please! I am sure you don’t want to hear about my exploits every month so do send me some lines about your plots, whether large or small or growing in re-cycled containers or … - Ed.
MIKE’S 2011 FRUIT GARDEN REVIEW
2011 was a strange year in the garden and many plants seem to have been confused by the weather to try flowering and fruiting out of season. Growth has been remarkably lush and most fruits have produced a bumper crop. I like to grow and experiment with soft fruits, which are worth growing, as they are so expensive to buy in the shops.
Nurserymen are keen to offer a host of new varieties and crosses, but in my experience, many of them are quite useless and this is confirmed by a recent report in Gardening Which magazine. Who would pay £9.99 for a sloe (blackthorn) or dewberry (a very poor sort of blackberry)?
Goji berry (the new wonder fruit loaded with good antioxidants) was described as a “waste of space”. My goji berries growing in Ernest Kong’s garden produced just a cupful of fruit ripening in November. “Ariona” – another wonder fruit is actually a species of Choke Cherry, which has a small hard black fruit and has to be mixed with other fruit to make it palatable.
Honeyberries and a miniature Kiwi are growing well, but have not yet produced fruit, but there have been two successes. “Casseile”, sold by D T Brown, is a cross between a blackcurrant and a gooseberry, but it is not the same as a Jostaberry. It produced a huge crop of large juicy berries, which proved so attractive to blackbirds that they disappeared overnight. We must remember to protect them this year. Also, the autumn raspberry “Joan J” started fruiting in August and I picked the last pound on January 6th.
With all this fruit growing, I am now rearranging my home garden and have lots of good surplus fruit bushes for disposal. All the following are free, so call asap as I need to clear the space.
| Blackcurrant | Gooseberry | Loganberry | Casseile |
| Redcurrant | Raspberry | Damson | Goji berry |
| Strawberry | Autumn Raspberry | Victoria Plum |
Mike Bickerton
862154
COOKERY CORNER – 3 EASY WAYS WITH PARSNIPS
It doesn’t matter if your parsnips look as if they come from outer space, grown in Hardington clay. Just chop off the wayward roots and slice horizontally instead.
First, peel and quarter lengthways (or slice and cut into half moon shapes), 3 medium or large parsnips. Parboil in slightly salted water for a few minutes, drain and then…
- Make a gratin: mix with chunks of 3 parboiled carrots, two rounds of black pudding and a chopped cooking apple, cover with 3 tbsp breadcrumbs, dot with 20gm butter and bake at 200C/400F/gas 6 for 30 minutes.
- Make curry soup: mix with 2 diced potatoes, a chopped onion and a crushed garlic clove. Pour in 500ml vegetable stock, add 1-2 tsp curry paste and simmer until tender. Mash gently.
- Stir fry: fry in 1 tbsp oil for 10 minutes, then stir in 2 tsp each dried cumin and coriander, add15gm butter and stir fry for 3 minutes.
BOOK REVIEW
I’m sure I’m not the only one who has shelves of gardening books so, when another one arrived at Christmas, the muttering started from The Man From Del Monte (with the woolly hat) … “Oh, not ANOTHER one!”
But Helen Dillon’s Garden Book is something different and a breath of fresh air, particularly at this time of year when our time in the garden is limited. She has a down to earth, witty and accessible style and, in her introduction, she freely admits her mistakes in design and planting.
The book is divided into three sections: the first for beginners, then for those who are more experienced and the third for, what she calls, ‘the fancy stuff’. The whole book is packed with ideas and her energy is infectious and enjoyable. This book had me laughing out loud and her style reminded me of the late John Cushnie, who was also Irish and passionate about gardening.
Helen Dillon lives in Dublin and is the holder of the Gold Veitch Memorial Medal, the highest accolade of the RHS, so don’t take my word for it that she knows her stuff.
Eve Lloyd
BEST BUY SEED SUPPLIERS - Reminder
I am always surprised that some packets of seed can contain a large number of dead or damaged seed resulting in less than 80% germination or worse. Best buys for two years running (tested by Gardening Which) were Dobies and Suttons. The Organic Gardening catalogue, Wilko and Marshalls were also best buys in the last trials. Some of us were pleased with Wilko seeds last year which are cheap and definitely worth a try.
More on seeds and their longevity next month. - Ed
EVENTS
POTATO DAYS - hosted by Pennard Plants
Saturday 11th February 2012 10.30am – 3.30pm Drimpton Village Hall
Sunday 12th February 2012 10.30am – 2.30pm The Constitutional Club, Castle
Cary.
More details on the notice board
East Lambrook Manor Gardens
Open every day from the 1st February for the snowdrop spectacular.
Adults: £5.50 Free for RHS members.
5th February – open for the National Garden Scheme.
Forde Abbey
Snowdrop weekends throughout February 10.00am – 5.00pm £4.00 entry Free for
RHS members.
South West Orchid Show
Saturday 25th February 2012 - West Monkton Village Hall, Taunton
TA2 8NE 10.30am – 4.00pm £2.00 entry Orchids for sale.
Thank you to all who have contributed this month. As always, I would like to hear about members’ plans for the year ahead. Any recipes for seasonal vegetables would be welcome as would any article of a horticultural nature. Tel: 01935 862180. E-mail rosemary.richards@virgin.net