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Plough
Field Allotments at Amerton
Gardening
Tips
By Mrs FM
Hartley.
Unusual
& Old
Fashioned Fruit
Trees.
Unusual
Vegetables,
Herbs & Other
Edible Plants.
Environmental
Issues And Going Green.
Vines
And Other Climbing Plants.
Fish
Ponds
Books
By
Alan J Hartley
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Some Last Minute Jobs Of
Summer.
Some weeks ago I trimmed my Bay
Trees and cut them back quite hard, but they grew back very quickly. In
fact they grew back too fast and too much, so I decided to “bite the
bullet,” and cut them down to just bare trunks, in effect Pollard them.
The “Hedge,” is really only 3 Bay Trees, but they are multi stemmed so
look more, although they only run for some 6, or 7 feet in length. They
had grown to over 6 feet in height though, which is the limit for trees
on our Allotments. Consequently, at the beginning of September, after
the Wildlife Nesting Date Rule, I cut them down to about 18 inches. It
was a good job that I obeyed the rules about not cutting hedges during
the nesting period of birds, because I did find an empty Birds nest in
the growth that I cut off.
Hopefully, the Bay trees will
put on some growth before Winter settles in and they go dormant,
although being evergreen, I guess they don’t ever truly stop growing.
Like with the Eucalyptus in my Garden that I cut down a little while
ago, the roots will be well developed and will have lots of energy that
will cause them to re-grow very fast, so I may well have to remove them
altogether in a couple of years.
On the subject of the slightly exotic, while I was in pruning mode, I
attacked an overgrown Fig Tree on my Allotment. It is Fan Trained, or I
should say Espalier trained, and needed tidying up with many branches
shooting from here there and everywhere. Figs are untidy growers at the
best of times and need to be constantly trimmed to keep them in shape.
This one was spreading itself outwards, all over the path, so I picked
away at the edge of the stone path and dug up some partly rooted shoots
that made good cuttings. It is really the wrong time to dig them up
while they are in leaf, but I wanted to tidy up my path, so I did. They
were potted and put in the shade on my yard at home to settle down and
hopefully they will put on some proper roots over winter.
It is my hope that by the Spring they will be ready to be sold on our
Sales Day Fundraiser Day, that we are planning for the Allotments, along
with some Strawberry Runners that I have also recently potted up. In a
week or two I am going to cut most of the tops off the old Strawberry
plants in my plot to tidy them up and I will give them a feed of
“Chicken Manure Pellets,” as well to rejuvenate them before winter sets
in.
Back at the beginning of September the Passion Flower fruited on my
Brothers Vine in his back garden. Several times in past years I have cut
one or two of the fruit open to remove some seeds and have sown them
which always resulted in numerous, healthy young plants. These have been
taken to work where they have grown them on for sale. The Fruit of the
hardy Passion flower is not really any good to eat as it doesn’t have a
tasty centre to it, but the fruits are bright orange and colourful, and
the vine looks good anyway. Actually, the Vine isn’t totally hardy and
can be cut back by, or even die altogether in, a very hard winter, but
most years they survive well. They are pretty tolerant of most
conditions as well and don’t mind a bit of shade or full sun and grow
quite fast easily covering sheds in a few years. Indeed, I always had a
big Passion Flower at my Mothers house, but haven’t got one of my own at
the moment so I intend to plant one to grow up and over the shed on my
Allotment. There is no point planting one of the edible varieties that
you sometimes see on sale as they definitely aren’t hardy and the
flowers of the common, hardy type are very pretty and quite exotic
anyway. Indeed the flower even has religious significance going back
hundreds of years. The reason for this is that when the Spanish and
Portuguese Catholic missionaries went to the new Americas in the 1500’s,
they used the native Passion Flower to teach about the story of Jesus
Christ.
The 10 petals of the flower were said to represent the number of Jesus’
Faithful Apostles.
The five anthers of the flower represented the five Sacred Wounds of
Jesus.
The Crown of Thorns was represented by the circle of filaments in the
center of the flower and the three purple stigma represented the 3 nails
holding Jesus on to the cross.
It seems that the wonders of the passion Flower didn’t end there because
healing and soothing infusions were made from the leaves and roots of
the vine. These days its use is strictly ornamental apart from for one
edible variety, but it is widely cultivated and there are now hundreds
of varieties available to grow with a range of differently coloured
flowers.
Elsewhere on my Allotment I decided that as Autumn was upon us I ought
to prepare for the large quantity of rubbish that I will have to compost
by emptying my compost bin again. It wasn’t that long since I last
emptied it, but after turning it a few times in recent weeks it looked a
bit rough, but just about ready to use as a mulch. The last time I
emptied it I hadn’t quite had enough to mulch all round my Asparagus, so
I put another couple of barrows on that bed to even up the layer that
had been started. Several more barrows of the rough Compost were piled
up on a little space where my Potatoes were coming out so that it would
be ready to dig in later. With the bin then empty I forked in a pile of
fresh weeds that had been temporarily piled up on the slabbed area next
to the bin, but there was still plenty of room for a lot more waste
still to come from all of the foliage on things dying down for the
winter. Indeed, it won’t be long before the dwarf French, heritage
climber and Runner beans along with the Jerusalem Artichoke stalks will
all need clearing up. The last few years I have also been putting in
bags and bags full of the dead top growth from the herbaceous plants in
my back garden at home. However, this year I have decided that I will
chop up the waste from my flowers and use it directly as a mulch around
the plants as they die down in my garden instead of composting it. The
only problem with doing that, that I can see, is that some of the seeds
on the dead flower heads will germinate. But of course they can be dealt
with in the same way as any other unwanted weed, because after all “A
Weed is only a Plant that you don’t want!”
 
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