Home growing avoids risk of importing disease

GROWING your own plants from semi ripe cuttings couldn’t be more satisfying and rewarding. And invaluable in Covid’s cashstrapped times.

And yet another pernicious plant disease also means that garden centres may not always have the plants you want. This year, growers have been strongly urged not to import lavender, rosemary and olives, species that could be affected by the bacterium Xylella fastidiosa first identified in Italian olive trees.

In April, Gerard Clover, from the John Innes Centre in Norwich said: ‘There is very little propagation of lavender and rosemary in the UK.’

Although growers may be able to import stock, Clover has now added: ‘We urge growers and gardeners to only buy high risk plants [such as rosemary and olive] that have been grown in the UK and avoid sourcing them from Europe.’

The disease is thought to affect 560 species in 72 families, so growing your own may be the only option and this episode shows the importance of supporting Scottish nurseries propagating from local material.

If your greenhouse is overflowing like mine, cuttings come to the rescue. A few little pots of cuttings takes up much less space than all those large planters with tender salvias and pelargoniums needing overwinter protection.

I also like to take out an insurance policy for dianthus, lavender and rosemary that could succumb to age or winter ice. If I lived in a lower, more sheltered place than here where I could grow ceanothus I would also now take cuttings from it.

I like to take semi ripe cuttings over the next few weeks, immediately after flowering and

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