An Hour in the garden - week by week Paul Peacock

Welcome to An Hour in the Garden No 81

This week we take a quick look at what pots and containers we have used to grow vegetables

Plants that deter insects pests, slugs and snails

Houseplants that help clean the atmosphere

And the State of the World’s Fungi report by the RHS at Kew

Welcome to An Hour in the garden no 80

First of all, so sorry for last week. (Grandchildren + bug = wiped out!)

I finally got into thegarden and harvested cabbages and potatoes and spent the ‘recovery’ time watching the leaves falling, so we do into a little about how and why leaves fall - after all, it can’t just be the wind, it gets windy in the Summer too and the leaves don’t fall at all.

The thing is, for many reasons, a layer of cork appears at the end of the leaf, which is more brittle, and so consequently, the leaf eventually falls off under pressure.

Quite why is a different story. Many explanations are given, but they don’t always fit the bill, and it seems to me there are combinations of reasons for the effect.

We go on to look at some plants I am buying this autumn


Broadbean:
Aquadulce for sowing now
Oscar and Robin Hood for later


Cabbage:
Getting plants of Aprio, Wheelers Imperial and Winter Green

Plus Savoy for next year, though this year I have been sowing All Year Round

Carrot:
Aron F1, Berlicum and and Flyaway

Cauliflower:
You can’t beat the old favourite All Year Round

Celery:
Golden Self Blanching

Garlic
Bohemian Rose Wight from Prague
Carcasonne Wight - lovely flavour
Caulk Wight - pink striped from Russia
Two old favourites:
Early Purple Wight and Solent Wight

Time to sow in a cold frame:

Violas 
Lupins we’re sowing  Dwarf fairy pink
Aquilegia,  - carulea
Aconitum or monks hood or wolf’s bane
Hollyhocks creme de cassis
Eryngium 
Echinops
Verbascum  - I think they are like hollyhocks and lavateras seeds off outdoors now either direct sown or in pots in a coldframe.
Salvias 
Red Hot Pokers 
Hardy Geraniums
We have Wargrave Pink, and you can’t get rid of it! It is very invasive. But there are so many others! I quite fancy Orchid Blue and purple haze
Sow where they will grow
Poppies of all kinds
Ammi majus (Bishop's Weed))

Cornflowers
Poached Egg plant
Larkspur