It's Chelsea time

Oh no it does not move me. I don't want to go to Chelsea! At least that's what Elvis Costello thought about it. I, on the other hand, love going to Chelsea - the Chelsea Flower Show, that is. And that's where I was today and will be for the next three days - so don't expect any replies to your e-mail enquiries until I get back.

I've been going to, and working at, this show every year since 1988. Being a gardening journalist it's one of THE places to find out what's going on in the world of horticulture, check out the latest trends and see what's new. For the last seven years I've been there to produce the live, virtual flower show for the RHS. This involves long days, early mornings and late nights and a lot of running around with camera and notebook in hand. But I love it!

I'll let you know how I get on over the next few days. In the meantime, to view the full coverage visit RHS Online, the RHS website.

Three-day Weekend

You can't beat it - apart from the four days at Easter!
Apart from the antics in the veg patch and my appearance on Dougan Does Gardening on BBC Radio Cambridgeshire on Sunday, both of which you can read about on my RHS veg blog, my only other main gardening antic this weekend was to help Clare cut back the large holly and the cotoneaster growing underneath it to reclaim some new planting areas.
The shade and the room covered by the holly meant that this area has been much under-used. The bed was also quite narrow, so we stripped off more turf (which makes the lawn smaller and reduces mowing - hurrah!). Next job was to dig in some old, well-rotted leafmould from two years ago and some compost.
I'm still vigilant for lily beetles - even though I've sprayed them with Provado Ultimate Bug Killer. I've found another four, but they're obviously very drowsy from the Provado and just fall into my hand.
Have a great gardening week.

Pruning & talking - but not at the same time

When I moved into my current house seven years ago, one of the things that persuaded me to buy it - along with the L-shaped garden (I’ve got the bottom of the gardens of the two houses to the right) – was the fabulous white-blossomed cherry tree. Sadly, it looked like it was suffering from bacterial canker, but seemed to be growing fine. Even more sadly is the fact that the canker has been getting worse since then, despite annual sprays with a copper fungicide.
This year it hasn’t flowered as well as it usually does (normally it’s completely covered in flowers) and the new growth looks sparse – I’m worried for it. But it’s such a feature of the garden I’d hate to loose it, so the fight goes on. I spent this weekend starting to prune out as much of the dead, weak and badly diseased growth as possible. But there’s still plenty more to take care of, which will have to wait until next weekend. Then I can give it its spring spray of copper.
As I was in a happy, ‘hacking’ mood, I decided to take the secateurs to some other plants. I’ve given the annual hard prune to the hardy fuchsias, perovskia, penstemon, caryopteris, phygelius and tidied up the cotinus. After pruning I always give a good feed with – usually – a granular rose fertiliser to put some strength back into the plants and ensure a good crop of flowers.
For more information on pruning, why not buy my book!
The daily early morning searches for lily beetles secured another four adults this week that were swiftly dispatched by the boot. Even though this vigil pays dividends I also decided to give all the lilies a quick treatment with Provado to bulk up the protection levels – there’s nothing like a belt and braces approach to gardening!
One of the things I love doing out of the garden is giving talks to gardening clubs and horticultural societies – and this spring has been especially busy. I’ve been up to Bingham in Nottinghamshire and Knaresborough in North Yorkshire, down to Abbots Langley and Olney in Buckinghamshire and Upminster in Essex, as well as lots around Peterborough and Cambridge. Subjects have ranged from pruning and propagation to pests and diseases, weeds and the weed-free garden and luscious lawns. This week I’m going up to Swayfield in Lincolnshire; I think this is the fourth time I’ve been there, so I must be doing something right. It’s probably the prizes I bring for the raffle!
This week was also busy on the BBC Radio Cambridgeshire front. On Thursday I was in the Peterborough studio answering questions on the weekly gardening phone-in. Then on Friday it was off to Jane Smith’s garden to record my monthly items for her programme. These are broadcast at around 7.45am on Saturday mornings. I used to do them over the phone, which meant crawling out of bed on a Saturday morning. Pre-recording not only does away with this chore, but also means we get some great atmospheric recordings, including bird song, tractors, jets flying overhead and the barking of her two dogs when someone walks past!
Next Sunday I’m back in the Peterborough studio for Dougan Does Gardening from 11am to 1pm.
Ah, the busy world of a gardening journalist!
And, of course, this weekend involved plenty of activity in the veg garden. You can read all about this on my RHS grow your own veg blog.
Have a great week in the garden.

This weekend’s forecast for yet another mixed bag of weather meant that I needed to get cracking early – just in case, just in case things turned really nasty and put the kybosh on my plans. As a result I was out in the garden by 8 o’clock on both days.
The weather wasn’t as bad as expected – although Sunday started out dull, damp, dingy and wet, but by 11.15am (having gone back indoors for American pancakes and The Archers) it had stopped raining and the rest of the day was fabulous.
The plants from the front garden from Beth Chatto had arrived mid-week, so Clare had the delightful job of getting those planted and announcing the front garden complete. Hurrah! Apart from putting back the gravel mulch. Boo! About an hour and a tonne of gravel later, this was also complete. We think it looks great and certainly a vast improvement on what had been there before. And, as it's all planting and gravel we’re doing our bit to prevent localised flooding from hard-standing run-off!
The finishing touch was to yank out a moth-eared clematis that hadn’t been doing well for the past three years and replace it with something a bit more exotic and in keeping with the new look front garden – we chose Campsis radicans ‘Flamenco’.
I felt that this weekend was a good time to start feeding everything in pots. I’m a firm believer in controlled-release fertilisers – they feed just the right amount when the plants need it for anything up to six months. I get mine from Greenacres Horticultural Supplies who do a wide range of feeds and the results are always excellent. I also went around treating those plants in pots that need an acid soil (our water is very hard/alkaline) with Sulphur Soil – also from Greenacres; this included rhodos, Japanese maples and blueberries.
Every day this week I’ve been patrolling the lilies for the red menace – I found one on Saturday, but that has been the first since last weekend’s six; but this is no time for relaxing – vigilance is still needed.
By Saturday evening the lawn was dry and ready for a cut, and on Sunday I decided to rake and oversow some of the thinner patches. I’m not sure if many people realise that up to 25% of the grass in a lawn can die each year and the best and easiest way to replace this is to oversow with grass seed.
Of course, this weekend also involved some activities in the veg garden. You can read all about these on my RHS veg blog.
Enjoy your week.

A damn good catch up

Because we’ve been away the last couple of weekends and haven’t managed to spend much time on the garden or the allotment, jobs were beginning to pile up – and both my girlfriend Clare and I were beginning to get just a tad twitchy about the situation. So this weekend we were going to get on with things whatever the weather. Perhaps a touch too much bravado considering the forecast!
Luckily, we had both outdoor jobs and indoor ones – seed sowing and sorting out the greenhouse. So we had plenty of time to get on with the indoor jobs as we spent the weekend dodging heavy showers, thunderstorms, hail and sleet – all in all, a nice mixed bag!
We more-or-less finished planting up the front garden, just a few plants we’re waiting for from Beth Chatto to finish it. And, of course, the heavy downpours meant everything got watered in naturally.
When tidying up a number of pots I received a nasty shock. One of the lilies had its first unwelcome visitors – lily beetle – six to be precise. Thankfully, I managed to carefully pick them all off without any escaping and put them to the sword – or more correctly the foot; they do make a satisfying crunch! This is much earlier than previous years, so I need to keep a careful eye on them from now on.
On Sunday we decided to risk a few hours at the allotment – there were the seed potatoes and garlic to put out of their misery, languishing at home desperate for some soil to get their feet into. What started off as a really nice morning, soon deteriorated into a day of heavy showers. Luckily, we can get the car onto the allotment, so we dodged the rain in the car, looking at a road map and wondering where in Norfolk we could go for a weekend away; once all the main gardening jobs had been done, of course!
By 7 o’clock Sunday evening we’d finished, thoroughly damp to say the least, but pleased that we’d more-or-less caught up with ourselves. We celebrated with a nice bottle of rosé.

Whether the weather be fine?

April – my favourite spring month. The weather’s warming up and generally becoming more pleasant, allowing me to get on with more things in the garden. At least it better be!! The weather forecast doesn’t sound great for this weekend, but let’s see what can be done.
Talking of weather, the Met Office has released its forecast for the coming summer.
Apparently, it’s expected to be a 'typical British summer' – whatever that is these days. Summer temperatures are more likely to be warmer than average and rainfall near or above average for the three months of summer.
The risk of exceptional rainfall on the same scale as the summer of 2007 remains a ‘very low probability’ – so that’s a maybe, then!
One of the Met Office Directors has said that the long-range forecasts are proving useful to numerous groups and organisations to help them plan ahead. They are not forecasts that can be used to plan a summer holiday or an outdoor event. The Head of Forecasting said that the predictions for last autumn, winter and spring have all provided accurate advice, giving more confidence in this summer forecast. So now we know.
I’ve got the next Garden Media Guild newsletter to produce, so I’m off back to work. Luckily, come rain or shine I can at least get on with the ‘day’ job.

Easter - was it really Easter!

What a washout – or snowout this Easter was. This is one of the most unpleasant ones I can remember. Snow, biting cold winds, frosts and cold temperatures. They all combined together to make me feel inclined to stay indoors and eat Easter eggs and hot cross buns. But there were things that had to be done.
Ever hopeful that the Met Office had got the forecast wrong I ordered a tonne of compost for the front garden. We'd decided it needed a complete revamp, so had dug everything out in autumn and dug over the soil for the winter weather to break it down. The weather had certainly done its job and the soil was ready for some invigorating BOM – bulky organic matter. It arrived at 7am on Thursday – which kind of upset the neighbours! It was good stuff, really well rotted, so I started shovelling it in place. I didn’t want to overdo things, so got about half of it moved.
On Saturday it was time to brave the snow, sleet and horrendous driving conditions on the M11 to shoot down to Chelmsford for Gardening Plus on BBC Essex. I think most of the good people of Essex had decided to stay indoors too, as we were really busy with phone calls, texts and e-mails.
We had a range of questions – including plants for an Australian garden and various pest and pruning conundrums. But strangely, most of the discussion was about wildlife – the unwanted sort that can make a mess of the garden – squirrels, foxes and deer. We came up with our stock answers, but the favourite cure of the listeners was male urine. Yes, it has to be male, but apparently to those in the know it really works as a deterrent.
We also had a couple of guests in the studio. The first, Aydin Tanseli, is the Director of Cropaid. The company’s product of the same name is a natural plant antifreeze that increases plants’ resistance to heat, cold and frost – how timely! It contains a mixture of friendly bacteria, minerals and vitamins and is sprayed on the plants. Apparently, it is widely used commercially and so I’m going to give it a whirl at home.
The second guest runs a veg box scheme so we had a big box of organically- grown vegetables to munch on, alongside the hot cross buns and Easter eggs. We ate the purple sprouting broccoli with our Sunday lunch and it was really tasty.
Bank Holiday Monday was spent moving the rest of the BOM onto the front garden – and the back garden, as there was more than we needed just for the front. The rest of the day was spent doing maintenance – mainly watering of plants in the greenhouse and frames, young seedlings in the propagator. Some of the radishes sown last weekend for the RHS radish trial have germinated (well at least ‘Rudi’ has) and so I needed to make a frame to suspend the polythene above them – obviously too cold to remove it completely. Then another snow flurry and a cold northerly squall made me think I'd had enough - time to go inside for more chocolate and buns. Happy Easter!