by Michael Roadnight
Regular readers will be aware, that after appealing in these pages for a humane and hopefully not fatal way of dealing with moles in a lawn, I had a telephone call from a charming lady known only to me as Jean from Harold.
What she recommended was chopping an onion or two into quarters and then placing beneath the surface in the burrow.
Having done this every day for around a month, I am delighted to say that Moley has shuffled off to pastures new and I am now left with a couple of bare patches in the lawn to repair!
What’s more, if the humble onion ever becomes scarce during the current coronavirus pandemic, I shall have my very own subterranean supply as I did get through a large pile!
As with all of the correspondence I receive, I am extremely grateful to Jean for taking the time and making this suggestion.
It has worked perfectly, and the mole has not been harmed in the process: perfect. Got any tips to pass on to other gardeners? Please follow Jean’s lead and get in touch via the details below.
It is practically a cliché to say that there is always a job to do in the garden but as people are forced to spend more time in their own spaces, some non-gardening folk are picking up the spade for the first time.
My advice: there is no shortage of information out there, online and in print, about what to do and how to do it though I would always state that for some jobs, there is a correct way and a correct time of doing something there are also those jobs, that allow the gardener a little bit of flexibility.
Pruning very definitely belongs to the former group though. Get it wrong and you will not get the fruit or the flowers that you want.
So, it really doesn’t matter what your old gran used to do, what matters is that you think carefully about the nature of the plant. If fruit or flowers are produced on ‘new’ wood or not is central to its pruning regime.
If you know that a plant, a rose for example, flowers on new wood than it is safe to prune the same year as it is due to flower (in March is an excellent time to prune roses). But if a plant flowers on last year’s wood, it would be folly to prune.
As one of my old horticulture lecturer’s used to say with regularity and a bit of a twinkle in his eye: think like a plant! However, odd that may sound, it is actually, excellent advice.
Towards the end of March, in this area, we had a number of very sharp frosts and on consecutive days which though providing wonderful photo opportunities, also badly damaged those plants that had already started to grow and form buds.
Arguably, the plant that sustained most damage was the Hydrangea and if yours is currently sporting shrivelled or furled leaves and generally looking very sorry for itself, reach for the secateurs and very carefully, remove the dead material.
Hydrangeas’ buds form directly under the leaves so pruning them is a precise, almost surgical operation. It is for this reason that the age old advice with the care of this beloved plant is to avoid pruning until the threat of frost has passed.
If you do this, the spent flower heads operate in the same way as lightening conductors and bear the brunt of the frosts rather than the delicate flower forming buds. Ignore this at your peril!
The answer to last month’s question: moles take their name from a corruption of the late middle English ‘moldwarp’. What does this literally mean? Moldwarp actually means ‘earth thrower’; our forebears were a canny lot!
This month’s just for fun question is: you see a neighbour tying the leaves of gone over daffodils together. Extremely fiddly and labourious, why should this task NOT be done?
As usual, many thanks to all of you for contributing to this column and please contact me with any gardening tasks or queries you may have, lawndocgardens@aol.com or tel: 01767 627 581 or 07796 328 855.
