With the change in seasons upon us, it is time to tidy the garden
Whatever you call this season (Autumn or Fall) depends on where you are from, but after the extremely long, hot summer, it is a relief for the gardener here as well as the garden! Daylight hours become shorter, and night temperatures start to drop, and some trees start to shed their leaves.
Although almonds shed theirs continuously, others like prunus and pecans keep their now golden leaves a little longer. Some need a cooler spell to recover and produce new buds and leaves for next season. The red leaves of ‘Virginia Creeper’ brighten up uninteresting walls at this time of year, but once they drop, the plant is very boring with just a few bare stems!
Pyracantha is ablaze everywhere with berries in reds, oranges and yellows, although the birds don’t like yellow berries and tend to leave them alone. You just have to look at Melia azedarach trees, which started out life in India and the southern hemisphere, to see great clusters of the yellow berries hanging from the branches all winter long. Birds seem to know that eating these narcotic berries can cause them, in their drugged state, to be vulnerable to any local cats, so they do not feast on them.
Other plants which need your attention include Pampas grass, Cortaderia sellonia, as it may be looking ragged by now. The old method was to burn them down, but that is quite rightly frowned upon nowadays, so use the loppers and take the debris to the recycling yard. Pennisetum, those lovely deep purple grassy plants, may also need a trim.
Any yellow cycad leaves at the bottom of the plants should be removed, but take care and wear gloves for that job, and if your Aloe vera plants still have their dead flower stems and you don’t plan to use them for staking, remove them too! Tidy up your cannas and remove any dead or dying leaves and flower stems. Be watchful and do not cut into any late flowers, which may appear on the main stems hidden among any new leaves.
Seeds come in many shapes and sizes, and at different times of the year. Some early-flowering annuals make many seeds. Poppies, for instance, shed their tiny seeds through holes in the tops of the seed capsules, so the stems are best cut off just before this happens. Nigella, another pretty annual, with ferny foliage and delicate blue flowers, has a similar habit, and the seeds are extremely fertile. Although they make lovely swathes of flowers, you may not want them everywhere forever!
Others drop their seeds when the seed cases become brittle. Caesalpinia gilliesii is a good example of that. When the dry seed pods burst open, their flattish seeds are scattered everywhere. The lovely lilac-flowering jacarandas produce many large seed-pods, looking rather like dried oyster shells, but tucked inside the outer cases is a seed. Pine trees produce seeds that are hidden inside the various layers of the cone,s and when the weather is dry and breezy, the seeds are released and float on any breeze until they find some suitable soil in which to grow.
I have mentioned before that some plants don’t come true from seed and are known as hybrids. A hybrid plant is the result of cross-pollinating two different plant varieties and growing the seeds. The dominant plant of this union will likely be the one that evolves. A good example of this is the apple ‘Pink Lady’, whose parents were ‘Golden Delicious’ and ‘Lady Williams’, and the strongest sapling of that union was encouraged to grow and became the apple we enjoy. A more modern way of reproducing trees is done by grafting.
Generally speaking, remove the seed pods of bulbous plants such as daffodils, tulips and hyacinths as they occur and much later on, agapanthus, as you want the plant to concentrate on building up the bulb for flowering again next season. They take such a long time to grow from seeds anyway! Chasmanthe, known erroneously here as monbretia, produces very fertile seeds which germinate easily, but usually chasmanthe are grown from flattish corms, as seeds from these plants may take quite some years to produce flowers. These eye-catching plants do need space and some support to get the best flowers, and can grow to a couple of metres high if they like where they are planted.
Stating the obvious, seeds are the way that plants reproduce themselves, although some plants like ferns, mosses and liverworts do not produce seeds at all. Remember that most seeds need a cold period before they germinate, so if you bought packets of them from a supermarket or garden centre or even collected them in your own garden, pop them into the fridge for a few weeks before sowing, to give them a ‘winter’.
I love it when the bulbs come into the garden centres, but you have to be quick to choose any favourite ones, like Paperwhites, which quickly sell out. Amaryllis can make lovely presents for those who like flowers, but do not plant them yet a while. They will grow equally well indoors as out of doors, on a veranda if you garden there. I have found that they grow best in a pot.
If you plant freesias too early, then they will shoot up far too fast, and their foliage will flop about all winter. Remember that bulbs won’t make roots in dry soil, so wait until the earth is really damp before you plant them. Daffodils and hyacinths (which have fewer flowers as they age) can grow on for a few more years, but tulips will only give of their best in the first year. Time to check on any other potted plants which may have been out of doors all summer long. Sometimes they can become root-bound and need to be split up. Their soil may need to be refreshed as well, which helps new growth to appear. I always use Phostrogen for my potted plants, which encourages new growth as well as flowers.
Don’t forget any irises that you may grow. In my garden, I have some large clumps of Iris albicans and Iris germanica. Iris albicans has white flowers with a golden throat, known as a beard, hence they are sometimes referred to as ‘bearded’ irises. Iris germanica, with blue flowers of which there are also many hybrids in glorious colour combinations, also grows well here. Both irises tend to clump up, so every few years or so, dig them up and separate them, replanting the rhizomes towards the sun in friable soil. After this treatment, they may not flower next year, but will be something to look forward to later. Give them a feed of bonemeal if you can get it, or a rose feed will do.
Plant of the Month Asplenium nidus
Asplenium nidus is a native of the tropical regions of South East Asia and various places in the Pacific and is more commonly known as the ‘Bird’s-Nest Fern’, although it has another common name of ‘Crispy Wave Fern’. The leaves of this interesting fern are unlike any you would expect a fern’s foliage to resemble, as they are quite long, glossy and slender, sometimes with a black stem running along the middle of the leaves. They form a unique rosette growth likened to a large bird’s nest, as one of its common names suggests. In its native habitat, it usually grows in tropical rainforests, as it thrives in the humid and shaded environments found there under the cover of trees. Some even grow among the branches of trees where it is shaded and out of full sun, and any leaf litter that falls into the crown may sustain it for a while and will assist the plant to grow. If grown indoors, the winter sun and morning sunshine through a window shouldn’t do much harm, but avoid strong direct sunlight or you’ll risk scorching the leaves, and they will turn yellow.
They need moisture but not too much, and not near the centre of the plant, which may cause root rot, a sure sign of too much watering! Try using one of those plastic containers that come with electric irons, as they are ideal for carefully watering around the edge of the plant and not near the centre, which you don’t want. A little fine misting occasionally might be the right thing, too. Known to be long-lived, they are not toxic to cats and dogs, so can be grown indoors and are known as one of the best air-purifying plants around. Luckily, they do not suffer from any serious diseases
Propagation is not as easy as they do not grow from cuttings, rather spores on the undersides of the leaves – best left to the experts! They prefer to grow in a peat-based compost but may need repotting every 2-3 years. Try to keep them in temperatures between 15-24C and feed with a balanced fertiliser every 4-6 weeks.