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gone. Sweet pea plants are fairly hardy; it's the wet that spoils them, not cold, except of course, frost. By sowing in early October, good strong plants are produced, ready to plant out next April. This is the only way to produce early cut flowers by the end of May. If we are lucky, and, if grown on the cordon system, 'show blooms' are formed to win at our Shows.
Bulbs for Christmas already? Yes, this is the time when those 'prepared' bulbs appear in the shops and on the market stalls. Prepared bulbs, usually hyacinths, have been given treatment to wake them up ready to start growing. This is a controlled temperature regime of warmth, followed by cold, and is like a summer and winter so that the dormancy in the bulb is broken and allows the flowers to be encouraged to grow out of season, usually a couple of months in advance of normal untreated bulbs. Once they have flowered, they revert to a normal life cycle and in the future, they flower at the usual time; the best treatment is to plant them out in the garden after they finish flowering.
Clematis flowers with pieces eaten from the petals - that's what a lady from Bridlington found on her Jackmanii Superba plant recently.This is typical of earwig damage. I'm afraid, like dahlias and chrysanths, earwigs love clematis petals. Regular spraying with a general insecticide will help, but we don't like to spray if possible so try the old way of trapping in inverted flower pots filled with hay or straw, placed on canes near the plant, and attend to the pests each morning. Grandfather used this method with great success: he had time to do it after he retired!!
RUDSTON'S NEW TOP QUALITY FRUIT
In 1825, Mr. Cox, who lived in a village near Slough, raised a few seedling apple trees from pips, one of which became the famous Cox's Orange Pippin, a world best. In 1770, a schoolmaster named Mr. Stair, did the same with pear pips and gave us the William's pear, later to be renamed in America, Bartlett pear. In Rudston in 1999, Mrs. Farrow, of Long St., planted a stone from a nectarine, which grew into a small tree; this was potted into compost, and last year it flowered and produced five first class, pink-shaded nectarines. This year, thirty fruits set, these were reduced to sixteen, and in late July, they were ripe and of excellent flavour: they were the best that I have ever seen and would, I'm sure, win at the RHS shows at Vincent Sq., London. There
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