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| Catherine, our wonderful Gardening Blogger |
Thoughts on plant breeding for
gardeners....
Sunday 1st February, 2015
Plant breeding has gone on for thousands of
years.People have always made sections of material which is suited to their
needs. Much modern plant breeding based on same techniques, but with more
control.
The same principles are used in hybrid
plant breeding. Plants which are more vigorous than natural species with bigger
flowers are sought, which are consistent, uniform and predictable. Parent lines
which are very different genetically are brought together, giving what is known
as ‘hybrid vigour’.
The seeds or plants produced are called F1
hybrids.
Think of Ranunculus, these started off as
small buttercup like flowers from Persia, now there are more than 500 varieties,
many with very complicated, large flowers.
F1hybrids are very important in the seed
industry. If you buy a packet of seed you want what you grow to look like what
was on the packet, and one of the best way of achieving this is with F1 Hybrids.
Often these days plant material is kept
for most of the year in a laboratory growing on specials substance called
media.
They are kept in a laboratory for safety in
a sterile environment free from pest and disease.Large numbers of plants can then
be produced from a very small amount of plant material.
Plants handled in this way include:
So next time you buy a cauliflower the
chances are that the plants that produced the seed it came from came from a
laboratory!
Because of all this effort F1 hybrid seed
is often very expensive but worth it because the flowers and plants you get are
bigger & better!
You may see the description ‘self-fertile’
often on vegetable seed packets, i.e. male not required.
This question is important for all sorts
of crops, e.g. apples. Some varieties are self-fertile but many are not, and commercially
in an orchard a pollinator related to a crab apple is planted in the rows to
provide pollen. So check that the new fruit tree you buy this year is labelled
self fertile. If not you will need to buy two trees of different varieties that
can pollinate each other. Or look around your neighborhood, if there are a few
apple trees around, an insect which has visited a neighbors tree will
probably do the trick!
Are
all new plants bred?
No, some occur naturally as mutations and
are known as ‘sports’.
E.g. Corkscrew Hazel (Corylus
avellana ‘Contorta’) also known as
Harry Lauder's walking stick. This originated as a natural
'sport' in England in the mid-1800s, it was found by Harry Lauder growing in a
hedgerow, and all plants today have been propagated from that one plant simply
by cutting off pieces & rooting them.
Sometimes gardeners find a shoot on one of
their plants that looks completely different to the rest of the plant. If it is
a ‘sport’ and turns out to be stable, companies involved in propagating and
plant breeding may be willing to buy the ‘odd’ bit on your plant! You could
make a bit of money & possibly have it named after you! So keep your eyes
open!
Happy gardening...
Catherine
Snowdrops...
Thursday 1st January, 2015
January can be a tricky time in the garden. It is difficult to seed sow or propagate
ready for the Spring because light levels are low even if the temperature is relatively
high. This is the time of year to plant snowdrops ‘in the green’. Snowdrops establish
much better if planted in their leafy stage rather than as bulbs. You can buy them in bulk mail order, but I
split a number of clumps in my Mum’s garden and transplanted them to my border.
It did the trick beautifully.
Maybe now is the time to be planning a new project such as a
large planter or sink garden. You don’t need a new planter or half barrel bought
from a garden centre. Any large container can be used, a galvanised old tin
bath, old sink, hollowed out tree trunk, even some plastic storage boxes can
work. Wooden wine crates won’t last forever but they will last a fair few
years. Start saving polystyrene packing.
Maybe you still have some from Christmas gifts? It is very useful for putting
in the bottom of deep containers reducing the amount of compost needed and
improving drainage. And it can make it much easier if you want to move your
container.
Shaun and I collected a half barrel from an importer of
whisky and Sherry barrels in Pembrokeshire. The whole place reeked of booze and
we wondered if we were safe to drive with it in the car!I was lucky enough to have a holiday in Switzerland last summer. Many of the plants I saw were related to the alpines available in our garden centres. And alpines are ideal for planting in a sink garden.
The golden rule is to make sure you have got good drainage.
The reason I like old sinks is because your drainage is built in! It can be tricky making holes in the bottom of
your container; I must admit I usually ask Shaun.
As well as the usual broken pots in the bottom it may be helpful to add some gravel or grit to your compost to make it freer draining, and it can also be used as a decorative mulch around your plants.
Here is my effort from last year using an old sink. If I did
it again I would put slightly fewer plants in, I got a bit carried away!
Happy planning!
Catherine.
Tuesday 2nd December, 2014
I am helping tend quite a lot of poinsettias at the moment, and thought some cheery pictures would help put as all in the mood for Christmas!
We started these off in the August, so they are quite slow
to achieve their full glory. They originate in Mexico & Central America, &
in the wild tend to be a lot more straggly with smaller ‘flowers’. What look
like flowers are in fact bracts, a type of leaf, and the tiny flowers are in
the middle and nothing to write home about. They can be kept from year to year
but tend to go leggy & more like this wild one….
And here are some beauties!
Wishing everyone a Happy Christmas and all good things
for 2015….
Wrapping up our tree fern...
Monday 1st December, 2014
I have been putting the garden to bed for
the winter. Although this year so far it doesn’t feel like we are going to get
a winter!
Wrapping up our tree ferns is a bit of a feat. These are wrapped up in the filters from industrial air cleaning units, which remind me of Father Christmas beards. But I would imagine old acrylic carpet would work well, not wool, it would hold too much moisture. In the ‘olden days’ it was traditional to pack out the centre of the fern with straw. This is where next year’s fronds are already perfectly formed and lying in wait. Until it snows they look a bit strange in the back garden, I think I could probably lend them out for the filming of an episode of Dr Who! But when it snows they just look the business, but then I have the stress of wondering whether the weight of the snow will break the fronds off! Sometimes I try and ping them a bit to shake the snow off. I am always worried about doing this as the fronds are brittle at low temperatures, and could possibly snap.
When we moved to Wales from balmy Kent I
had to prepare myself for losing both of them over the winter. It is quite high
here in Treharris with invariably 2 degrees temperature difference between here
and Cardiff. Aberglasney Garden in Carmarthenshire lost all their tree ferns,
about 15 in total, in the bitterly cold winter of 2010.
But mine are still alive and kicking and
bring happy memories of a holiday in New Zealand and the wish to return there
again someday. In New Zealand tree ferns are called pongas. What a wonderful
word!
