Plant Care

This is a photo of a Ryegrass plant, that was growing in Type I MOT Roadstone on flat ground in a private garden. You will note that it has a great deal of fibrous root - apparently in American Baseball Stadiums each grass plant has over 100 miles of root.

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That root in cooperation with worms, bacteria etc takes in food, which is brought down from the surface by water (usually rain, but can be by irrigation) either in tunnels created by the worms, moles, etc or when the ground cracks open in the summer when the clay soil dries up and shrinks - clay soil can absorb 40% of its own volume before it turns from a solid to a liquid. That root also breathes in oxygen then expels carbon dioxide (Click on Carbon Cycle) and nitrogen (Click on Nitrogen Cycle) ALL THE TIME.

If you buy Sharp-Washed-Sand from a Builder's Merchant and put that into a clean pot round a plant, then using NPK fertilisers the roots of that plant can absorb that food dissolved in water. Once you stop supplying that water and food, that plant will die (it is like saying that for you to survive, that you need a lb of glucose each day, so I sit you down outside and put 365 lbs of glucose round your feet. It rains and within 6 weeks that glucose has either been eaten by you or dissolved in the rain and washed down into the ground below your feet. Then you complain to me that you are hungry).

To make that Sharp-Washed-Sand into soil, you need dead plant material, shit from animals or dead animals, bacteria, worms that can be eaten by the animal, bacteria and worms to bind those sand particles together with clay and organic matter (Click on Soil Structure). That soil can then hold onto the some of the rain (Click on How does Water act in the Soil) with food for the animal/plant in it, before the excess rain drains through below the top soil to the sub-soil and the food in it is then lost to the plants above it. The easiest method of supplying the dead plant material is to collect your potato peelings, tea bags, coffee grounds in a bucket under the sink before putting them on the ground surface round a plant. Then, mow the lawn and put 1cm or 0.5 inch depth of grass mowings on top to complete the organic mulch, provide water from the grass and nitrogen from it to compost the peelings below. The worms having made tunnels in the soil may also eat the peelings. When it rains the water can absorb nutrients from that mulch and take it down using those tunnels. WHEN THOSE TUNNELS ARE FULL OF WATER AND A CLOD-HOPPING HUMAN WALKS ON IT, THEN IT COLLAPSES AND NO LONGER FUNCTIONS. If it rains heavily, allow the ground to recover for a couple of days before walking on it.

You can then see that a Sandy Soil is much easier for the roots of a plant to get into, but when it rains it dries up quickly and then the food in it gets washed through it very quickly (Click on How are Chemicals stored and released from Soil?). It is also easier for the gases to get in and out.

A clay soil is more difficult for plants, since when it rains the tunnels fill up with water and thus could drown the roots. Put sand round its roots up to the surface of the soil and this will combine with the clay to stop the roots from being drowned or without Nitrogen and Carbon gas exchange. If your lawn is soggy when it rains, then cut the lawn short when it is dry and apply 25Kg of sand over a 5 metre x 5 metre area once a month for 3 months during May-September and it will change the soil structure to lessen that.

A mixture of Clay and Soil is best (Click on Soil Formation - What is Soil Texture?).

I saw a yew tree that had been planted in a churchyard in 2000 as a 2 foot high tree. In 2009 it had reached 7 feet high and 3 feet across. Why had it not grown?

It was planted on a 30 degree slope in clay/sand soil with grass growing round its base. It had the following 3 reasons for failure to grow:-

• When it rained, the water would either be taken up by the roots of the grass (Click on the roots of just 1 plant in the photo above) or run off down the slope.
• The grass would take all the nutrients out the top soil leaving none to be washed down to the roots of the yew tree.
• The grass would be using all the oxygen that came down the tunnels, leaving none for the yew tree

So, I carefully removed the grass and its roots from around its base out to the tips of the tree branches and mulched that bare ground with shrub prunings / grass mowings to a 4 inch depth. A year later it was growing quite well with new leaves and an increase of density of branches.

In Maderia I saw a mature olive tree - which had been transplanted from the nursery to a roof garden - a year after it was planted. It was on a mound with brazilian grass growing round its base. It was dying from dehydration even though it was irrigated every other day - the grass was growing well.

An organic mulch about 4 inches deep on weeded soil makes garden maintenance very easy. Once a week you walk round the garden and using a swoe (a hoe has 2 arms to the horizontal blade, a swoe only has 1 so that you can stand on the lawn and be able to hoe behind the plant in front of you) hoe through the weed root in the top of the mulch and remove the uprooted weed. I find that Spent Mushroom Compost is light, easy to lay, easy to hoe and lasts a relatively long time. You may lose about 50% each year. If you do not apply any mulch and you do have groundcover plants covering all the soil, then you will enjoy permanent weeding chores like the painters on the Forth Bridge last century - you come to the other side and have to start again immediately. When you prune your shrubs/trees/hedges then put the prunings on your uncut lawn. When you deadhead your bulbs or remove perennials, shake off the earth from the roots and place on the uncut lawn. Using a rotary mower cut your lawn and it will cut the grass and your prunings/perennials into small bits which you then mulch your flower beds/hedges with. In the autumn, set your mower to its highest cut and transfer the autumn fallen leaves onto the lawn before mowing them and mulching as before. Continue mowing once a week untill all fallen leaves have been removed.

If your garden is on a steep slope - I maintained one that had half-circle beds with lawn paths round them - the diameter of the circle was usually level and the half-circumference went down the slope. The ground had flint and chalk in it and the plants in it were usually the inverted cone shape. When it rained, the stones would be washed off onto the lawn paths and damage my mowing machine. Providing any mulch applied to those beds is covered with grass mowings, then that problem - of the stones being washed off by any rain however hard onto the paths - is stopped.

Roots of plants that you put into your garden do extend and grow, but the existing roots do not move by themselves to better places. You have to untangle them and spread them out yourself. I planted a blue cedar in my front garden and 9 years later it died. When I took it out, I found that the roots which had been going round the inside of the pot before I planted it had expanded sideways to fill the complete space between them as if they were still in the pot. There were very few roots which had grown away from this rootball and so the plant died due to dehydration, lack of food and lack of gas exchange in the ground.

A minor point that people forget is that you only live because you can breath oxygen, and plants provide it. So please look after the plant so that they have food, water and air (best soil has at least 30% air in it) on a regular basis, just like you do for your children.

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I have split the Colour Wheel below into the following 48 colours plus the 4 Neutral colours (I have added the web-safe colour name to the Colour Wheel Name as detailed in colourcodes):-

• Dark Tone or Shades is where Colours are mixed with Black
• (o)Dark Tone: Red 12 is Blood Red
• (o)Dark Tone: Red Orange 12 is Chocolate
• (o)Dark Tone: Orange 1 is Rusty Pelican
• Dark Tone: Yellow Orange 1 is Browser Caramel
• (o)Dark Tone: Yellow 12 is Grass Stain
• (o)Dark Tone: Yellow Green 12 is Verdun Green
• (o)Dark Tone: Green 12 is Pakistan Green
• Dark Tone: Blue Green 12 is Blue Stone
• (o)Dark Tone: Blue 12 is Navy Blue
• (o)Dark Tone: Blue Violet 12 is Violet
• (o)Dark Tone: Violet 12 is Royal Purple
• (o)Dark Tone: Red Violet 12 is Dried Blood
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• Mid-Tones is where Colours are mixed with Grey
• (o)Mid-Tone: Red 34 is Fuzzy Wuzzy
• (o)Mid-Tone: Red Orange 34 is Heatland
• Mid Tone: Orange 2 is Tuscany
• (o)Mid-Tone: Yellow Orange 23 is Bhudda Gold
• Mid-Tone: Yellow 34 is Pine Glade
• (o)Mid-Tone: Yellow Green 34 is Slimer 2
• (o)Mid-Tone: Green 34 is Weak Green
• Mid-Tone: Blue Green 34 is Aqua
• (o)Mid-Tone: Blue 34 is Periwinkle
• (o)Mid-Tone: Blue Violet 34 is The Bands
• (o)Mid-Tone: Violet 34 is Calihoe
• (o)Mid-Tone: Red Violet 34 is Forbidden
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• Pure Hue is where the Colour is the Primary, Secondary or Tertiary Colour named on the outside of the Circle
• (o)Pure Hue: Red 56 is Red
• (o)Pure Hue: Red Orange 5 is Orange
• (o)Pure Hue: Orange 3 is Vitamin C
• (o)Pure Hue: Yellow Orange 45 is Tangerine
• (o)Pure Hue: Yellow 56 is Yellow
• (o)Pure Hue: Yellow Green 56 is Lovely Lime
• (o)Pure Hue: Green 56 is Lime
• Pure Hue: Blue Green 56 is Light Teal
• (o)Pure Hue: Blue 56 is Blue
• (o)Pure Hue: Blue Violet 56 is Grape
• (o)Pure Hue: Violet 56 is Fuchsia or Magenta
• (o)Pure Hue: Red Violet 56 is Process Pagenta
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• Pastel, Pale Tones or Tints is where the Colours are mixed with White
• (o)Pastel: Red 789 is Flat Pink
• (o)Pastel: Red Orange 6 is Orangelin
• (o)Pastel: Orange 45 is Atomic Tangerine
• (o)Pastel: Yellow Orange 67 is Sand
• (o)Pastel: Yellow 789 is Bone
• (o)Pastel: Yellow Green 78 is Limeade
• (o)Pastel: Green 789 is Off-white Green
• (o)Pastel: Blue Green 78 is Baby Blue
• (o)Pastel: Blue 78 is Off-white Blue
• (o)Pastel: Blue Violet 7 is Mauve
• (o)Pastel: Violet 89 is Magenta Shift
• (o)Pastel: Red Violet 78 is Pink
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• Neutrals are White Colours which are mixed with the others
• (o)Neutral: Black 1 (Black has 100% Black Colour)
• (o)Neutral: Grey/Gray 234 is Gray40 (Gray40 has 60% Black Colour)
• (o)Neutral: Grey/Gray 5 is Gray80 (Gray80 has 20% Black Colour)
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• White Colours by themselves
• (o)Neutral: Pure White 1 for Cultivated Flowers (Pure White has 0% Black Colour)
• (o)Neutral: Pure White 2 for Cultivated Flowers (Pure White has 0% Black Colour) for Roses and Multi-coloured
• (o)Neutral: Wild White for UK WildFlowers (Pure White has 0% Black Colour)

All the plants who have flowers in this website will have their Common Name, Botanical Name (click to see its Page Description) and Months of Flowering (Click to see it compared with others in another Page) in one of the above flower petal colour index pages. The Common Name will be in Red if it is a Wildflower, The Botanical Name will link to its Plant Description Page and each Flower Month will link to the respective Flower Colour Comparison Page in the relevant Gallery.

The overall effect of the petals of the flowers has been used to classify them from the photos used in the website. Thus, although some white flower petals have other colours with them, the general effect may be white and therefore they are put in the Neutral: Pure White 2 Page under Multi-Coloured.

If the Flower Petal of the photo in the Cultivated Plant Description Page is Multi-Coloured, then it will be placed in the Multi-Coloured Row of a Colour Wheel of Flower Petal Colour Index Page that appears to have the majority space of that colour on that petal.

If the Wildflower does not have its Plant Decription Page yet, then the Botanical Name and Flower Month will link to its Family Page.

The following photos show that nature can create conditions in and on a bed of Type I Roadstone - laid on a geotextile to prevent the soil under it from mixing with it - to support plants and then grow grass.

This is the same garden as the one showing the roots of a Ryegrass plant above. The Roadstone had been laid to create a more level garden and then only used with a normal washing line to dry washing. The weeds were growing quite tall in the area where the dead leaves from the Leylandii Hedge growing alongside the boundary fence in the next door garden were depositing themselves.

In order to reduce the length of time maintaining this garden, reduce the height of growing vegetation and since some grass had already started to grow, it was decided to sow grass seed and then let nature take its course without an irrigation system.

So the first area was cleared, cheap grass seed sown and some sand was scattered over the seed to level the surface, prevent the birds from eating the seed and produce an easier area for the grass roots.

The juvenile grass appeared after a couple of weeks.

The weeds grow in the roadstone covering this garden and have been used as a mulch on the raised bed on the left. A self-sown seedling of an oak tree has been growing in this raised bed and its only maintenance consists of providing a mulch of the weeds removed from this garden round its base. Since this minimal maintenance program was started, the sapling has grown 4 feet in 2 years.

The paver in the middle covers the hole for the supporting tube of the washing line.

These show the new grass growing in the roadstone with sand on top and in the roadstone without sand on the top.

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So, if you want a new drive that will provide you with:-

• oxygen for you to breathe,
• absorb the rainfall that falls on it rather than that rain going into the public road and maybe causing flooding further down the road,
• solve the problem of overhanging trees dropping their leaves on your ground - in the autumn set your mower to its highest setting and once a fortnight mow the drive, then use the mown grass/leaves as a mulch on your flower beds, vegetable beds and hedges,
• re-use an area that was boggy or unused for a hardstanding for cars, caravans or boats.

then remember to use a geotextile under 4 inch depth (10cms) for sand or chalk soil or 8 inch depth for clay soil (Click on Case 3 which details the foundation depth required) to prevent the soil and stone mixing and the roots of trees or shrubs from growing in it. Then, sow your grass seed before blinding it with a thin layer of sharp-washed sand to level it and stop the birds from eating that seed. Then, from March to December mow it after each 3 week period to 1 inch (2.5cms) height to keep it low.

According to the Civil Service Motoring Association Magazine of September 2012, "there are 7,000,000 UK gardens that have been paved over to make space for parking, says the RAC Foundation. The increase in vehicle numbers, and limit on public parking spaces, means that, of the 80 per cent of dwellings built with a front garden, two-thirds are now paved over for cars." Most of the current population in the UK breathe, and that means that most of the current population do not have the 25 x 25 feet of lawn necessary for that lawn to produce their required Oxygen for the year for them to breathe as well as the incredible amount of oxygen used by car engines. This means that the human population is currently asphyxiating itself, instead of growing grass to park their cars on.