Watering

Watering
Like us, plants are primarily composed of water—around 90 percent of their mass— which performs the vital function of moving nutrients around the plant. Desert plants have adapted to cope without water for considerable periods of time, but most plants with quite rapidly unless the water supply is replenished frequently.
For optimum plant performance, the supply of water should be fairly regular and definitely at those periods when the plant is programmed to expect it—otherwise, even if the plant manages to survive, it will experience various growth problems.
The job of the gardener is to help nature along at those times when, for one reason or another, the climate does not behave as expected. However, it is a wise
gardener who also understands that they will create less work for themselves if they choose to grow plants that survive in the average rainfall conditions of their climate, rather than hankering alter plants from welter climes that will require constant watering.

General winter tasks

Just because the garden is largely dormant, this does not mean that there is nothing to do once your preparatory tasks are complete.
The gardening lull in winter offers the ideal opportunity to clean up the garden shed and store all your equipment neatly. You can also use this time to oil and sharpen the blades of saws, pruners, cylinder lawn mowers and garden knives.
Preparing for winter (left) Frost-tender plants will need (o be well wrapped in winter to prevent frost damage. Wrap container-grown plants arid their pots in burlap or bubble wrap. Cover the crowns of tender perennials with straw.
SHARPENING A KNIFE
Knives used for gardening are ideal for a whole range of tasks from taking cuttings to cutting string. Whatever they are used for, the blades should always be kept very sharp.
Use a moistened oil stone to sharpen your knife. Hold the blade at an angle of 25 degrees and push it gently along the oil stone until it is sharp. Only the factory-sharpened edge needs to be treated in this way.

GARDEN MAINTENANCE

Up under the ice, causing the fish to suffocate. The best solution is to install an electric pond healer to keep the water at .1 steady temperature. 1 low ever, for this you will need a permanent outdoor electricity supply that conforms to safety standards—this includes specially insulated cable and socket. It is advisable to consult a qualified electrician.
This solution can prove expensive, but is an important investment i( you have a lot of fish or if your pond is stocked with expensive breeds. If you cannot afford this, you can float a ball on surface the improvement of the ball is supposed to prevent ice from forming. This method is not infallible, and you may not want to take the risk if you have fish, but it can help to protect water plants. Generally, lighter balls work best—ping-pong or tennis balls arc ideal.

CLEANING A POND

Your pond should be cleaned to remove debris that has accumulated throughout the year. Before cleaning, any beneficial creatures, such as water snails, should be placed in a shallow tray of water so that they can be reintroduced to the pond once you have finished.
1 Empty the pond by bailing it out with a bucket, or pump the water out by attaching a hose to the pump outlet.

2 Remove any soil, mud, and plant debris from the bottom of the pond. Put pond animals in a tray of water.

3 Using a stick brush, scrub the sides oj the pond, applying a weak solution of sterilizing agent.

4 Clean (he sides and bottom with a powerful water jet. Allow (lie pond surface to dry. then refill.

Water features in a garden

If you have a pond in your garden you should find it relatively easy to maintain, but occasionally you will have to clean it out to remove any leaves and other debris that may have built up in the base of the pond. No pond should be installed near deciduous trees. If yours is in this position, you will have to cover it with a net during autumn to catch the fallen leaves.
II you have water plants in the pond, you will need to check regularly to see it they have become too big for their pots. If so, they will need to be potted into larger containers (or, alternately, you can prune their roots). Autumn is a good time to do this. If you have a pond liner, be very careful not to damage it while carrying out maintenance tasks like these.
Tranquil haven
A pond can be a precious asset to your garden, so it is well worth carrying out maintenance tasks to keep it looking its best.
You must take any fish out of the pond before you attempt to carry out any maintenance. Remove them using a net and keep them in a shady spot in a container filled with pond water. Leave the pond to settle for at least 24 hours before you return the fish to their home. II necessary, use a specially formulated water-balancing chemical to improve the quality of the water. In really cold weather, you may need to prevent your pond from freezing over. II you do not deal with this problem, gases may build Protecting water features lightweight ball can help to prevent your pond or water feature from freezing over.

Plants

Plants
Looking after your plants will involve you primarily in (ceding and watering, and also in pruning. In addition to these basic tasks, you will also need to support some of your plants, particularly climbers, to
prevent them from flopping over. To prolong the flowering season of any plant, it pays to remove any dead or dying flowerheads so that the plant docs not set seed (which will automatically prevent it from making any additional blooms). Deadheading is a task that should be carried out regularly throughout the flowering season, although you will find that it needs lo be done most frequently during summer.
• With most gardening chores, it pays to spend small, regular periods of time in the garden— perhaps half an hour every other day—rather than trying to cram in everything during the weekend. You can deal with small chores such as deadheading and watering as you walk around the garden. Pruning is also best done this way, as and when individual plants have finished flowering, rather than in a once- or twice-yearly hit.

Caring for your garden

It is important to be realistic about the amount of time you can give to your garden, because the reality almost always exceeds the plan. I he time you will need to spend tending your garden not only depends on its style and content, but also varies from season to season.
In a traditional garden, with a modest lawn and a small vegetable patch surrounded by borders of shrubs and perennials, the most time-consuming seasons are spring (when the planting and much of the pruning are carried out) and autumn (when you will be occupied with digging and tidying up). However, it the summer is very dry, then you may spend quite a lot of time watering, especially if you have plenty of plants in containers. The lawn will require regular mowing regardless of the weather—ideally once a week.
Another factor is your own preference: if you like to keep the garden in almost military order, with nothing out of place, then clearly it will take almost double the time that a more relaxed approach would demand. Whichever group you belong to, for efficiency's sake it will always be worth ensuring that the tools you use arc cleaned before being put away and are hung up or stored in a specific place. Nothing is more annoying than losing, again, your only pair of shears, and it may well be worth investing in a gardeners belt, or some other device with large pockets, in order to keep them sale.
Wooden surfaces
In addition to the work required to keep the plants in good shape, you will also need to keep the hard surfaces in your yard in good condition. Any softwood in the garden needs to be protected against the ravages of the weather
Cleaning tools To keep tools in good condition, it is important to clean of) any soil and grime after use. Scrape off the thicker layers before wiping the surfaces with an oily cloth.
Oiling moving parts All the joints on your tools should be treated with oil regularly to keep them in good working order and to prevent excessive wear and tear.
Treating wooden tools Wooden shafts should be feel clean and treated with linseed oil at least once a year. This prevents the joints from diying out and the wood from splitting.

and occasional new coals of preservative will be required. For most pretreated woods, linseed oil boilers an efficient form of protection, feeding the wood as it preserves it, A good time to treat the wood is in early winter on a line, reasonably warm day, after the autumn's gardening tasks have been completed. The wood will then be protected against the winter rains and frosts.
Wooden decks, particularly in wet climates, will need occasional scrubbing with a si ill-bristled brush and an algicide to remove any accumulated (and slippery) green slime. Hardwood decks need not be treated, but softwood will be treated with preservative once a year.
Gravel and paving
If you have areas of gravel, even if you have laid a membrane or plastic sheet underneath it, you Raking gravel rake with widely spaced lines is ideal for removing leaves from gravel without disturbing the surface.
may need to apply weedkiller or remove any emerging weeds by-hand. Once every three years or so you may need to top up the gravel.
Paved areas of the garden will need sweeping occasionally (but more frequently during the fall, if there are deciduous trees nearby), and a hose-down once in a while to remove the inevitable build-up of dirt. You can recycle any leaves that have fallen onto paved areas of your garden by bagging them up and allowing them to rot down into valuable compost or leaf mold.

ROSE GRAFTING

Tools and materials
■ cutting from a rose rootstock
■ sharp knife
■ shears
■ semi-ripe shoot from rose cultivar
■ rubber band
■ pot and compost
■ plastic bag
1 Start hardwood cuttings, taken from one-year-old shoots of a rose rootstock, into growth in a warm greenhouse in midwinter. Remove the lower buds, then heel in to a soil bed. Graft in spring, when semi-ripe shoots of the rose you want to propagate are available. Prepare the rootstock by culling it down to 6 in.
2 Make a single shallow, upward-slanting cultivar in. long at the lop of the rootstock, thereby exposing the plan! tissue responsible for healing (the cambium), which allows the slock to heal together.
3 In long from the rose cultivar you want. Remove all of the leaves apart from the uppermost one.
4 Make a single downward-slanting cut approximately half in. long on the bottom section of the scion, just behind a bud. This cut will expose the cambium.
5 Gently place the two sections of plant together, so that the cut surfaces match. then they arc correctly positioned, carefully bind I he graft with a rubber hand. This will hold the graft firmly until the two sections join.
6 Place the graft into a pot of compost. Water it well, cover with a plastic bag, and place on a warm windowsill.

SUCKERS

Suckers occur when the rootstock of a grafted plant starts to produce shoots from the area below the graft union. Suckers are allowed to grow unchecked, they will start to compete with the grafted plant to which they are joined. Unfortunately, because the rootstock is usually more vigorous than the cultivar grafted onto it. The growth of these suckers will outstrip that of the grafted plant, usually resulting in the death of the grafted plant. Suckers must be removed at an early stage by simply pulling them out.

AIR LAYERING

For this method of layering, you will need a small, clear plastic bag with the bottom removed, a sharp garden knife, a matchstick, a couple of ties, and a small amount of sphagnum moss.
1 Cut the bottom off a plastic bag to make a lube and slide it over the leaves. This holds the leaves out the way.
2 Further down, make an upward cut into the stem, penetrating halfway through. Wedge the cut open with a clean matchstick.
2 Slide the plastic tube down the stem so that the wounded area is in the center of the bag. lie the bottom firmly around the stem.
4 Pack the plastic bag with moist sphagnum moss until it is full and tie the top of the bag firmly around the stem with string.
soil. These plants will often do this without help from the gardener. All you need to do is make sure that the tip of the shoot is buried shallowly in the soil.
Air Layering
This is a useful method of layering for plants with stems that are not very flexible. You can use either the basic layering (above) cut or the stem girdling technique for air layering. The secret of the method lies in creating a scaled pocket of growing medium around the cut area of your plant, which then encourages new roots to form.
STEM GIRDLING
This method involves damaging the stem of the parent plant in various ways to encourage new roots to form. This technique can be used when carrying out air layering.
1 Tightly twist a piece of thin wire until ii cuts into the hark. This will encourage roots to form.
2 Twist the stem until the hark splits. As the stem heals, roots may form around the damaged area.
3 Remove a narrow ring of hark. I his will encourage roots to form around the damaged area.
4 Make an angled cut into the stem, creating a wound which may form roots as the stem heals.

Simple layering

This method works well with shrubs or trees with flexible stems. Using a sharp knife, cut a tongue into the wood tissue about halfway through, then peg the cut side so that it is in contact with
the soil. A small mound of compost placed at the contact point will encourage rooting.
Serpentine layering
This is used for climbers such as clematis or wisteria. Several cuts are made along the shoot and pegged down, so that a number of new planllets form.
Tip layering
Ibis method of layering is used for the genus Rubus (wild brambles), including blackberries, which will form new plants where
SIMPLE LAYERING
The most basic form of layering is "simple layering", where a soft, flexible shoot is bent down to touch the soil. If rooting is successful
this shoot can then be separated from the parent plant so that it can grow on independently.

1 Select a suitable shoot and gentle bend it down to soil level to see where the hole should be dug.

2 Remove any leaves at about 12 in. from the tip. Cut a ll/2-in. "tongue" half into the stem.

3 Dig a shallow hole, so that the side nearest the parent plant slopes at 45 degrees and the other is vertical.

4 Lay the wounded section into the bottom of the hole. Peg into place with a wire hoop. Cover with soil.

Layering plants

Layering is one of the easiest methods oj propagation, and it has the added advantage of being more or less foolproof. It is used primarily as a way of increasing a wide range of shrubs, trees, and climbers, and can also be used for propagating some soft fruits.
Layering, in which new plants are encouraged to grow from the stems of the parent plant while these are still attached, makes use of the natural tendency to produce new roots (known as adventitious roots) where a wound occurs in the cambium of the plant (the layer immediately under the bark). You can make use of this tendency by cutting through the outer part of the stem and ensuring that the wound is placed in contact with soil that is then kept sufficiently moist. Layering can be done
either by pegging down a cut shoot or by wrapping the cut area with sphagnum moss that is wrapped in a clear plastic bag. "I here are several different methods of layering, each suitable for use with plants displaying particular characteristics.

Leaf cuttings
Some plants can be propagated from their leaves. Notable among these are African violets [Saintpaulia), Cape primroses [Streptocarpus), and begonias (Begonia). The new plants will develop cither from the base of the leaf (the real petiole) or from one of the veins that runs across the leaves. The compost should be a mixture of multipurpose compost and sharp sand (roughly two parts to one part). The addition of sand makes rotting less likely.
African violets are easily propagated by removing a couple of leaves from the parent plant with the stalk attached and then inserting the stalk of each real into a small pot of cutting compost, so that the base of the leaf touches the compost. Cover the pot with an upturned clear plastic bottle or plastic bag and
leave in a warm place, out of direct sunlight. Small plantlets will form at the base of the leaves. Once I hey grow large enough, you can remove the plantlets and plant them individually. Some succulents, such as crassulas {Crassula), can be propagated in the same way by removing a couple of leaves from the parent plant, but you should allow a clay or so for the wound to callus over before inserting each leaf into the cutting compost.
Larger leaves, such as those of cape primroses, can be cut into sections to be used for propagation. Plantlets will form where the cut surface of a vein is in contact with the compost (see below). To keep the leaf cuttings moist, cover the tray or pot with a clear plastic bag and seal. Alternatively, all types of leaf cutting can be rooted in a propagating case.
TAKING LEAF CUTTINGS
It is possible to propagate some plants by cutting and planting their
leaves in a pot or tray of compost. New plantlets grow from either the base of
the leaf or the veins that run across it. Cape primrose {Streptocarpus) is shown here.
1
Lay the leaf upside down. Use a sharp knife to cut along the leaf close to the fleshy midrib, to leave two sections of leaf Hade. Discard the midrib.
2
1f you are dealing with particularly long leaf strips, cut them into halves or thirds so that they will/it comfortably into a tray or pot of compost.
3
Insert the strips so that the cut surface is just below the top of the compost. Lightly firm the compost, water, and leave on a warm windowsill or in a propagator.

Root cuttings

Plants that produce shoots directly from their roots—for example, acanthus (Acanthus) and sumac (Rhus)—can he increased by taking root cuttings. These cuttings are normally taken in late autumn or during early winter while the plant is dormant.
11 o w v o u deal with the cuttings depends on the type of root system of the plant. Thicker roots should normally he cut into sections 2-3 in. long, while thinner roots should he cut into longer sections up to 4 in. long. It is important that you make a different cut at each end of thick roots so that you know which way up to plant them: make a straight cut at the top of the root (nearest the stem) and a slanted cut at the other end.
Prepare a tray or pots of compost containing a mixture of peat and venniculite. Insert the slanting ends of the roots into the compost. Cover with grit and then water well. Alternatively, use sand to cover the cuttings.
With thin roots that are too delicate to insert upright, lay the roots on the surface of the compost. Cover with grit, as before, and then water well.
Hoot cuttings can he propagated in a cold frame and potted when new shoots appear in spring.
TAKING ROOT CUTTINGS
Some plants produce very short stems and shoots, which can make taking cuttings very awkward,
so another part of the plant has to be used. The roots of many herbaceous plants and alpines,
and a number of trees, shrubs, and climbers, can be used for propagation.
1
After carefully digging up the wots of the plant that is to he propagated, wash them to remove as much soil as possible before you begin.
2
Cut thick roots into sections 2—3 in. long with a flat cut at I he top and a slanted cut at the bottom tihis will become the planted end.
3
Insert the root cuttings by gently pushing the slanted ends into a pot of compost so that the top of each cutting is level with the surface.
4
Cover with grit, which allows air to reach the top of each cutting without letting them dry out and also ensures good drainage.

Root and leaf cuttings

In addition to cuttings made from new shoots, some plants can be propagated from other parts as well, in particular the roots and the leaves. The sections of root or leaf are placed in or on an appropriate growing medium so that they can develop new roots and shoots.

Some plants produce very-short stems and shoots, which can make taking cuttings very awkward, so another part of the plant has to be used.