How to Make Plant a Good Garden

Companion planting, the gardening technique that carefully chooses and grows compatible plants with one another for their mutual benefit, is enjoying a revival. It began centuries ago in European cottage gardens but now can be found all over the world - in vegetable gardens, in flower borders, and in gardens that are delightful mixtures of all sorts of edible and ornamental plants growing happily together: vegetables with fruits, flowers, herbs, trees, and shrubs.

Plants can and do help each other keep insect pests in check. A mixture of plants that have different tolerances to diseases lowers the risk that a virus or bacteria will do much damage to a garden.
Although gardeners plant for the future, they do so with a firm eye on the traditions of the past. Tested theories have been handed down from generation to generation. Earlier gardeners learned not only from their own experience but also from that of their families, friends, and from writers.
Seed can be sown directly into the ground or in pots and trays. Basically, the technique is the same in both cases: provide a moist, warm habitat in which the seed can germinate. It should be as free from the competition as possible.

In the open garden, the soil should be dug over, digging in the green manure crop if you planted one, and raking it into a fine tilth. If the intention is to sow in rows, then draw out a shallow drill, about 1/tin (1.25cm) deep for most seed, but as deep as tin (5cm) for large seed such as beans and peas. The drill can be kept straight by the use of a string line stretched between two sticks as a guide. The distance between the rows will depend on the height and spread of the plants.

If the soil is heavy, and cannot be broken down into a fine tilth, or if it is very quick draining, a layer of compost from the compost heap can be put into a slightly deeper drill. This will help the germinating seed find a foothold and keep it moist at this critical stage in its development.

The drill should be watered and the seed thinly was sown. With plants that will need quite a bit of space when they mature, like parsnips, they can be station sown. This means sowing three or four seeds at 6-9in (15-23cm) intervals along the drill (larger intervals should be left for larger-growing varieties). Sowing thus saves time thinning out all the intermediate ones at a later stage.

The seed should then be covered with a thin layer of soil and gently firmed down. Each row should be marked and labelled. Labelling may not be very important, but it is surprising how easy it is to forget the name of the variety by the time harvesting comes around. Knowing the variety grown can be important when deciding whether to grow the same one for the following season.

If planting in blocks, the seed can be sown in short rows and then thinned out to give a random pattern, or the seed can be broadcast over the whole area. The soil should have a fine tilth. The seed should be evenly scattered and then raked well into the top 1/2in (1.25cm) of the soil.

Tray- or pot-sown seed is sown in fine compost made up of equal parts of loam, sharp sand, and leaf mould. The seed is sown on the top and then is covered with a thin layer of the compost. The compost should not be allowed to dry out nor be kept wringing wet.

The majority of seed-sown vegetables are sown in their rows and then left to grow there. The seedlings are thinned out, allowing the strongest to remain at intervals determined by the size of the variety and how big you want them to grow. Parsnips, for example, will grow big if given the space but much smaller if left crammed together, in competition with one another.

After thinning the row should be watered to the firm in any soil that was loosened around the remaining seedlings. Evening time, when the sun is not too hot, is a good time to thin.

Thinning carrots can be troublesome, not only because the shoots are so fine and difficult to separate, but also because it can encourage the carrot root fly. This insect can pick up the scent of the carrot plants when the foliage is bruised during thinning. Onions planted nearby help to mask the smell of the carrots, but on still evenings the onion scent will not spread too far, it is better to sow carrot seed as thinly as possible so very little thinning will be needed.

Some plants, such as cabbages, need transplanting after the seeds have grown into seedlings. Keep them well watered before digging them up and, once dug up, replant them as quickly as possible so that they are kept out of the ground for as short a time as possible. Cabbages, in particular, need a firm planting and the ground around the plant should be firmly tamped down

Gardening for Cut Flowers

Any garden can yield a surprising quantity of material for flower arrangers with regular jobs decorating churches, or supplying material for flower clubs. I am not a skilled flower arranger, but I do make up little posies of what’s in bloom for a small vase on my desk so that I can enjoy the essence of my garden while I am working. Grander arrangements seem to require a framework of shrubby material, fleshed out with fillers of foliage and small flowers, with larger, more sumptuous blooms carefully placed to provide the main impact. The latter can be bought or grown, but gardens come into their own as providers of foliage and fillers. Skeins of ivy, fern fronds, hosta leaves, the long sword-like foliage of New Zealand flax (Phormium) (8-10), and stems from shrubs such as Elaeagnus and Pittosporum are all useful. For pretty posies and tight, domed tussie mussies, Brachyglottisgreyi (9-10), bay, hyssop, rosemary, and lavender are ideal.

For flowering filler material, members of the cow parsley or carrot family come in useful. Fry growing bishop’s flower (Ammi majus) or dill (Anethumgraveolens) as annuals. Spurges, too, are useful, such as caper spurge (Euphorbia lalhyris) (6-9), sun spurge (A. cyparissias) (4-9), and E. oblongata (6-9). Colorful fillers might include biennial sweet rocket (Hesperis matronalis) and tobacco plants (Nicotiana) grown as annuals from spring-sown seed. Don’t be afraid to use the kitchen garden to raise plants specifically for cutting. Try Iceland poppies (Papavcr nudicale) (2-8), dahlias, and rudbeckias.

Tip
I like to lift tulips that have flowered once in my borders and remove them from the equation before they can spoil next season’s color combinations. Give them a good six weeks in leaf before lifting and drying the bulbs off. Replant in late autumn, about 5 inches apart into rows in rich soil. They will then yield excellent cut flowers the following spring.