This month my boyfriend (also a fellow horticulturist) and I are heading on a trip down south to visit some famous gardens that we have been wanting to visit for a while, especially after one of our lecturers talked about Christopher Lloyd at Great Dixter.
We are hoping to visit Sissinghurst Castle and Gardens, RHS Wisley as well as Great Dixter. If we get chance it would also be nice to go to the Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew as they have built a tree top walk which will enable us to see the vast extent of Kew's spectacular gardens.The glasshouses look amazing too as they have exotic plants from all over the world!
Last week when the weather was nice, I planted up two hanging baskets with plants that my parents had bought. I designed them using contrasting colours with trailing plants over the edge; using miniature petunias, begonias, fuschias, pelargoniums and lobeilia.
In order to prolong flowering dead head flowers and don't allow the compost to become dry. Use a growing media that has good water retention and feed as required with a suitable liquid fertiliser.
Hanging baskets add a bright and colourful touch to the garden and are fairly quick and fun to do, needless to say my parents really liked them!
As part of our crop production module we learnt how to propagate plants for habitat enrichment. Plants were grown for a new dartfrog vivarium located in the animal unit on campus. We grew various tropical species from bromeliads, squirrel foot ferns to pillow mosses. However, propagating orchids proved to be difficult.
Propagating ferns and bromeliads in the glasshouse.
Over the weeks as the plants grew larger and became too large for their pots, we had to divide them, thus creating more plants to propagate, such as the pups created by the bromeliads. The plants were kept in the glasshouse in a warm humid environment, in order to mimic their natural growing conditions. They were kept in a heat box to begin with to give them a head start . Once established, the plants were translocated to the animal unit.
Pups growing from the bases of the bromeliads.
Our propagated tropical plant collection!
Stage 1
First clay beads were placed into the bottom of the vivarium for drainage.
Stage 2
A layer of mesh matting was laid on top of the clay beads to prevent the soil from falling through.
Stage 3
Coir (made from coconut husk) was used for the growing media, which was placed on top of the mesh.Thecoir was piled up slightly higher in places to createraised areas for planting.
Stage 4
Rocks, plants and a log with moss growing on it were placed in the coir with climbers growing up the side, in order to help hide some of the walls in the near future.
The first planted up vivarium!
Some left over plants were used to create a second vivarium! The plants have come on quite a bit since being planted in the vivarium not so long ago.
The second planted up vivarium!
Working in a different field alongside people studying animals has been a valuable experience allowing us the opportunity to learn about specific plants for certain habitats within the Zoo Horticulture industry,which is fast becoming a new niche market.
As a group we started the project in October 2014 and completed it in May 2015, all we are waiting for is the frogs to arrive, so they can be introduced to their exciting new environment!
Companion planting is good for the organic grower as it a way of working with nature, rather than against it. It is also a technique used by people that practice permaculture.For example some plants are good at deterring unwanted pests from crops.
A few examples are:
Chives, radishes, or rosemary can be used to deter carrot fly from a carrot crop, as they then can't smell the carrots due to the scents of the other plants.
Rosemary is also good for driving away cabbage moth.
Apparently Chives are also good near roses for controlling aphids, helping to reduce the disease blackspot.
Marigolds help to keep away aphids, perhaps due to their aroma.
The good thing about companion planting is that you can also get some other crops to eat too! They will help to attract pollinators and other insects such as ladybirds, that are beneficial for controlling aphids.
Someone once told me a planting scheme for a border which she referred to as 'Something the same, Something different'. For example you have the same colour flowers or foliage throughout the border using different species, so it could be an all purple border but with different types of foliage.This could also mean picking different varieties, that flower at different times. I thought it would be interesting to see what a border like this would turn out like!
Why we need to put plants that are beneficial to insects in our gardens?
I
don't know if you are aware, but the population of bees has been
declining recently in the United Kingdom. They are thought to be under
threat due to changes within the countryside and to agricultural
techniques. According to the Bumblebee Conservation Trust there are
fewer wildflowers than there used to be; this is because more land is
being used for increased food production. Also,
nowadays, people are having modern hard landscaped designed gardens
that are of low maintenance; which have formal planting schemes (usually a lot of gravel and Buxus hedging!) This means that are few flowering plants to attract bees into these types of gardens.
Why are bees important? Bees are key Pollinators, especially when it comes to food production!
Here is a way we can help bees
Other Plants That Are Beneficial To Wildlife
Teasels and Millets provide seed for birds.
Verbena, Echinacea and Buddleja to name but a few are great for attracting butterflies to your garden. Scented flowers such as Lavandula (Landender) also go down a treat with the bees.
I once entered a different category at the produce show I was talking about in one of my previous posts; which was to make a monster out of fruit and vegetables (I was about eight years old at the time). I used a melon for the body, carrot chunks for the legs, carrot tops for hair, carrot ends for eyes, a carrot for a tail, a pepper cut in to a jagged shape for the mouth, the eyebrows and stalk for a nose, beans for arms, and baby sweetcorn sticks for horns! I was highly commended for it, but I wasn't bothered where I placed as it was a lot of fun to make and allowed me to be creative with produce.
I would recommend having a go, looking back it could be a way to encourage children to eat their fruit and vegetables as they may see them as being 'fun'. If this is the case, it definitely worked for me!
As I have got older, I can certainly say that I like more fruit and vegetables now, than I did in the picture below. (Plus they are good for you too).
When I was nine years old I received a
propagator as a birthday present from my parents following a visit to
our local garden centre. It came with little seed trays and various
packets of seeds; such as varieties of lettuce, tomatoes, cornflower (Centaurea cyanus),other wildflowers, daisies (Bellis perennis) and sunflowers (Helianthus annuus). Each year I used to try and grow one that was taller than the previous year.
Every
morning I would get up to see if any of the seeds had started to grow
and became very excited if seedlings were germinating. I have recently come across Perlite, which is good for seeds as it encourages them to germinate quicker. Other benefits are that it holds moisture without becoming soggy, thus improving drainage, plus it improves aeration. When the seedlings became
too big for the propagator, they were potted up into larger pots. You
get a great sense of satisfaction nurturing a plant from a seed to a
mature plant.
On our front patio, we also had a polythene greenhouse for the mature plants from the propagator.
Another friend of the family used to give me various varieties of
tomato plants, which I used to grow on from a small plant; being young, I
was shown how to care for the plants in order to produce a good crop.
Tips: Remove side shoots from tall varieties while small, otherwise it will leave a scar on the stem, which could lead to pests and diseases getting into the plant. But be careful not to pinch out the growing tip at the top of the tomato plant.
My mum used to call me 'green fingers' as she thought I was good at taking cuttings. One being a Flowering Currant (Ribes) which is still growing well in our garden today!
During my later years of primary school I began growing kidney beans. A friend of the family used to provide me with the seeds he cultivated. Little did I know that one seed variety I was given produced prize winning kidney beans!
So, with a little help from my dad I began to grow beans in my back garden. It was surprising how well they grew as my garden is overshadowed by many large Pinus sylvestris specimens (one of the many issues of having a garden adjacent to a wood).
I entered one of my beans into 'The Longest Kidney Bean' category at the local produce show in the village (which at the time was held in my primary school). This competition takes place during early September. This event has been running for the past fifty years.
I must have been about nine years old when I first entered. When I came second in the competition two years running, I was very pleased. In the first year my bean grew to eighteen inches long. However, I managed to top it with a bean twenty two inches long in the following year. Not bad for a junior!
Even though I was up against a lot of experienced, adult vegetable growers - I still placed high enough to make me feel proud of my achievements. The main difference between the adults and myself was that I did it because I enjoyed it.
Unfortunately as a very young grower, I worried that if I ate any of the beans it might have been a prize winner!
