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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 Odd
Jobs.
All through late Summer and
into the Autumn I have been Seed sowing for work and also taking
cuttings of some of the plants in my Garden. Furthermore, I have been
dividing up some of my Herbaceous Perennials one of which was my
Artemisia Chinese Limelight.
Hundreds of years ago the naturally occurring Artemisia, or Worm Wood as
it is commonly called, was used to make an alcoholic drink called
Absinthe. It was more popular on the Continent than here in the UK, but
it came to be generally believed that the drink was quite Toxic and a
little Hallucinogenic, so it was banned in several countries in around
1900. However, modern scientific research has concluded that the harmful
effects were exaggerated and due more to the very high alcohol content rather
than the low concentration of the hallucinogenic chemical that it
contained which are now limited by law anyway. So, it is again possible
to buy the infamous green, bitter, anise and fennel flavoured, herbal
spirit again which is a little akin to Pernod in taste.
Artemisia, like many other natural plants, has been hybridised and
cultivated to create a family of garden plants. Artemisia Chinese
Limelight is one such plant and has Golden leaves that make quite a
bright splash in the garden, but it does spread easily and can become a
bit of a nuisance. Like Garden Mint that spreads so much, I keep my
plant, at home, in a large tub on the yard where it looks good,
especially in the Spring. As the plant was so healthy, I recently
divided it up and produced quite a number of separate pieces that I
potted up. I have also got another Artemisia called Powis Castle which
has bluish foliage and a lovely smell of mint, but is far less rampant.
At the moment though, that plant is too small to get cuttings, or
divisions from.
Another Garden plant that I have recently divided up for work is
Saxifraga Urbium, or London Pride as it is more usually known. Most
Saxifrages are quite small and grown as Alpines, but this one is
somewhat bigger and has quite an attractive flower spike in season. It
does spread well, but is easily controlled unlike the Artemisia Chinese
Limelight.
It is not just at home that I have been digging up plants to divide for
work. Every year at about this time, after the leaves have gone down, I
dig up and divide one of my Rhubarb plants. Having 4 plants it means
they get divided once every 4 years to re-fresh them. If you don’t do
this they can get enormous and have a tendency to go to flower and
become less productive. This year I also had the opportunity to divide
several large clumps on another Plot Holders plot, so, I potted some for
the fundraiser sales day that the
Allotments are planning to have in the Spring and some more were potted
for work. A further Crown went to another plot-holder for him to divide
and plant. You can be as rough as you want when you dig up and divide
Rhubarb as long as each piece has got a good Growing Bud. The pieces
that you cut up do not need to have any roots. They will throw out roots
quite readily because they have lots of energy stored within the Crowns.
There is no urgency in dividing and potting up the Crowns either, as
large pieces of Rhubarb will happily survive for a few days out of the
ground, even if they get frosted, as long as they are not allowed to dry
out too much.
After sorting out my Rhubarb I turned my attention to my Yacon as they
had flowered and the tops had started to die back. Flowering generally
means that the plant is mature and ready for harvesting. The flowers on
Yacon are only small, but they are really an early type of Dahlia plant
and as such are rather tender not liking cold weather at all. As the
weather gets colder I will need to keep an eye on them, or else the
Crowns could get damaged. After cutting off the Tops in the past, I have
covered the Crowns with a little mound of Woodchip to protect them for a
few weeks until I got round to digging up the edible Tubers as I was
ready.
When I was doing a bit of weeding and general tidying up round the
various fruit trees on my Plot I found that several of the Apple Trees
had a few Suckers on that hadn’t been removed, so I cut them off as
well. Do remember though, that you shouldn’t do that at this time of
year on any stoned fruit like Plums, Cherries and Peaches as they need
to be in full growth to heal safely without the risk of infection getting
in.
Everybody seems to have different ideas about when to prune Fig Trees,
but when I planted the young Ice Crystal Fig the other week I found that
it had lots of partly rooted shoots round the base making it look very
untidy, so I took a chance and cut those off. Most Fruit Trees are
grafted so there is no point in trying to grow Suckers like these as
they won’t come true, but Fig trees are usually grown on their own root
stock, so they aren’t really suckers, not in the technical sense. There
were over half a dozen, or so cuttings with some roots starting to form
which was a lovely, unexpected bonus! I cut the few remaining leaves off
them to give them a bit more of a chance and potted them, but it will be
the Spring before I really know whether they take.
Another Fig tree that I have which normally fruits well, is my “Chelsea
Fig,” and that also had a lot of shoots coming up from around the base.
Unfortunately they had no roots on, although some months ago, I had
heaped some Woodchip around the base of the tree to encourage them to
root. Now the leaves have dropped it is time to take hard wood cuttings
anyway, so I cut them off tidily and put them in to root in an empty
patch on my plot. I have found that gently scraping the outer layer of
bark off from round the base of each cutting to expose the Cambium
layer, or the growing part of the stems, will encourage them to root.
Not many trees will root like this, but Figs will take fairly easily as
long as they don’t rot over winter. They do take some months to root
well and it will be later next year before they really start to develop
into new, but small trees ready to plant out. You will have to be
patient and wait for a year or two longer after that before they will
fruit, but when a small potted tree in a garden centre may cost over £15
or £20 they make quite a saving and that is what Allotments are all
about.
 
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