Gardening news and tips from March 2007
Update: The veg patch: part VI. Best potatoes and pest-free carrots. By Sarah Raven
Roots of wisdom
www.telegraph.co.uk
Potato planting time has arrived and the question - to chit or not chit - raises its head again. Last year at Berryfields, the Gardener's World garden, we did a trial to establish whether it was worth the extra palaver of chitting, or whether you could shove your potatoes straight into the ground. The chitted potatoes in all cases - earlies and maincrops - gave a larger crop, but, as Alys Fowler, the off-screen head gardener at Berryfields pointed out, the non-chitted were a better size. The chitted ones grew very large and had to be chopped to be cooked, while the non-chitted spuds were the perfect new-potato size. With time rolling on, I'm going for the easy option, and my spuds will go straight in.
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Update: The vegetable patch: part V. Sowing tomatoes and aubergines. By Sarah Raven
The red brigade
It's always a lovely moment when tomato-sowing time arrives: it means that spring is here, or is, at the very least, just around the corner. If you have space to grow tomatoes under cover, sow them now, somewhere warm and cosy. You'll then have decent-sized plants in flower, ready and waiting to go into greenhouse beds or growbags at the end of April, when very cold nights are unlikely and you can stop mollycoddling your nascent plants.
Update: The vegetable patch, Part IV: when to sow. By Sarah Raven
Ins and outs of successive sowing
With spring looming nicely, I'm raring to start sowing seeds for the veg garden. We all have a limit on undercover sowing space and it's still too early for sowing all but the hardies direct into the garden, so it's a good time to decide which seeds to get started first.
Update: The Veg Patch, Part III: how to sow seeds. By Sarah Raven
Most people will tell you that sowing seed direct into the garden is the easiest way. However, on my heavy soil that's not the case. I get decent germination rates sowing in this way from May until mid-August, but earlier or later than that I always end up with very patchy rows. The seed rots before it germinates.
I started experimenting with different sowing techniques and now use different systems to suit different plants. My germination rates have gone from between 30 and 50 per cent to nearly 100 per cent.
Update: The Veg Patch, Part II: Choosing and filing seeds. By Sarah Raven
www.telegraph.co.ukWith the weather still chilly and the nights long, it is a little early to get gardening. It is, however, the ideal time to order the seeds for your vegetable patch.
Have a list in front of you of what your household likes to eat. Without that, it's easy to get carried away, selecting plants that look interesting or rare rather than things that your family will devour.
Update: Garden centre cultivates a bright future
CLITHEROE garden centre is to secure its future by investing £500,000 in a major new expansion.
Shackletons Garden and Outdoor Living Centre is to construct a new permanent building at its site between Chatburn and Clitheroe, to replace some of its current facilties.
Update: Pupils' heartbreak as vandals wreck garden (15/03/2007)
CHILDREN were left devastated after vandals wrecked their primary school garden.
Yobs ripped up trees and overturned pot plants in the grounds of Walmsley School, Egerton.
The incident happened just over a week after the school was left with a £1,000 repair bill when vandals climbed on to the roof and damaged an extractor fan and guttering.
Update: Pergola enhances patio space
JOY JOHNSON’S DIY experience is in the world of landscaping.
“I’ve done my whole yard,” she said from her Norfolk home located near Lake Taylor High School. “There was nothing here when I first moved here except 15 oak trees. I’ve planted azaleas, camellias and dogwood.”
The Veg Patch (10/02/2007)
Sarah Raven's complete guide to growing your own. Part 1: getting startedwww.telegraph.co.uk/
Look outside your window. Is there a patch of garden going spare? Is there room for a few pots, or even some space on a sunny window ledge? And if not, are there any local allotments?
Creating your own veg patch - however small - is one of the most life-enhancing things you can do. Within a few paces of your kitchen table, you could gather the most delicious mixed-leaf salad, collect a basket of courgettes, harvest the sweetest peas you've ever tasted and pick juicy tomatoes and a fistful of basil to have with them.
Update: Beyond reasonable drought (10/02/2007)
Three top nurserymen tell Val Bourne how we can adapt to milder conditionswww.telegraph.co.uk/
While some of us have simply watched in awe while spring has rolled on seamlessly from autumn, others are becoming increasingly anxious about our strange weather patterns. I spoke to three leading nurserymen about how they are tackling this new climate, and what tips they can give to the ordinary gardener.
One fear is the threat of an increasing number of pests. Surprisingly, our experts have yet to see any big changes. Robert Vernon, of the Bluebell Nursery near Ashby de la Zouch, (01530 413700; www.bluebellnursery.co.uk), suspects there may be more scale insects on bay trees and maples, and recommends three consecutive monthly doses of a systemic insecticide.
Update: Thorny problems
The future is lemon
www.telegraph.co.uk/
A reader who calls himself Mr Boots from Sussex has been having fun with his new "lemonery". The lemonery has one long brick wall, faces roughly south-west and is unheated but double-glazed, with an underfloor (bilge-pumped) rainwater tank fed from its gutters.
During his first year as an indoor gardener, he planted three large oblong terracotta containers, standing on gravel trays, with a hotchpotch of plants, to see what would work. There is a suffering grapevine, bougainvilleas, Christmas cactus, a tender ipomoea, plumbago and indoor jasmine. Elsewhere on shelves are pots containing cuttings, "resting" houseplants, and hibernating bulbs. Watering is a trial in hot weather and he plans to simplify everything. Advice is sought.
Borderlines
Ursula Buchan finds proof again that there's no tool like an old tool
I have a love-hate relationship with the tools in my shed, and never does it burn more fiercely than in January, when I carry out the annual cleaning and sharpening routine. This is when I must admit to their shortcomings, which I try hard to ignore for the rest of the year. I must face the fact that a number are not very good: not because they are bad in themselves, but because they are worn out or don't fit me very well.
The reason I have kept some tools that I should not have kept - and I am sure I am not alone in this folly - is that I have inherited them. There are few things in life about which I am more stupidly sentimental than the old forged steel tools I remember from childhood, most of which have come down to me.
Secrets of my shedwww.telegraph.co.uk/
It's time to tidy the potting shed, but be careful – that chaotic assortment of broken bell jars, rusting tools and discarded seed packets may have its uses. Helen Dillon confesses her love of the healthy disorder in every gardener's favourite hiding place
The wonderful thing about a potting shed is that nobody knows exactly what you get up to there. Like the side chapel of a remote foreign cathedral, the potting shed is a heavenly place to stop and think. If I hear footsteps, I start banging around getting busy with the broom in the hope that whoever is approaching will make a hasty U-turn.
If you want to get ahead, get a shed
ROSALIND GIBB AND LEE SIMPSON (Sat 20 Jan 2007)
THE humble garden shed. The image that springs to mind is of a middle-aged man pipe, slippers and newspaper in hand desperate to escape “the wife’ for an hour or so, surrounded by carefully stacked patio furniture, piles of old junk, a dog-eared copy of Gardener’s World and a bag of musty compost.
However, sheds are no longer dingy retreats. They are, in fact, fast turning into the trendy, must- have space for those who fancy getting away from the rigours of everyday life, even if it is just for a few hours.
