If only preparing the garden for your summer holiday was as easy as packing a suitcase. But time and thought spent before you go should prevent you being greeted by a jungle when you get home.
Day length and weather conditions determine how well our crops grow and the recent endlessly cold, wet spell has stressed many of them leading to possible bolting. So be prepared.
Every inch counts in a small garden, so make as much use of walls as of traditional open ground to let you grow delicious space-hungry fruit such as our Scottish Brambles or Tayberries.
Few plants can surpass Peonies for their sumptuous beauty. From late May till the end of June, a selection of different cultivars brings glamour to our gardens- and as I see their bursting buds in the garden I’m inspired to write this column.
Camasssias are the perfect early summer successors to snowdrops and daffodils in a grassy, sunny part of the garden. Like most flowers they prefer moist, well-drained and fairly fertile soil but, as I’ve found, they’ll cope with partial shade and pretty poor ground. Even if they then don’t reach the expected height.
Weeds are our most successful but unwelcome garden plants. As a new gardening year dawns, they are the trail blazers, ready and willing fill every inch of ground.
Every summer veg garden should boast a runner bean frame with its promise of an endless supply of beans throughout the late summer and autumn.
The growing season in Scotland is all too short so I like to keep the veg beds as full as possible as much as I can. If you use the potager style of gardening, you’ll be used to filling any space as it becomes available, but many of us sometimes have to rethink how to use larger beds. Why let a leek bed stay empty till the end of June or the space for early tatties be vacant after the middle of July?
Grass clippings add value to any compost bin - they break down easily, add moisture to the heap and speed up the composting process. And they inject heat. Empty a collecting box into the composter and you’ll see what I mean. As a composting geek, I’ve stuck a thermometer into the pile and got an instant reading of 60C.
