Cicadas Are Here! Experts Share How to Protect Your Plants

The napkins, cushion cover and table cloth seen here in Ivy Green

Summer is arriving and, all of a sudden, the kitchen garden is coming into its own. I am harvesting masses of salad leaves, broad beans and strawberries, and hopefully the first new potatoes. I can almost see things growing before my eyes, including the weeds, which I make an effort to keep on top of every few days (although I leave self-seeded dark pink poppies and some mauve linaria to encourage insects and add colour). To make the most of a small space, I grow salad leaves in large galvanised metal troughs, making sure that I sow a new crop every few weeks so I have a constant supply through the summer. Salad leaf mixes, including swift-growing, cut-and-come-again lettuce, rocket and mustard leaves, are available from almost any seed company, or at garden centres. Winter salad leaves, including mizuna, are best sown after midsummer, as they tend to run to seed quickly. I grow my salad leaves in the least time-consuming way, scattering the seeds thinly on the surface of the prepared soil or compost, and raking them in gently with a hand rake. Keep them watered and they will germinate within a few days and be ready to harvest in about six weeks. If you want to grow them in your vegetable beds, it is better to sow them in drills, so that the emerging seedlings are easily distinguishable from the weeds.

For the ultimate in low-maintenance planting, intersperse small balls of box with a seasonal display of bulbs and summer bedding: tulips in spring, geraniums in summer and winter pansies in autumn — or almost any annuals that take your fancy.

Temperatures are expected to be higher than ever this summer, with record-breaking heatwaves already hitting the Southwest United States. You might be prepared with ways to beat the heat, but what about your garden? 

Planting and maintaining a thriving garden isn’t all knowledge and natural instincts—there can be an element of luck, too. Your plants’ success can be out of control with influences like rain, wind, and other weather. But fortunately, one elements can be managed to a certain extent: water.

I SUSPECT every gardener has for years now over and again heard the warnings about the most widely used pesticides in the United States, neonicotinoids—or neonics for short. In 2013, the American Bird Conservancy issued a report warning of their impact on terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems, and especially the ripple effect their use was having on birds. The Conservancy has issued an updated report with a telling headline, “Neonicotinoid Insecticides failing to come to grips with a predictable environmental disaster.” So where are we now with limiting the use of these pesticides and what can we as citizens and gardeners do to help in the effort?

Have you ever planted something in your garden and years later regretted it? There are several plants in my garden that fit that bill. One such plant is horsetail or scouring rush (Equisetum hyemale). Over the years, it has spread rapidly in a shady, wet garden area and now it pops up in my lawn.

Goldfish

Long before modern pharmaceutical companies did their best to persuade us to rely on a battery of synthetic chemicals to treat pests and diseases, gardeners used a wide variety of planet-friendly methods to keep our plants hale and hearty, utilising natural materials found close to hand. Great for plant and soil health and kind to the environment. They’re also cheap and easy to make.

How to Grow and Care for Fruiting Quince Cydonia oblonga

Right plant, right place, as Roy Lancaster’s book taught us, is a well-known adage and one we all try to live by. Get it right and your garden will love you for it. On closer inspection that phrase belies a whole historical context that is not evident at first sight. I was reminded recently of the stark fact that most of the plants we have in our gardens are from somewhere else. From Asia, the Antipodes, South Africa, to the Americas and continental Europe, these continents have supplied us for centuries with plants that fill our green spaces. Many are now so familiar and yet two hundred plus years ago they arrived as exotic specimens, delighting the Victorians and their predecessors.

How to Grow and Care for ‘Bosc’ Pears Pyrus communis ‘Bosc’