Tag: plants
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Divided about rhubarb
RHS Garden Wisley holds the National Collection of Rhubarb and today we were taught how to divide and replant crowns. Autumn is best, because if you plant rhubarb in the spring, you are then required to keep watering the new plant to help its establishment. Adding manure to the hole The first step in 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…
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Cane management and training
Berries of the Rubus genus cross liberally, and today we learnt how to deal with blackberries (R. fruticosus) and its hybrids, some of which I have tried to research in more details… a mammoth task, I suppose because in the search for the better berry, yielding more and more disease resistant – or even the…
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Gooseberry aplenty
… as over the last couple of months I have had several stints at pruning the cordon collection, and there are still a few to go. Cordon gooseberry pruning is, as of now, the only skill that I feel I really had time to practice long enough to master. I have also tried to time…
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Preparing for winter
It is late indeed as the season has been so mild, but the time has come to puts plants to rest for winter while cheering the place up with some winter bedding. Today we put up the lean-to frames, made of wood battens and clear plastic sheeting, to cover the fan-trained peaches and apricots and…
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Learning, weeding and improvising
The Herb Garden at Wisley is a lovely little area that opened back in 2003 and where my colleague experiments with planting of old and novel herbs, some of which are used in the restaurants on site (they share some of the recipes online that might be interesting). The area is divided by use of…
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10 apples or so a day: keeps the doctor away?
After all the picking, and the rehearsal in London earlier in the month, the last six days have been full-on on apples at the Wisley Taste of Autumn Festival and one can get enough of apples, I tell you! Produce display for Wisley Taste of Autumn After a day of set up that involved me checking stored crates of…

