Go To Intro

Wellington Fields Allotments - Hixon.

More
Web-sites!

Plough Field Allotments at Amerton

Gardening Tips
By Mrs FM
Hartley.

Unusual & Old
Fashioned Fruit
Trees.

Unusual
Vegetables,
Herbs & Other
Edible Plants.

Environmental Issues And Going Green.

Books By
Alan J Hartley

Seeds and Propagation.

Although it is getting late for a lot of seed sowing I am still putting the odd things in to germinate, and when I say odd I do mean odd! After the interesting crop of Scorzonera that I grew last season I have re-sown some of the seed that was left over, directly in the soil instead of in trays this time, in the hopes that the roots won’t fork. After the eternal trouble with rabbits on the other site, mom was determined to get some Monarda which are supposed to be rabbit resistant. Eventually we found some seeds that germinated in the warm house only a few days after sowing. They are supposed to produce a good crop of flowers for cutting, but now everything is going in on my Hixon allotment the fact that they are rabbit resistant isn’t really needed.

My brother recently went to the Gardeners World Live show at the NEC and came back with a packet of Pomegranate seed for me, but I am not convinced there was really anything in it. There was supposed to be 100 seeds, but when I opened it I couldn’t see anything. I knew some seeds are so tiny that they look like little more than dust, so I carefully opened the packet folding it completely flat and brushed the “Empty” packet over the compost as instructed, but I have 1-4 months before the supposed germination to see if there really was anything there!
On the subject of growing plants from seeds, Sweet potatoes are a member of the Convolvulus family and on the instructions that came with them it said that you can’t save the tubers from one season to the next as you might ordinary potatoes. So, my thoughts were why can’t you save and sow the seeds? It said they flower easily before dying in the autumn and flowers mean seeds. Even potatoes produce flowers and seed although you grow them from tubers, but seed must be used commercially to produce different varieties of potatoes as new varieties have to be produced genetically and not vegetatively. Sweet Potatoes slips are horrendously expensive to buy and I realise that if you could save your own seed, the resulting plants may not be true to type, but if they are basically free I am all for giving it a try.

The “Free,” seeds from various fruit bought in supermarkets have produced some great little Asian Pear and Kumquat seedlings, and my Feijoas seedlings (from a bought packet of seeds) are doing well and are all standing outside to toughen them up before winter. I did put in a new batch of “free” London Plane tree seeds after the first batch damped off and they are doing better this time. They will not go on the allotment as I am growing them just for fun, but when they are much bigger and have been potted on they will probably be donated to the Stafforshire Wildlife, or Alrewas Memorial Arboretum as it is “Plant A Tree For Jubilee.”

Not only I am busy with seed sowing, but I am trying a few cuttings. My two Honey-berry plants have put on a lot of growth this year and are producing their first real crop of berries, although no-one is very impressed with their taste! So, I gave them a good trim to shape them up and put some cuttings in to try and root, after all they are only another type of Honeysuckle plant which are easy to grow. I did keep the cuttings from the two different plants separate as the instructions that came with them said that you needed two different plants to give good pollination and that means two genetically different plants, not two plants produced from the same plant. The Goji Berry cuttings that went in earlier have rooted well and as with many other fruit plants don’t need such cross pollination to fruit though.