Peter Seabrook: the gardening season is far from over, says Peter
The gardening season is very far from over, says Peter
WHEN I hear people talk about the garden season coming to an end when the clocks alter and days shorten, I think their lack of gardening understanding really beggars belief. Personally, I find it more difficult to fit everything in with the steadily reducing number of daylight hours.
First, many of the free-flowering summer annuals will continue to bloom freely – the four colours of Petchoa ‘BeautiCal’, for example, withstanding several degrees of frost. There are spring-flowering bulbs to plant; biennials such as forget-me-nots, stocks and wallflowers to plant; the turf needs renovation after summer wear; there are root crops to lift — the list goes on.
What about chrysanthemums? They are in full season from September to
Christmas, and deserve our attention. Fresh cut blooms brought indoors will last for weeks if the water is occasionally changed. Every year, I try to grow a small bed of them across the vegetable patch, 6in (15cm)-square netting spread over the surface to give planting lines and even spacing.
This netting is held taut by stakes so that, as the chrysanthemums grow, the netting can be lifted horizontally in support. My planting of several cut flower kinds suffered in the summer heat, and even after repeated watering had me worried for a few weeks – then the rains came, and how they grew!
Now the first single bloom on each stem has been cut, and lower sideshoots are developing to give a second flush of blooms. Most of these will not be debudded, but grown on to provide spray blooms. If there is time and I can see in the dusk of evening, some may have the lead bud removed so that the cluster of buds below all open together.
Come Christmas, the roots (which are called stools) along with six inches or so of old stem will be lifted, trayed up with some old potting compost, and stored in a coldframe to provide cuttings to root for next year’s bed.