Time to finish off your summer tasks
Gardening shouldn’t jeopardise our safety... perhaps the answer lies in a less tidy plot
News that a former groundskeeper was awarded £226m earlier this month after a jury ruled his terminal cancer was caused by the weedkiller Roundup was a shock to the gardening world. Dewayne Johnson, 46, had taken Roundup’s maker Monsanto to court in the US and the jury also found the firm had “acted with malice or oppression” and ruled it knew, or should have known, the weedkiller was dangerous.
Monsanto plans to appeal. But what does it mean for us and how we have gardened – and indeed farmed – for decades?
The ruling cannot be ignored. With increasing evidence linking the use of glyphosate-based weedkillers to cancer, gardening stores on these islands are reviewing whether they will continue to sell the likes of Roundup and similar.
Gardening isn’t easy. We seek to control and tame nature, fashioning it to our desires.
We often want neat solutions... tidy lawns, neat borders and neatly pruned plants.
We want the plants which we purposely introduce into our gardens to flourish and all others to be banished beyond our boundaries.
Sometimes we recoil at species which, having been found in far-flung places by our forefathers and introduced to our gardens as rarities, take over.
Plants like Japanese knotweed. We want it out, killed, destroyed.
But we are beginning to become aware that our stewardship of even our own garden plots can be a complex environmental and personal safety issue.
The answer may be… whisper it… less tidy gardens.
A new reality is dawning, one where we may look back aghast at the way we dumped chemicals into our plots to make them “perfect” and we will try and find new ways of gardening in harmony with nature. During the recent drought I noticed that although my lawn was a crispy brown, there was some green dotted through it.
Yes, the dandelions had made it through, their long thirsty tap roots hoovering up the last drops of water. Other tap roots, such as plantain and dock, need to be dug up completely by hand – a job that’s best done when the soil is soft.
Annual weeds aren’t doing so well in the drought and a quick hoeing of these soon finishes them off as they shrivel up. ■ Increase your stock of border carnations by layering – choose a non-flowering healthy side shoot, bend it over without snapping the stem, and peg firmly into the ground with wire. Cover the stem with soil and water it in.
■ Divide overcrowded bearded irises to improve vigour for next year.
■ can be started into growth in the greenhouse.
■ Having trouble with earwigs on your dahlias? Make traps with pots stuffed with shredded paper and remove earwigs daily.
■ Prune climbing and rambling roses if they have finished flowering.
What other methods are available that will not harm you or the environment?
Weeds need leaves to photosynthesise – the process whereby they convert light into ■ ■ A high-phosphate feed for the lawn will encourage strong root growth, a good measure to strengthen it for winter.
■ Colchicum, sternbergia and autumn crocus should be planted as soon as they are available in garden centres. energy. Constant removal of a weed’s leaves weaken the plant and if you completely smother it with light-excluding materials such as dark polythene, eventually it will die.
This is a tried and trusted method for cleaning an area of soil – you can also use old carpet and if you don’t like the look of this, you could disguise it with some bark mulch. It will take time but eventually you will have weed-free soil. Another version of this, which I favour, is to weed as much as you can and then use a heavy mulch of bark to suppress future weed growth. For this to be really effective you will need to pile it on about six inches deep.
I also like to plant closely and use groundcovers as weed suppressors. I recently planted a selection of Vincas which will form a green carpet