Success with Greenhouse Melons

Here’s how I grew 30 Charentais melons in a narrow greenhouse bed just 5 ft long and 1 ft deep.

Charentais are a fragrant variety of cantaloupe or musk melon, bred in France in the 1920s. Typically they are more difficult to grow than standard cantaloupes and rarely succeed outdoors in UK climates. Their short shelf life makes them expensive in the supermarkets and the narrow window for picking them at their best means you are always at risk of getting a dud when shop buying. Home-growing these exotic fruit can, therefore, be a very rewarding challenge. But if you have a greenhouse I’ll let you into a secret or two…

How to make netted crop frames using bamboo canes

How to prune dwarf box hedging

The neat lines of well trimmed box hedging contribute so much to a garden. By contrast they seem to emphasise the form of adjacent plants whilst providing a direct link to the formal lines of nearby paving and brickwork. The architectural quality of clipped hedging connects the garden to the house geometrically.

Here’s how to get your clipping perfecting…

How to prune box balls and topiary

▲ The box balls in front have just been clipped, but the large one at the rear waits its turn.

For good results you will need really sharp shears, one-handed shears or garden scissors for detail and some kind of mat or cloth to catch clippings.

How to create quality wire supports for walls and fences

A traditional starting point for training climbers on walls and fences is a system of tensioned horizontal wires. Ideally these wires should provide a permanent structure that needs little maintenance over the years, whilst creating a firm fixing for tendrils, shoots, branches and canes to be attached to. In this post I am looking at the best solution I have found so far: the Gripple Trellis System.

Creating an ornamental lawn

Recently we had some friends over for a lunch party and without prompting, two of the male guests, (why is it a bloke thing? I don’t know why it’s a bloke thing, but it’s a bloke thing) quite independently, gazed at my lawn and said with a hint of envy “Nice lawn. How’d ya manage that?” Being summer, most of the grassy areas that pass for garden lawns have browned unevenly, and can’t decide if they are actually composed of grass or random broad-leaved perennials. Mine, however, was looking good: a deep velvety green, plush and even. Not a weed in sight or blade out of place. It’s a lawn you want to lay down on, a lawn begging for a picnic.

“Oh,” I said nonchalantly, “I vacuumed it this afternoon.” I wasn’t kidding.

How to grow carrots – for beginners

Carrots as a main crop are well worth growing. They can be temperamental, but once you get the hang of it you can grow all the family needs for six months of the year. Carrots are not a posh crop like asparagus or melon, but the flavour when they come straight out of the garden and are on the plate within half an hour cannot be beaten by anything in the supermarket.

They can be planted between March and June for harvesting from July to April Overwintering is easy either by lifting and storing, or as I do, leaving them in the ground where they will keep best with little or no protection.

Fan Trained Pear

If you purchase trained fruit at a garden centre they often come attached to an impressive bamboo frame like the one above. The frame can be a real distraction because what you are actually getting – and what you need to think about before parting with your cash – is the structure of the tree strapped to it. The photo above right shows the same tree in the nude, looking a lot less impressive. The trick when purchasing is to take note of the actual tree form, and see past the fancy-pants frame. In the case of the tree above, the shape was something I could work with, so was ideal.

Ten ways to plug the August gap

Below I’ll show you ten tricks that refreshed my woodland garden and transformed the drab late-summer muddle of seed heads and dying foliage into a crisp, minimalist space, calm and stylish…

By late August many of the plants that have provided colour throughout the spring and summer have finished, and their seed heads are brown, their leaves tatty: The garden looks tired and uninspiring. It generally stays that way until the autumn tidy-up. This ‘August Gap’ is particularly notable in the shade garden as most woodland plants flower in the spring before the canopy closes and light levels fall. There are very few shade plants that flower in autumn.

Summer Pruning step-by-step

Summer pruning is necessary for wall trained fruit to develop and maintain the desired form and encourage fruit production. It should be carried out in July for cherries, gages and plums and in August for apples and pears. You will need nice sharp secateurs, bamboo canes and plant ties.

The purpose of summer pruning is:

1. To remove new vegetative (leafy) growth
2. To reduce the tree’s vigour
3. To allow air and sun to get to ripening fruit
4. To remove shoots growing towards the fence or wall
5. To encourage the formation of fruiting spurs
6. To extend the permanent framework

Getting started

Look carefully at the two photos below, showing a trained (fan) fruit tree before and after summer pruning.

Before summer pruning – note the long new shoots.

After summer pruning – the long shoots have been shortened or tied in to bamboo canes to extend the permanent framework.

Step-by-Step

1. Identify the long shoots that have grown this year.

2. Take one of the shoots and count up 4 or 5 leaves from the base.

3. Cut off the shoot at this point just above a leaf.

4. Only a short ‘spur’ with 4 or 5 leaves should remain. This spur will tend to develop flowering buds in future.

5. Any shoots that are growing towards the fence should be cut out entirely at their base, flush with the branch they sprout from. This will prevent regrowth from this point in the future.

To extend the permanent framework

6. Identify a shoot that is in the right place to create a new permanent branch to extend your trained form. Prune back all other shoots as per 2-4 above.

7. Tie the remaining shoot to a bamboo cane and gently bend it into position. Tie the cane to the wire supports on your fence or wall.

8. Shoots coming from the tips of permanent branches can either be tied in to extend the framework or they can be cut off if they have reached the required extent.

Adjusting the permanent framework

9. As permanent framework branches become longer than their supporting canes it will be necessary to replace the canes with longer ones.

10. If branches are only one or two years old they will probably be flexible enough to raise or lower by a few degrees if required to adjust the shape and spacing of the framework, but as branches age they become more brittle and may snap if bent too far.

10. Finally, check all old ties and ensure they are not strangling the growing stems. Loosen and replace them as necessary.

>Recommended Link: Video tutorial on Summer Pruning

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