Tag: horticulture
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Rose pruning
After my rather demoralising experience with the rambling rose, I was looking forward our rose pruning masterclass today. Different types of roses need different pruning regimes to ensure good flowering, and we had a go with the four different types below. In general, when rose pruning, one aims at creating an open centred shrub to…
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More progress in the Cottage Garden
The new path was edged! Woodchips ready for spreading Back from the weekend I found another surprise: my wonderful colleague on duty had edged the new path with wooden boards ready to take woodchips… which my fellow trainee in the arboretum got for me as quick as a flash. Another of my plants, Aronia ‘Viking’…
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Spindles
Mature spindles A row of young spindles A kinky leader; on the side, a vertical branch Spindlebushes. A kinky leader at the top, not a permanent one; a layer of branches, slightly above the horizontal at the bottom (not the very bottom, about 75 cm), with a gap in the middle. This shape is widely…
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Apple pruning season
Sizeable canker on an apple tree It’s apple pruning season, and you know why? Because the fruits have gone (so no knocking about) and the leaves are down so you can see the shape of the tree more clearly! Otherwise, apples are pretty tolerant of pruning at any time between leaf fall and bud burst,…
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Post savers
Have you ever noticed that when a post or pole rots it does so generally at soil level? Step 2 Step 4 Step 5 Step 6 Apparently, it is in the topsoil where soil organisms in the organic matter, moisture and air combine to cause the most damage. So someone invented “polesavers”, sheets of bitumen…
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Plans taking shape!
Another great day’s work in the Cottage Garden as I got our intern and one trainee to help too. My proposal for a new path was accepted, so I marked it out with bamboo canes and string and we dug in (literally) first thing in the morning. By teabreak time, we had already finished the…
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Fig dressing
The preparations for winter continue, and today it was the Model Fruit Garden fan-trained fig’s turn to be put to sleep. The fig, ready to go to bed The first step was pruning the tree, untying it from the frame. Syconium inflorescence, with inward looking florets and fruits Figs (an inflorescence called syconium giving origin…
About Me
M.Paola Andreoni
I got the first allotment in 2007 (in the UK) and started growing my own food for the first time. Learning as I went along was not enough, so I studied some horticulture. I am striving to abide by organic principles. Brexit gave me a new life in the Netherlands, and two new plots by a nature reserve.
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