How to grow fuchsia | Alys Fowler

Not so keen on its clashing colour combinations? You might change your mind when you taste the berries

If you are wondering who is eating all the berries of your fuchsia bush, it’s me. I can’t tell you how much joy I get from wandering around my neighbourhood plucking from front garden bushes the juiciest of dripping fruit – it tastes somewhere between a kiwi, blueberry and strawberry, with a touch of pepper. If it’s too peppery, you are picking too soon – the berries really do need to be bursting.

The best berries tend to be on the naffest bushes; those bedding sorts with pirouetting ballerinas for flowers, in clashing colour combinations. If it’s hard to imagine wanting such a thing in your garden, you may change your mind when you taste the berries. Plus, as bushes go, they are a tolerant sort: good for bees, unfussy about soil, shade and, for that matter, being pruned hard. On top of it all, they flower from June right through to October.

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How to grow fuchsia | Alys Fowler

Not so keen on its clashing colour combinations? You might change your mind when you taste the berries

If you are wondering who is eating all the berries of your fuchsia bush, it’s me. I can’t tell you how much joy I get from wandering around my neighbourhood plucking from front garden bushes the juiciest of dripping fruit – it tastes somewhere between a kiwi, blueberry and strawberry, with a touch of pepper. If it’s too peppery, you are picking too soon – the berries really do need to be bursting.

The best berries tend to be on the naffest bushes; those bedding sorts with pirouetting ballerinas for flowers, in clashing colour combinations. If it’s hard to imagine wanting such a thing in your garden, you may change your mind when you taste the berries. Plus, as bushes go, they are a tolerant sort: good for bees, unfussy about soil, shade and, for that matter, being pruned hard. On top of it all, they flower from June right through to October.

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Gardening tips: plant a bee balm

Then kill off the tiny black flies around houseplants, and visit Special Plants nursery near Bath

Plant this If you have moist soil, bee balm (Monarda didyma) is great. This mint relative makes great cut flowers, and its aromatic foliage a delicious tea. The flowers range from white to purple: try ‘Violet Queen’ or bright red ‘Squaw’ – both are reputed to be resistant to powdery mildew. Height and spread: 1m x 70cm.

Treat this Ever wondered about the tiny black flies that float about your houseplants? They’re fungus gnats, aka sciarid flies, and September is their peak season. Ease off on watering, as their larvae in pots love damp soil, and apply nematode worms (£12.50, greengardener.co.uk) to kill them off.

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Gardening tips: plant a bee balm

Then kill off the tiny black flies around houseplants, and visit Special Plants nursery near Bath

Plant this If you have moist soil, bee balm (Monarda didyma) is great. This mint relative makes great cut flowers, and its aromatic foliage a delicious tea. The flowers range from white to purple: try ‘Violet Queen’ or bright red ‘Squaw’ – both are reputed to be resistant to powdery mildew. Height and spread: 1m x 70cm.

Treat this Ever wondered about the tiny black flies that float about your houseplants? They’re fungus gnats, aka sciarid flies, and September is their peak season. Ease off on watering, as their larvae in pots love damp soil, and apply nematode worms (£12.50, greengardener.co.uk) to kill them off.

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Is now a good time to extend your lease? Nottingham Estate Agents

The Government wants to make it easier to extend a lease or to buy out the freehold. There are no details yet, but change is certainly on the way. More than two million homes in England and Wales are held by a lease, with someone other than the people living in them owning the freehold. […]

The post Is now a good time to extend your lease? appeared first on OnTheMarket.com blog.

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Diet of worms has to be right for compost success | Letters

Readers respond to Adrian Chiles’s report of his struggle to create compost from his organic waste using a wormery

Along with, no doubt, many other vermophiles, I’d like to reassure Adrian Chiles that wormeries do work and that his worms will handsomely reward his efforts if he persists (The worm has turned – but where’s my compost?, G2, 12 September). Having decided that a wormery would be a good way of recycling vegetable matter in my small back yard, I too had a catastrophic false start, involving some drowned worms and the wrong sort of smelly decomposition, but with the help of a new batch of worms, I discovered the importance of incorporating dry material into the worms’ diet.

Torn-up egg boxes are particularly good, and I don’t need a shredder to dispose of details from bank statements when my worms are hungry. For years now, my wriggly little friends have been providing me with small amounts of compost and, more usefully, enough of a miraculously effective liquid plant feed to provide a copious supply to me and all my gardening friends. What’s more, whatever I feed to my worms isn’t going to landfill. Hang in there, Adrian. Be good to your worms, and they’ll be good to you.
Chris McConway
Newcastle upon Tyne

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Diet of worms has to be right for compost success | Letters

Readers respond to Adrian Chiles’s report of his struggle to create compost from his organic waste using a wormery

Along with, no doubt, many other vermophiles, I’d like to reassure Adrian Chiles that wormeries do work and that his worms will handsomely reward his efforts if he persists (The worm has turned – but where’s my compost?, G2, 12 September). Having decided that a wormery would be a good way of recycling vegetable matter in my small back yard, I too had a catastrophic false start, involving some drowned worms and the wrong sort of smelly decomposition, but with the help of a new batch of worms, I discovered the importance of incorporating dry material into the worms’ diet.

Torn-up egg boxes are particularly good, and I don’t need a shredder to dispose of details from bank statements when my worms are hungry. For years now, my wriggly little friends have been providing me with small amounts of compost and, more usefully, enough of a miraculously effective liquid plant feed to provide a copious supply to me and all my gardening friends. What’s more, whatever I feed to my worms isn’t going to landfill. Hang in there, Adrian. Be good to your worms, and they’ll be good to you.
Chris McConway
Newcastle upon Tyne

Continue reading...

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