Bad wives' tales

I AM always amazed by the codswallop that garden experts write—ponderous statements of fact that I know from my own experience to be complete bunkum.

- Charles Quest-Ritson

Here’s an example: ‘Never water plants in sunshine because you’ll scorch the leaves.’ Utter nonsense. Here’s another: ‘Plant garlic among your brassicas to scare away aphids and cabbage-white butterflies.’ Try it if you wish, but it doesn’t work. Nor do marigolds. The truth is that aphid infestations vary enormously from week to week and garden to garden. You never know whether or when one will turn up. Some years, I find very little greenfly activity; at other times, it arrives when I least expect it. Last year, blackfly attacked a mass of thistles that I had forgotten to pull out, but ignored my roses almost completely. And, for the record, caper spurges—Euphorbia lathyris— do not repel moles.

‘Finish planting tulip bulbs before the end of November.’ Well, mine never go in before January, because otherwise I find that winter wet will rot them off. ‘Always split herbaceous plants immediately after they have flowered.’ Not so—I find they all do best in October, because the soil is still warm and moist enough to get them established. ‘Wash out your empty flowerpots—clay or plastic—so that you do not transmit disease.’ This can only be true if the previous occupant of the pot succumbed to a soil-borne fungal infection, but, if that’s the case, it’s best to throw away the pot.

Even the great and the good talk nonsense from time to time. Recently, in the RHS’s flagship publication,