44 July 2018 Canal Boat canalboat.co.uk
ROOFTOP GARDENING
WATERWAYS ACROSTIC
BOATERS BREAK
with Julie Clark
S
ummer certainly took a while to get
started this year but when it arrived
temperatures certainly soared!
Watering is always an issue with
container gardening. When it does rain the
leaves can deflect the water away from the
roots and in the heat (and breeze) watering is
a daily requirement. If you started your pots
off a couple of months ago it is likely that
commercial composts will start to become
exhausted of nutrients and therefore it will
be necessary to supplement the feeding to
promote continuous healthy growth.
Spring sown vegetables should be
growing on nicely now and should be
cropping. This is therefore a good time to
plant subsequent crops of carrots, peas and
salads etc. for later in the season.
High summer is when bedding plants are
at their best. If you are growing sweet peas
remember to pick the flowers regularly to
ensure continuous flowering through the
summer. If you haven’t planned aheadgarden centres will still be full of wonder
flowers ideal for planting on your boat. It is
possible that there is not the selection of
summer bedding that there was a few weeks
ago – they tend to have a brief season of
availability starting around Easter. There is
no reason that one has to uses annual
varieties in pots so have a look out for some
of the low growing perennials. There is a
wonderful dwarf Buddleia with clusters of
purple flowers; try pots of Lavender, Alpine
Asters and Scabious. Alpine plants are
fantastic to grow in containers on boatsbecause they are tough little plants which
are used to growing in challenging
conditions as well as keeping small and not
obscuring the captain’s vision! If you want
really low maintenance plants succulents
such as the sedums (stonecrops) and House
Leeks are fun to try – as well as, according to
folk law, protecting you from lightening and
bad witches! The juice from a house leek leaf
is also supposed to be a cure for warts. If you
are planning to do a bit of instant gardening
pick up some pots of herbs from the
supermarket next time you visit and plant
them with a flowering plant or two and
perhaps a chilli. With a little attention they
will last the summer and be a convenient
source of fresh flavour as you travel along.
You may also find a mini variety of
tomato, often sold as pot plants in garden
centres for those people who don’t have the
inclination to start the plants off early
enough in the year so you can have an
instant flowering display and a mini veg pot.Moonrise on July 27 is rather
special. We’ll have a full moon, but
it’ll rise fully eclipsed in Earth’s
shadow. That familiar silver giant
that we all know so well will appear
as a ghostly dark orb over the
eastern horizon shortly before
9:30pm. Night’s deepening
darkness sees our ‘ghost moon’
rise higher into the sky. As it does
so coppery red tones mightdevelop over its surface. By about
10:20pm the left limb of the moon
brightens – a sign that our first
total lunar eclipse visible from the
UK since September 2015 is
coming to an end. And 25 minutes
later the left half of the moon is
restored; its silver face gaining
ever more prominence. Shrinking
away to the right is the remainder
of Earth’s shadow, the curveddividing line between the light and
dark portions being a projection of
Earth’s curvature on the moon’s
surface.
At 11:15pm the show’s over. Our
full moon is back to normal, but
you won’t fail to notice a red ‘star’
sat beneath the moon. This ‘star’ is
Mars, which makes its brightest
appearance in the sky since 2003
on the same night! Eclipsed moon rising in 2015LIQUID CRASHTHE BIG SKY with Seb Jay
Name the following locks and lock flights on the
Grand Union Main Line:
A single lock by the Shovel pub
Seven locks with a junction near each end
A museum stands above the top lock of this flight
A flight of 21 locks
Two locks and a pub share a name
Three locks that take their name from a Roman road
A flight with the New Inn at the top
A flight of narrow-beam locks
A flight featuring triple sideponds by some locks
A lock with a name that recalls a nearby metal works
Fit your answers into the grid, so that the letters in the coloured box
spell out the name of another lock on the Grand Union Main Line
LAST MONTH’S ANSWERS: Retford, Forest, Cuckoo, Idle, Worksop, Whitsunday Pie,
Thorpe, Staveley, Norwood, Killamarsh. Putting the answers into the grid in the right
order spells out the final answer: DRAKEHOLES