Gardening Tips
Your fortnightly gardening tips for indoors and outdoors |
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Sow seed or lay turf for a new lawn. Plant bulbs for
spring flowering. Tidy up the herbaceous border. Propagate herbaceous plants
by division.
Starting a new lawn. Early autumn is a good time to make a lawn either by sowing
seeds or laying turf. Seed involves less physical effort and usually provides the better
quality of lawn: turf is harder work to lay but produces a ‘finished’ lawn more
quickly. Thorough preparation pays big dividends whichever method is chosen. Kill
off all permanent weeds. Work over the soil well using spade and fork or a
rotovator. Ensure that the surface is level so that water does not gather in pools
and the grass receives equal water and nutrient supplies.
Sowing seed. Various mixtures of grass seed are on sale, and one of the main
distinctions is between those containing rye grass and those without. If the lawn has to
do duty as a playground for children a hardwearing grass mix with rye grass will be best.
If you want a bowling- green lawn you need a mix excluding rye grass and with a high
proportion of fine fescues and bent species.
Laying turf. Success with turf depends on its quality and how well it is laid. Turf
produced from seed ensures a quality product that is weed free. It is more expensive than
meadow turf, although this can also be good, especially if the weeds have been killed.
Lay the turves on the well-prepared site, making sure that each is butted tight up
to the next. If possible, lay before forecast rain, and certainly avoid doing
anything in a mini-drought.
Tidying the herbaceous border. This enterprise is a rather more active matter
through the summer and into the autumn than in the spring if everything is tidied up for
winter. In spring it will then be merely a matter of seeing off germinating weed seed and
perhaps spot killing one or two troublesome perennial weeds. A 8-10cm (3-4in) layer
of shredded bark is a great timesaver as it will inhibit most weed seed, and any that
manages to germinate is pulled out very much more easily It also provides an excellent
soil-protecting mulch, and keeps everything looking tidy . In early autumn any spot, where
for one reason or another the bark layer has been badly breached, can be filled up with a
bucketful or two of fresh bark. Tidying the herbaceous border now may well go hand
in hand with propagating some of the herbaceous plants. |
| If people
from Poland are called Poles, why aren't people from Holland called Holes? |
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| Embarrassing
Stories |
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| I was walking my mother’s dog to the nearby shops,
when I noticed a gang of youths pointing and laughing at me. I couldn’t understand
why until I looked down at the dog, who was carrying a ‘used sanitary towel’ in
her mouth! I for one will be pleased when wheelie bins are here and cats can no longer rip
black bin bags open. |
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In a recent article, Peter
Taylor goes to great lengths to assure us that “Caravans are not a threat”,
saying they are not responsible for coastal erosion. He then quotes Coastal Protection
Engineer Brian Farrow as saying “…the cliffs are sites of considerable interest
in terms of the flora and fauna which inhabit them, and their geological and biological
content.” Surely, if that’s the case, then covering those cliffs with caravans
is an enormous threat — to the plants and animals that live there, and to the beauty
of the Norfolk countryside now buried under caravans!
Megan Crewe, Sheringham |
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