Hadleigh Gardens

Personal Thoughts
We have had a good demonstration during August as to just how variable the British weather can be. On Thursday 12th August Gavin Mellerish in Benton St recorded 14mm of rain in 6 minutes during an intense storm. The storm included a lot of hail and caused local floods, but at Kersey where Kate Banks lives who normally provides me with weather data, they only had a shower.
I am a sucker for gardening books. Recently I stumbled across a second hand copy of "How to grow Giant Vegetables" published in 1995. Many years ago when the Hadleigh Club was heavily into running shows we used to stage the Radio Orwell Heaviest Onion Championship and this was usually won with an onion weight around 7 lbs. These looked enormous. I was therefore slightly surprised to find in the book a photograph of a 12 lb 4 oz onion. I am not into giant onions, but I do grow a couple of the larger varieties of tomato, not because I am after records, but because I like the flavour. So far I have had several tomatoes over 1lb in weight, but looking at the book I find that an American has had a tomato weighing 7 lb 12 oz.
It is good to see my grass recovering from it brown state. This year I really did wonder whether or not it would recover, but my front grass is now looking quite presentable. As it recovers it is important not to cut it too short. The idea is to take the tops of the leaves off to persuade it to produce more new leaves.

Weather Records
In July we had 44 mm ( 1.7 " ) of rain. This was better than the previous month and nearly up to our normal average rainfall. The rolling 3 month figure was 94.7 mm ( 3.7 " ) which is about 2/3 of the average value. We have had a lot of rain so far in August, so next month I expect to be reporting that we are back to average rainfall.
The maximum temperature in July was 30 Cel ( 86 F ) and the minimum was 11 Cel ( 52 F ). These are quite typical maximum and minimum temperatures for July. In mid August the ground temperature is 15 Cel ( 63 F ) which is typical for this month

Hints
In September it is time to enjoy the last of our Summer. Temperatures start to drop, and unless we have been very good at looking after them our annuals will be well past their best. Nice days provide a good chance to tidy up before the Winter.
Does your garden still have plants to keep it interesting in September? Dahlias and Geraniums (pelargoniums) will keep up their colourful display until frosts occur. Often around here that is not until early November. Other useful plants for this period of the year are the various Michaelmas Daisies, the hardy chrysanthemums, anemone japonica and the Sedums like the variety "Autumn Joy". Have a look and see if there are places where you could use some of these plants to improve your September garden next year. There are also some bulbs which flower at this time including some varieties of cyclamen, and the Autumn Crocus (Colchicum). Some of the later will flower happily indoors without even planting them in soil. Planted in the garden they will last for years, but need to be planted where the foliage in Spring will not be a nuisance. September is the time at which bulbs appear in garden centres, and there are a marvellous range available nowadays to brighten our houses and gardens. The range of colours and flower shapes in daffodils seems to be increasing all the time, and I plan to add a few new varieties to my collection this year.

John Rye

Hadleigh & District Garden Club

The Summer outing for the club was to Wisley, when a packed coach of members, family and friends made the visit on 29th July a day of beautiful weather. What a wonderful day it turned out to be, well worth the journey just to see the new glass house, which is truly a masterpiece of design, execution and topography that takes one seamlessly from ground level to tree canopy showing pretty well any plant that requires special conditions, from cacti to tropical forest. Fantastic!
The journey there was a piece of cake, coming back another story but, thank you everyone for your good humour during a fairly trying time, especially for our driver I would imagine. Never was there more interest in a horse box and various other trucks and the position there-of! I was relieved to hear on the traffic news the next day, it was even worse, being stationary from Wisley to the M25 tunnel crossing - poor souls! Despite the problems on this dreadful road, please do visit sometime if you haven’t been since the new green house was erected, the rest of the gardens are also undergoing extensive renovations, gorgeous.
I was personally thrilled to discover they had their problems too. Brown rot is obviously not peculiar to my orchard, perhaps they don’t spray either, and then of course spying various weeds was a relief.
Our extra meeting in August was a real treat. Phil and Chris Streeting gave us a talk on orchid growing and breeding, and showed us a most informative d.v.d. which covered a vast range of this most numerous of species. Judging from the number of members and guests who attended it was a subject of great interest. Phil and Chris also brought along some beautiful examples they grew themselves, thank you both for your input into the club. Our next meeting is 13th September.

Ruth Allen 822323