The Occasional Gardener: Plants do exactly what they say on the tin? Don't believe the hype
Plants are like people: unpredictable and contrary. Just like children who do and say things their parents would never expect, plants flourish in situations gardening experts say they will die or remain stubbornly anorexic where they should be blooming.
Some shrubs which are supposed to love boggy ground have simply disappeared from my fairly muddy front garden while some labelled "needs well-drained soil" have done so well this summer that they've been cut back.
The problem for non-expert gardeners is that we believe what it says on the tin - so if gardening gurus tell us to do something in the autumn, we do it (or at least we put it on the "to do" list) and if they warn us against growing certain plants in certain conditions, then we don't even try it. Although I admit to needing all the help I can get, a couple of things happened this year which make me less willing to believe the experts so slavishly.
In July, I read that runner beans won't grow in a polytunnel as there aren't enough bees buzzing about to pollinate them. That sounded logical - so I kept an eye on my runner beans as they shot up their bamboo wigwam in the tunnel and sure enough, they weren't flowering like the peas and mangetout.
To make space for the young purple sprouting broccoli, I uprooted the lot - and noticed, too late, that tiny bean pods had formed. Next year, I'll know better.
But nothing is ever wasted in the garden - it's all useful for making compost. I often follow the example of Ruth Stout - the no-work gardener who blankets weeds with straw instead of digging them up and believes that compost bins create unnecessary work - so instead of carting the runner beans over to the compost bin, I simply tucked them under the straw around the tomato plants to rot down and provide essential nitrogen.
In another example of nature doing its own thing and not adhering to experts' rules, willow trees are sprouting up inside my polytunnel. Luckily, they're only two feet high and not about to pierce the polythene walls quite yet, but the fact is that they shouldn't be there at all.
In July, I cut lots of five-inch twigs from a willow tree which had come down in the spring gales and stuck one in each corner of my raised beds, running a string between them to separate the growing area from the paths.
According to a garden designer I met recently - a big fan of living willow fences, arches and sculptures - the way to propagate willow is to take big slips in the autumn, after the leaves have fallen. You then plant them at an angle in the position you need for the fence or sculpture - two-year-old branches for the main supports and one-year-old twigs for the interweaving - and wait until the new year for growth. But a polytunnel isn't the place for a willow hedge so now I just have to work out where it can all go - and find the time and energy to transplant these accidental willow saplings.
The one thing experts do agree on is that adding organic matter - compost, seaweed or rotted manure - to your soil will improve it. And I can see they're right: the area where I piled seaweed last winter is now full of healthy spinach and chard - enough leaves for a big stir-fry every couple of days - while the spinach in another bed, which got no seaweed, is suffering from arrested development, despite feeds of seaweed concentrate in water.
Unfortunately, that means that I have to make another trip to the west coast for a trailer-full of seaweed for the weedy patch which is earmarked for next year's outdoor vegetable beds. And I thought late autumn was supposed to be a quiet time in the garden . . .
Willow to create a living hedge is available from Future Forests.
This column appears fortnightly
