DON’T MISS RESIDENT GARDENING COLUMNIST JIM McCOLL

Covid-19 may have halted our property supplement, but we simply had to find a new home for Jim McColl, our resident gardening columnist. With gardens more important than ever, you can read Jim’s column in The Press and Journal every Thursday

ore than a month ago, I had a wee “dig” at colleague Ed Bollom, when he revealed that he had given the lawns at Gordon Castle their first cut, by suggesting that we didn’t all garden in the Riviera-type conditions enjoyed by gardeners on the Moray coast!

The following week a professional gardener friend living a few miles from me revealed that he also had given his lawn its first trim of the year.

Must be that climate change thing again...

I can now confidently announce that it is “save the lawn” time because looking at our own patch, the predominant colour is light brown.

A closer look indicates that scarifying should be my first task because there is so much moss and dead grass in it that any new growth is in danger of being choked out.

Mind you, it is not as bad as some I could mention (see photograph), but I daren’t say where the picture was taken; if I do, the owner may never buy me a pint again!

That illustration does serve to emphasise that action is due – pronto.

But I must advise you to ca’ canny. You wouldn’t last long stripped to just the boxers and stood out in this weather. You must make it a treatment to be staged over the next month – a light trim, a gentle scarify and a dressing of an appropriate fertiliser would be in order.

There are plenty fertilisers to choose from that are formulated for the purpose, and some gardeners might try a Biochar top-dressing.

Apparently, according to the blurb, it is becoming popular with golf course greenkeepers. This material is a charcoal, made from burning wood in the absence of oxygen.

It is claimed to improve soil structure, aeration, water-holding capacity and nutrient retention – all terribly important, of course, but is it really necessary?

Pardon my scepticism, but I have never tested Biochar and therefore I am not qualified to judge.

Will it prove to be worth the expense?

You will never know unless you try it.

Some will argue that it is just a step too far. Talking of which... Here we are on the verge of the growing season, when garden perennials start to spring into life.

Are you sure that what you are looking at was planted by you?

In other words, are there any invaders appearing?

This is an indirect hint to bring attention once again to the problems created by invasive non-native plants.

I think, for example, of Montbretia, a member of the Crocosmia family and real nuisance in some areas when it “escapes to the country”, to use a familiar phrase.

Sadly, many of them first appeared in gardens.

We are our own worst enemies, of course, because in many instances gardeners brought these plants here in the first place, to enhance their borders and hopefully, if successful, to be just one up on Lord Muck next door.

There is no doubt that our gardens are richer as a result. Indeed, one of my favourite sayings is “a walk round a well-stocked garden is like a world tour”.

Rhododendron ponticum is probably one of the best-known invaders.

Introduced many years ago to enhance great estate gardens, but soon to become one of our most successful shelter-belt plants, especially in the acid soils on the west coast of Britain.

Oh yes, it just loved the conditions, but turn your back on it and it takes over at the expense of native species.

Others often quoted are Japanese knotweed, giant hogweed and Himalayan balsam.

Handsome plants, all of them, if you can control their spread.

That said, I sometimes think that specialists in the field of conservation of our natural flora go a bit too far.

I would argue that, just like ourselves, there is a condition known as evolution.

We might not like some of what is happening to our native flora but plants, like many people who land on our shores, after a generation or two, can be regarded as “true Brits”, and why not?

I tell you what brought this on. Checking in my leaflet on invasive nonnative plants, I was surprised to see cotoneaster on the list – birds will spread the seeds apparently. Well I never!

Do they?

I have five or six different cotoneasters in the present garden and they are staying put. Banning them would definitely be a step too far.

Back in the greenhouse, this is my time for starting onion setts in sections, filled with a seed compost. I am in no hurry, they are given frost protection only, because they will not be planted out until well into May.

Whilst onion setts are easily handled individually, small seeds have to be scatter sown, and if you want to have fine sturdy seedlings to be handled and pricked out into containers, you have to give them plenty of space and good light conditions or they will stretch in search of it, becoming lanky and skinny.

BEST OF BRITISH? Cotoneaster hybrida pendula (pictured in our last garden) is one of the plants that readers may be surprised to learn is a non-native invader

Left: Take care when sowing seeds. Right: Yes, that is a carpet of moss, and the sooner it is removed, the better

In the greenhouse, the onion setts are now prepared and ready for the ‘off’