The Gardeners Almanac

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Glossary


Annuals:

Plants that bloom, produce seed, and die during the same season.


Biennials:

Plants that need two seasons to get to full maturity.

Sown in early summer in nursery beds, and planted out in there final quarters in Oct / Nov.


Blind:

A plant or shoot that fails to produce flowers or leaves.


Crown:

The bud-like centre of plants such as Paeony, Strawberry or Rhubarb or the top of root-stock of hardy herbaceous plants.


Disbudding:

The removal of the superfluous flower-buds that form below a crown bud allows the plant’s energy to go into a single flower e.g. Chrysanthemums.


F1 hybrids:

Mostly used to refer to annual and vegetable cultivars produced by crossing two stable seed lines that give rise to uniform progeny.


F2 hybrids:

Plants grown from F, hybrids are called F2, hybrids and display much greater variation than their parents.


Generic hybrids:

Plants derived from crosses between two or more genera, indicated by an x before the composite genus name.


Hardy Annual:

Is a plant that passes through all stages of growth in the open without the need for protection.


Half-Hardy Annuals:

Plants that, in their early stages of growth, need protection prior to planting out.


Humus:

Decayed vegetable matter.


Lateral:

A secondary shoot that develops on a main branch.


Loam:

A type of soil/compost produced from turf that has been stacked and allowed to decay over a period of approximately one year.


Mulch:

A layer of manure, lawn cuttings, or bark shreddings laid around trees and plants to conserve moisture in the surrounding soil.


Offset:

Small bulbs attached to parent bulbs or small rooted pieces of hardy plants that are generally detached for propagation.


Perennnials:

Plants that continue to live and increase in the open for several years.


Phototropism:

Is when a plant/s tends to lean towards a light source.

This is brought about by plant cells that contain hormones called auxins.

auxins accumulate on the shaded side of a plant and cause cell elongation, this cell elongation effectively pushes the plant stem over towards the brighter light source.


Subsoil:

The soil lying below that which is cultivated i.e. the topsoil.


Suckers:

Useless shoots that form on the stock of a tree/shrub that has been budded/grafted.

Roses; plum and lilac tend to throw suckers freely and should be cut back to origin/source.

Rose suckers: are thorny, and normally have seven lighter coloured leaflets whereas a true rose leaf has five leaflets.


Tilth:

Is the state/texture of soil that has been broken down to make it suitable for sowing or planting.


Tap-root:

The main root of a tree or plant.