COLLAPSING CORDYLINES

I don’t tend to look at the weather forecast that often on the television, as I find it more reliable to stick my head outdoors to see what the weather is going to be like for the day. The Inishowen peninsula tends to have it’s own weather. Different to the forecasts. So imagine my surprise when I woke up one morning last week to the sounds of a gale blowing outside, now the odd gust of wind is no problem, but I certainly wasn’t ready for this particular storm.

I have some display stands outside the front of the house that are full of young plants and over wintering perennials. These were blown over, throwing the plants one-way and their containers the other. One of the stands fell onto the polythene tunnel, putting a large gash in the polythene. I managed to catch that straight away; if the wind were to get inside the tunnel it could rip the cover straight off. I was also dodging branches falling off a dead tree that is on the edge of the garden. Flying all around me were empty plant pots that hadn’t been put away properly and empty compost bags were circling overhead as the wind caught hold of them. It has taken me the best part of a week to get things sorted out and it still remains a mystery to me where exactly some of the plants disappeared to, if anyone living near me finds an odd plant on their driveway you know where it came from. And if your garden has some old empty compost bag stuck up a tree I can only apologize!

Collapsing Cordylines

There have been some Cordyline casualties this week as well, especially with the more mature specimens. These plants tend to have quite soft trunks and can break when the plant gets top heavy. I do know from experience that new growth will grow from the base of the plant, should you choose to remove all of the old plant. But if your plant has just snapped halfway through the trunk and you wanted to save the original trunk by bandaging it together, now there’s a different matter. Shrubs and trees can survive being patched up this way, (think of grafting), but with a mature plant such as a cordyline, it would have to be very well staked and bandaged to keep the two parts really tightly together. All I can say is it’s worth a try and if it fails then you will still have the new growth from the base. If anyone has successfully bandaged his or her cordyline please let me know

Horticultural.

SEAWEED

One good thing to come out of the storms is the fresh seaweed blown onto the beaches. Although seaweed (kelp) isn’t the most attractive thing you can put on the garden, it certainly is very useful, especially as winter mulch around the beds and borders. The look of seaweed can be improved if it is finely chopped, but I tend not to bother as it soon starts to rot down, releasing potash, sodium, boron, iodine and other valuable trace elements.

We are in a perfect location for making good use of this free natural resource, as we have so many places we can go and collect the odd bag. You can buy seaweed meal in a concentrated liquid form, but it is quite expensive. If it is collected off the beach then you may have to wash it a couple of times to get the excess salt out of it. Don’t worry about getting all the salt out, as what’s left will probably benefit the soil rather than harm it.

Horticultural.

SLUG RESISTANT PLANTS

Photo: Plants with thick skin like this Agave 'americana variegata' have a bit of protection from pesky slugs.

( Click on the title to get to the BBC link of 92 slug resistant plants)

With all this talk of mulching, some people have expressed their concern over the increasing slug population; this need not be a problem as the salt in the seaweed could help keep them down. Wood ash would help, or any of the standard methods, like drowning them in beer or throwing them over the fence.

One remedy to this annual problem would be to put in plants that slugs wont touch. Now I’m not too sure whether there are really any plants that a hungry slug wouldn’t eat but they obviously favour some plants to others.

There is an AtoZ list of slug resistant plants at the www.bbc.co.uk/radio4 website. There are 92 different plants in the list, and most of them are pretty common. Here are a few to get you started.

Ajuga-groundcover for alpine beds

Astilbe-popular herbaceous plant with attractive plumes.

Choisya-fragerent, evergreen shrub.

Poached egg plant- good groundcover, attracts hoverflies.Pinks (dianthus) flower all summer

Horticultural.