A Gardener’s Diary
Petunias give my sprits a lift Life and work in the garden rotate with remarkable speed, and absolutely nothing seems to come round with such speed as the Christian festival of Christmas. At least not for me. And this month I am always reminded of it because Christmas music starts in Georgetown in October, led [...]
A Gardener’s Diary
Patios are for sitting out In the past few months we have spent a lot of time sitting on our small patio, once the heat has gone from the day. There we enjoy a cooling drink and look around at leisure at our favourite plants and also look at the activity of our feathered friends, [...]
A Gardener’s Diary
‘One year’s seed equals seven years’ weed’ Any man who calls a spade a spade ought to be forced to use one regularly. So said Oscar Wilde, the great Victorian playwright. Here at home in Guyana we get over that little problem by calling a true spade a shovel − and we can usual1y get [...]
A Gardener’s Diary
Some plants can be propagated using leaf cuttings In the middle of September the nights get particularly cold in England, and further north in Scotland it is not unusual to experience the first frosts. Already in Manchester the colder nights result in the gradual change in the colour of deciduous trees as they prepare themselves [...]
A Gardener’s Diary
Coconut: The perfect answer for the idle gardener The largest seed most of us have had to handle in Guyana is the coconut. It’s as hard as old boots and the perfect answer for any gardener who is basically bone idle. It falls off its tree, and germinates where it falls. It just happens to [...]
A Gardener’s Diary
Try rooting African Violets from leaf-stalk cuttings Everything seems to be growing at a rate of knots, and I still have what you might call an irrational fear of trees suddenly shedding large branches without a lot of warning. They can all carry tons of water. It matters not where you are on this planet, [...]
A Gardener’s Diary
Talk to your plants At the time of writing this article I am in England. To be more precise I am in Manchester, the city where I was born and raised. In my formative days Manchester was not a lovely place. The buildings – often magnificent – were dark and had generations of filth embedded [...]
A Gardener’s Diary
Hydrangeas and heliotrope It is at this time of the year that the hours of daylight start to slide towards equality with my home in Guyana, and in a few months it will be winter. In England this means cold. The last two weeks have been glorious. The last two days have been appalling and [...]
A Gardener’s Diary
Never water fine seed with a can One very important thing we should all remember is that seeds first come from plants, not out of packets, so don’t forget that you can get seed direct from the plant without the expense of paying for them at the garden centre. Not always, of course, because not [...]
A Gardener’s Diary
You can make your own seed trays I always try and use a standard seed tray box for sowing seeds. A standard seed tray has an inside measurement of 14˝ x 8˝ x 2˝. Nowadays seed trays are made from plastic. In the old days (just post-war) they were made out of wood. Many still [...]