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!

Getting blown away

Wow, it's windy. And if there's one thing I hate (since experiencing the Great Storm of 1987) it's wind. We've had a few fence panels become dislodged, but managed to rescue them before they completely blew away. Now I'm inside catching up with work - rather than being outside, which is what I'd prefer.
In the lead up to the week before the big gardening weekend - Easter - I've been recording more messages for Garden Radio. Looks like potting compost, young herbaceous plants and a vast array of fertilisers are the big things being promoted in garden centres - and it looks like there are a lot of great offers available.
The broad beans and lettuces in the growing frame are growing at great speed. They even needed a watering this week, as the conditions in there are so warm that the soil had dried out quite a lot. Then typically it started to rain soon afterwards. Never mind, the rain just can't penetrate deep enough, so they needed a good watering. Mind you, according to my Oregon Scientific weather station we had 32mm of rain last night. The pond certainly looks full!
The garlic plants in the lean-to frame, which were meant for the allotment are growing well and have put on a spurt of growth. Sadly, the allotment isn’t quite ready for them yet, so I had a change of heart and have planted out two rows in the raised beds. There’s still a tray of 12 left so these can go out onto the allotment at a later stage. They might need potting up first though as the cells are getting chocka with roots.
I made the first outdoor sowing yesterday of radish - four cultivars in fact as I'm taking part in the RHS radish trial. Can't wait to see how each one grows and, more importantly, eat them.
And I've also managed to sow some chilli and sweet peppers in the propagator.
I’ve just received some young tomato plants from Suttons. These are plants they want to trial. There’s ‘Elegance’ and ‘Hundreds and Thousand’ plus a grafted plant of ‘Elegance’. Suttons are selling grafted plants this year on a rootstock that will give them greater strength to fight off diseases including tomato blight. After last year’s fight with blight I’m looking forward to seeing how they perform – although I’m not looking forward to blight returning as bad as it was last year.

Voice in the ether

One of the other things that I get up to on a monthly basis, and really enjoy doing, is recording the monthly gardening and promotional messages for Garden Radio. This is the in-store music and messaging service for garden centres, now playing in more than 90 outlets throughout the UK.
This service is a great way for garden centres to promote their special offers and gives timely tips to customers when they visit the centre.
So, if you've ever wandered around a garden centre and heard a voice over the PA system saying "Now's the time to buy your petunias...!" or similar messages, the likelihood is it's me.
Visit the Garden Radio website if you want to know more

Itchy fingers

I'm getting impatient. It’s that time of year when gardeners can’t make up their minds what to do – and either get really frustrated or do silly things too early and regret it later.
OK, yes I’ve done some pottering around the garden – tidying this and straightening that. But I want to get on with seed sowing, major projects and the like.
So what has been happening in the great outdoors? Well, I’ve been hacking back (that’s a technical term for severe pruning!) a large pyracantha screen along one side of the garden and started to revamp one of the borders – it’s tired, the plants need looking at and the soil has deteriorated, so needs some new life putting in it. So we’ve been lifting and dividing perennials and repotting other things ready for the big change over.
I’ve managed to plant out some of the broad beans and winter/spring lettuces under cloches. The onions under lights have been repotted and look like they’re doing OK.
Now if this weekend promises to be as good as the Met Office says – rather than being a miserable, cold fog-bound one like last weekend, maybe I can work off some of the impatience and frustration.

Radio Gaga!

This weekend was another radio fest – on Saturday I was on BBC Essex doing the Gardening Plus programme, and Sunday on BBC Radio Cambridgeshire on Dougan Does Gardening. Both have a strong element of answering listeners’ questions and having a general chat about gardening.

On Gardening Plus a lively text debate erupted over how to keep water butts clear of mosquito and other insect larvae. My approach was to keep the butt covered with a lid and use either potassium permanganate (1 teaspoon per full water butt) or one of the products available commercially. One listener suggested adding young goldfish to eat the larvae, whereas another suggested adding a covering of petrol! I think the goldfish idea would work well as long as the butt didn’t drain completely, but I’m not sure about the health and safety aspects of adding petrol; I suggested a better solution might be to add a layer of cooking oil. The final note went to the listener who reminded us that leaving the lid on if you were using the goldfish approach may not be conducive to the fish!

Other questions included using sawdust, coal ash and soot as soil improvers; growing auriculas, jacarandas and Japanese wineberry; problems with hellebores (leaf spot), onions (neck rot), kiwi fruit (no pollinator) and swedes (soil too acidic, free draining and not consolidated enough); pruning blackberries, lilac and broom. Finally, a big thank you to the listener who phoned in at the end of the programme. His question flashed up on the screen that he wanted help ‘growing herbs’. When we asked which herbs in particular, he replied ‘you know, herb’. We soon realised he was talking about The herb – or marijuana. After reminding him it was illegal he hung up.

On Dougan Does Gardening we had questions about pruning Campsis radicans; growing potatoes, tomatoes, brassicas and associated problems with blight and cabbage white butterflies; propagating leylandii and rubber plants; dead patches on conifers, woolly aphids on apples and blind daffodils

Both programmes also looked at the problems associated with paving over front gardens, garden grabbing and the effect both have on water run-off and waterlogging. In the UK we’re paving and grabbing at a rate of knots, which is adding to our existing problem of flooding. And if the theories of climate change are correct – warmer, wetter winters – then the problem can only get worse. As I like to tell everyone: “We’re all doomed!” The RHS has a useful leaflet on front gardens; go to www.rhs.org.uk/gardeningmatters for a free download. Personally, I’m helping things go in the opposite direction. We’ve removed all the tired plants from the front garden, removed all the gravel and the thick plastic planting membrane and we’re in the process of improving the soil, adding lots of organic matter to aid drainage (we’re ‘blessed’ with heavy clay soil) and planting up with lots of drought-loving plants. Now, there’s a contradiction if ever I heard one!

Weather watching

Being British and, worse than that, a British gardener, I’m fascinated with the weather. It is so important for deciding what to grow, when to plant and sow and whether it’s possible to go outside and do some gardening! And now that the climate is meant to be changing I thought it was time I kept an eye on it.
There are people that do this professionally – the Met Office and the weather station at RHS Garden Wisley for instance – but I want to check things out at home and in my garden.
So, I’ve decided to install a weather station in the garden. I’ve got my hands on an Oregon Scientific Advanced Professional Weather Station (WMR200). This provides ‘the ultimate forecast’; it gives comprehensive weather information, including weather forecast, indoor/outdoor temperature, humidity, barometric pressure, UV measurement, rainfall, heat index and wind direction and speed.
Once it’s up and running I’ll let you know how I get on.
So, is the climate changing? Well, a further indicator that it may be is that the record for the warmest night in January was broken in several places across the south of England on Friday (January 18). The temperature in London was 13.2C, beating the previous record of 12.7C. In my garden in Peterborough the temperature only went down to 10.3C. Anyway the plants seem to be enjoying it. I had to give a radio interview today, discussing daffodils and other plants that are in flower at the moment. January is now the new spring!

The early bird...

“I’m late!, I’m late! For a very important date.” So said the White Rabbit in Alice in Wonderland. And if I was an exhibition veg grower I would be late. I’ve just sown some ‘Mammoth Improved’ onion seeds for this year, whereas exhibition growers always try to sow on Boxing Day or as soon after the shortest day as possible.
These are now sitting in the propagator in the garage. Sadly, I can’t get electricity down to the greenhouse, so always have to sow seeds nearer to home. In the past I’ve always used the conservatory, but light levels here (it’s north facing) mean that the seedlings grow a bit tall and lank. But how can the garage be any better. Well, my girlfriend is the Gardening Editor on Garden News and she’s testing a growlight and we’ve set it up in the garage to see how well it does. We’ll be using it to grow on a range of plants; I’ll let you know how we get on.
So how did 2007 end on the veg front? Well the year itself was a complete washout – no pun intended – and one of the worst I can remember for veg growing. I feel really sorry for all those who started veg gardening for the first time, only to be beset with failures, disappointment, doom and gloom. But be positive – this year just can’t be any worse, can it?!
Like most people I suffered (well, not personally you understand, it was my crops) from potato and tomato blight – although a couple of sprays with Dithane did hold it in check and the crops were OK.
The low light levels in summer and resulting cool temperatures did for my aubergines, sweet peppers and courgettes – the crops were abysmal (keep it a secret, but from six aubergine plants I cropped one aubergine!). Thankfully, the chilli peppers were a huge success and in the pantry I’ve still got a couple of jars of dried chillies plus some fiery chilli jam.
Leafy salad crops, on the other hand, grew really well, lasted until November and basically I was self-sufficient in salads for nine months. I also feasted on peas, runner beans, French beans and globe artichokes from the allotment.
So how has 2008 started? Well the garage still contains two types of potatoes and the very last of the onions. The allotment has crops of Jerusalem artichokes, a range of brassicas and leeks. At home the only crop growing outside is kale, but I have broad beans and garlic growing on in the lean-to frame and lettuce in the greenhouse all ready for planting out.
So here’s to 2008 – let’s hope the weather is just a bit more conducive to veg growing and we have a much better year. If you’re reading this please join with me by crossing your fingers, toes and anything else you can lay your hands on.