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With Dick Robinson
This is the month to propagate the Tayberry, Loganberry and Blackberry, (bramble to most of us), by layering the ends of this year's new shoots - it's called tip layering. The ends are buried about three to four inches into the soil; a peg is often used to hold the stem secure. It's from this end piece that roots and a new shoot develop the following year. I used to root Tayberries by tip layering into five inch pots of compost - the pots being plunged into the ground; this allowed rooting to develop in the pots. When new growth got started in the New Year, the old can was cut and the layer permitted to develop in the pot. This meant no root disturbance and, by the following autumn, I had well-developed plants, with a strong cane. I stress, it is this years new shoots that layer, last year's old fruiting canes do not root readily. I consider the tayberry to be the finest of all the cane fruits, it is bigger and more vigorous than the loganberry, laxtonberry or wineberry, and, apart from the raspberry family, it's the only cane fruit worth growing. Tayberry jam ranks high on my list, nearly as good as the "Rolls Royce" of jams, the damson!!
Keep cutting the dahlia and sweet peas, the two most reliable flowers for regular supplies, which leads me to the seed for next year's sweet peas. The ideal time to sow this wonderful flower is the first week in October, so now is the time to get good named varieties from a firm that specialises in top quality strains. The gardeners who grow those exhibition blooms only sow the best seeds; visit our Driffield Show each July and see how good the growers are. There are a number of seed firms that supply suitable varieties and they advertise in many gardening papers.
Sow individual seeds in small pots of seed compost and over-winter them in a garden frame, keep moist but not too wet, allow plenty of fresh air, keep covered when there's rain, and, should we get an old-fashioned winter for a change, with lots of hard frost, I then keep the glass on the frame, and only lift to give fresh air when the frost has
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