Strulch - No, I'm not a fan

For anyone who hasn't heard about this stuff, it's a product made from chopped straw, partially composted, and “mineralised”, which came into popularity a few years back, as a mulch material.

This is one of the promotional pictures, from their website:

 

They do state that it darkens, over time.

Normally, if I want to add nutrients, I would use our own home-made compost as a mulch, although you always have to be aware, when using home-made compost, that it may well contain weed seeds. Here's a wall-mounted Strawberry Box,  mulched with lovely rich home-made compost:  here it is, after the owners were away for a couple of weeks, and not there to notice the weeds...

 Yikes! Tomatoes!! (And this, dear reader, is why I always advise Clients not to put kitchen waste into their domestic compost pens...)

 

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Tree Peony: Autumn pruning

 This is one of those topics which is just soooo much easier to demonstrate than to describe... but I've have five people ask me about Tree Peonies in the past few days, so - as I still haven't managed to get a Go-Pro sorted out - you will have to bear with my descriptions, instead of a quick five-minute video. Sorry about that!

Right, Tree Peonies: these are actually small shrubs, and instead of being cut down to the ground every year, which is what we do with our “normal” bush Peonies (I wrote about this recently), they have stout woody stems, and can get quite large.

The most popular one - in the photo above - has yellow blooms: it is variously called Paeonia lutea var. ludlowii. or Paeonia delavayi var. ludlowii, or Paeonia ludlowii... obviously a chap called Ludlow was involved in the breeding of this shrub, at some point, and he is determined that we all know it!

Anyway, although most of the Tree Peonies you will encounter.....

 

 

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Gardening with Pliers

 Now, when gardening, there are certain tools which we all expect to use:

 ...and when doing more specialist tasks, we might need additional tools, like this lot which my arborist partner and I used for a day of hedge trimming and tree work:

 ... but how many gardeners, I wonder, are in the habit of carrying a pair of pliers? Is it just me?

 

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Peony: autumn tidy-up

 Yup, it's that time of year: the bush Peony flowers are long gone, the seeds - if we left them un-dead-headed (if there is such a word) have disappeared:

 

 .. and the leaves have gone brown. There is nothing attractive left...

 

 

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Salix Kilmarnock: better in a pot, or in the ground?

I had a question from Gita the other day (waves - “Hi, Gita!” ), about her Salix Kilmarnock, which - as we all know now! - is a small, grafted, weeping ornamental tree.

Hers had been living in the pot in which it was bought, for a couple of years: then Gita noticed that the leaves were yellowing out of season, and the soil seemed to be really compacted, so she decided to take it out of the pot, and plant it in the ground.

I specify “take it out of the pot” because there have been several occasions, over the years, where I have found trees planted without the pots being removed....

 ...anyway, hers was planted properly, and it did much better: the tree is healthy, the branches are growing, in fact that has become the problem.....

 

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