Page 10 - Garden News

Best ones to try
AboutNOW
Elder
Both flowers and berries provide raw materials
Blackthorn is a for traditional home-made drinks. Use
wildlife-friendly the cream-coloured flowers for cordial or
hedge and you
can make sloe champagne and the berries for a moreish wine.
gin from it! Hazel
Forget the dry-as-dust
nuts that you’ll find in
supermarkets before
Christmas, hazelnuts
are moist and
sweet in autumn.
Blackthorn Elder blooms S
Add sloes, and, below, tock
blackthorn’s fruits, crab apple
to gin to create that
traditional winter-
Wildlife Watch Alamy Crab apple
warmer, sloe gin.

With Julian Rollins Well worth including
because its blossom
feeds pollinators, who
Mix it up with hedges… will then get busy S u
e stock
elsewhere in the garden.
Crab apples are too
Why forage far from home when you could sour to eat, but can be used to make jelly.
Hawthorn
be growing your own in a mixed hedgerow? Quick-growing and prickly, hawthorn is
the mainstay of farm hedgerows. It’s great
here was a time when garden it’s prickly, keeping intruders out. for wildlife too, mainly because birds
hedges had to be trimmed with a And, of course, hedges support all sorts love its orangey-red berries. The fruit can
Tregimental sergeant major’s eye for of wildlife. They offer shelter from wind be used to make jellies and ketchup.
detail and uniform. You could have box, and rain and predators, provide nesting Apple
privet, or leylandii, and that was about it. opportunities for birds, and the blossom If you go for M27 rootstock your apple
Now, though, we’re more in touch with feeds bees and butterflies. Plus, caterpillars
trees will get to about 2m (6½ft)
nature and open to the possibilities of eat hedge foliage while berries, and other when fully mature.
the mixed hedgerow. Could it be time for fruit, feed birds and animals, including us!
the garden hedge to make a comeback? Creating an edible hedge using mostly native Damson
A thriving mixed hedge can do so species is easy and cheap. You can buy bundles Blossom in spring, and beautiful fruit in
many things. They can, of course, mark of young plants just now for pennies per plant, autumn; a great combination. Damson jam
the boundary between you and your and have them planted ready for spring. is good, but try damson chutney first.
neighbours and sub-divide the garden. What to include in a mixed edible hedge is Quince
But a hedge will also do things a fence very much a matter of taste. On the right are Grows to medium height (up to 4.5m
panel can’t, such as taking the edge off some possibilities, including a few standard /15ft). Use the fruit to make quince jelly,
noise, filtering out air pollution and, if trees that can be left to grow to full height. which is delicious with a good cheddar.

GEOFF HODGE Geoff Hodge tests vegetable seed tapes
Tools for THE JOB
ter, TV & radio broadcaster and product guru designed to make seed sowing easier

BEST SELECTION BEST SPACING BEST WEED SUPPRESSION
Bakker.com, £2.75-£4.99 Mr Fothergill’s, £2.99 Thompson & Morgan, £2.99
Bakker.com The six T&M
supplies eight different supplies
different veg are eight
individual supplied as different
vegetable 6m (20ft) vegetable
seed tapes, long tapes, varieties
plus mixes of which on extra
varieties and works wide
vegetable out at 7.5cm
types. Seeds 50p/m (42p/yd). Seed numbers were (3in) tapes. As these last longer than the other
were pre
y well spaced out along the tape, good, and they were well spaced along tapes, they help reduce weed competition
so providing the correct final growing spacing. the tape for the final spacing. The carrot along the row. Each tape is 4m (13ft) long,
Tape length varies from 5-7.5m (16ft 6in-24ft 6in), tape was very thickly sown, giving working out at 74p/m (62p/yd), but this
depending on type, which works out from the option to grow smaller carrots, is offset by the time and effort saved not
37-66p/m (31-55p/yd). or thin them out for larger ones. having to weed for the first few weeks.
Supplier: Bakker.com, 0344 481 1001, Supplier: Mr Fothergill’s, 0333 777 3936, Supplier: Thompson & Morgan, 0844 573
www.bakker.com. www.mr-fothergills.co.uk. 1818, www.thompson-morgan.com.

10 Garden News /January 27 2018