Plantpassion

Do I need to water my pots & baskets in winter?

Now the nights are drawing in, and you never seem to be home in daylight, it's easy to forget about watering pots and hanging baskets in the garden.

It's true that containers won't need as much attention as during the summer, but winter winds can be very drying, and so particularly evergreens will need some additional water maybe once a month through the winter.  The most important thing to remember is to ensure that the roots don't sit in water, because the moisture will turn to ice, and if the compost freezes solid for long it kills the plants (from drought, ironically!).
Ensuring that any saucers used in the summer are removed, and that pots are drained by placing on bricks or pot feet, so that any excess moisture can run out.

these pot feet are available from crocus

Water before midday, so that plants have time to soak up the water before the daylight fades and the temperature decreases, and if possible avoid getting water on the plant leaves, just water the compost.

If watering in a greenhouse or poly tunnel, ensure that all doors and windows are open to ensure thorough ventilation, but close up before dark.

In the middle of the winter, it may be worth "lagging" your most precious pots with bubble wrap, or moving them to the lee of a house wall where the temperature will be several degrees higher than in the rest of the garden.

Garden Clearup - Tidy out the Greenhouse

If like me, you are lucky enough to have a greenhouse to shelter yourself and your small plants in, you may find, that when it gets to this time of year, when the weather has stopped being quite so benign, that your precious space is taken up by all manor of sheltering plants and tools.

 

Garden clearup - Recycling pots

it's at this time of year when I've planted as much as I can in the garden, and finally given up on the dead sticks in pots that have been dessicated since the summer, that I finally have a turnout of all the pots that have been lying around the garden all year.

Unfortunately my collection of pots isn't all terracotta and rustic looking, most of the plants I buy are in black plastic pots, and although I need a few each year to pot seedling on into, I don't need nearly as many as I use.

Children and water in the garden

Children, - particularly little ones, are drawn to water in a garden, For anyone that's been on a day out to any parks or gardens, you know that feeding the fish or watching a waterfall are a little ones favorite activities.

 

(William watching the waterfall in the RHS Wisley Glasshouse)

But as children are drawn to water, - that also means that there is danger that they will fall in, and not be able to get out. - I've unfortunately heard enough horror stories in my time about toddlers walking into swimming pools or ponds, (The horrifing stats are that about 200 under 5's have been drowned since 2002) that I wouldn't recommend to any family that they have an open pond in their garden, but there are other options that make a garden water feature safe for children and you to enjoy.

If you have a small pond, and want to have fish, then my recommendation is to use a pond cover. - This can be a cage above the water, but in my experience, this spoils the view, and makes tending to any pond plants or marginals very difficult. - This photo shows the recommendation I came up with for one of my clients gardens

This grid is installed just below or above the water surface and is designed to take the weight of a child

it's by a uk company called safapond

If you don't already have a water feature in your garden, - my suggestion would be to add the sound of running water without having the standing water, by using an underground water sump and a pump to create a fountain. - We used to have one of these in our last garden, with a large stone for the water to trickle out of, and pebbles surrounding it, - I couldn't find a photo of this (typically), but there are now lots of different types of kits sold that you can easily create this effect from.

This photo is taken from a website called waterfeatures2go.co.uk  which has a huge range, for all budgets.

My favourite of this type was one I saw at the Malvern show recently, - these are made to order, and the copper will weather to a lovely green grey.

This one is by Robert Peters and his company is copperwaterballs.co.uk

The other thing that you can do is to have a fountain coming out of a wall, or a stream/watercourse that disappears into an underwater sump, so that you can get the sound without the pool, and without the danger.

New additions to the family (or - chickens in the garden)

After many months of debating, and a lot of researching, we finally have our chickens.

Sally and Princess Leia (yes my 5 yr old's choice of names, Cars and Starwars being favourite movies) are now installed in our back garden in their fox proof coop and run.

They are rescue chickens, - which means that after a year of laying eggs for a farmer, they were about to  go into their seasonal moult. - little hen rescue are a not for profit organisation that collects up hens that would be disposed of because they were not laying, and finds new homes for them as free range egg laying pets.

Here's some autumn colour I forgot

ok, there is more than one, but I keep snapping more pictures of autumn colour and I don't want you to miss out.

Autumn Colour, catch it while you can

Lovely Autumn colour, - but why do we sometimes get great colour for ages and sometimes none at all?

Plants don't have an internal calendar, they work from Temperature and length of daylight hours. They can also be affected by too much or too little water, and these all have a massive affect on Autumn colours.

In a year with cool dry weather right until the end of October, the colours will be a lot better than a cool wet autumn, when the leaves will fall off the trees without turning colour or a warm dry autumn where the leaves won't turn colour until later, and then will suddenly drop, the first spell of wet or wind we get.

We've had years recently (in southern UK) where the temperature (particularly at night) hasn't been low enough to trigger leaf colour change until November, - but this year we have got some great colour, although with wetter weather coming in this weekend, don't expect it to last for long, - here are some more pictures i've taken over the last week.

Garden Bloggers Bloom Day October 2009

Thanks to Carol at May Dream Gardens who hosts this collection of garden bloggers posts, here is my selection of what's in flower this month at the Brown household in Surrey UK.

My Nerines (Bowdenii) are in their second year, and are loving the south facing border against the house.

Falling leaves, - turn them into plant food and mulch

The nights are drawing in, the days are getting shorter and your lawn suddenly disappears under a sea of leaves.

Now raking leaves up can be invigorating excersise, or it can be boring and never ending at this time of year, - but it might cheer you up to know that all your hard work can be worth it, if you turn your leaves into leaf mulch.

2 years ago, I encouraged (ok, maybe bullied is closer to the truth) several of my clients to start leaf bins. - The results are now in.

and whether you leave your leaves in a large builders sack, -or in a purpose made bin, you can get great leaf mulch within 2 years to add to your garden.

To make really good mulch, you need 3 ingredients

1) Wet Leaves, - if you add them dry, then you need rain to be able to get to them to help them to rot down

2) Air, - either open sides, and open top or holes in the bags help with this

3) Time - leave it alone for a couple of years and you'll have deep rich crumbly leaf mulch

i'd also suggest you compact the leaves well as you put them in or this happens

there is a very good value leaf bin available through The recycle works But if you don't have a completly flat surface with lots of space, i'd recommend using extra canes as support to make sure the bin doesn't collapse like this one did. - also make sure you put the join in the mesh at the front, so that you can easily get the leaf mould out.

I hope you have fun making your leaf bins, -even if the leaf raking is slightly harder work.

Cabbage caterpillars (get off my winter veg)

In the past, I havn't had the room to grow winter vegetables, - my tiny raised beds at my last house only had enough room for my precious winter salads and herbs, and Cabbages, Brussel sprouts and Calabrese take up too much room, but this year i've got some space, - so imagine my horror when I saw that the leaves of my sprouting broccoli were looking like this

I looked closer, wondering if my circle of bran around each plant hadn't kept off the slugs, but then I found these