Cordyline death...everywhere

This weekend I made my regular trip to Chelmsford to guest on the Ken Crowther Gardening Programme on BBC Essex. Ken was on holiday, so it was up to me to give all the gardening advice. It was a busy two hours with lots of calls, texts and e-mails.
The over-riding question was on cordylines - all suffering from the winter cold. It looks like cordylines have been one of the biggest casualties of the cold snap - we had numerous calls on this one, all wanting to know what to do to save them. I gave a talk last night at the Middlesex Hardy Plant Society and again cordylines were a hot (or freezing cold) topic of conversation. Well, if you're worried about your cabbage palms, here's some advice.

The vast majority of other questions on Ken's programme were to do with grow your own - both fruit and veg - so it looks like this is still a big gardening subject for 2011 - despite what some industry experts are saying.
We had questions on what to do with seed potatoes (to chit or not to chit that IS the question), growing sweetcorn, blueberries, scab on apples, what to do with too many leeks (eat them?), planting soft fruit, splitting and moving rhubarb, getting the best from raspberries and starting a new veg garden in a small space, among others.
Another new gardener thought her whole garden was 'dead', but it was just that she wasn't used to brown being the predominant garden colour in winter. And, like my last stint on the show, what to do to get the best from orchids - obviously either the most popular houseplant or one that causes more angst than any other - was worrying the county.
So, gardening is alive and kicking in the minds of gardeners - even if all their garden plants are dead!

ABC of amaryllis, bonsai & cyclamen

I've been guesting on Ken Crowther's gardening programme on BBC Essex again, sorting out the county's problems.
It's odd how questions go around in packs/trends and this time everyone was fretting about their Christmas purchases or Christmas presents.
How to look after amaryllis (don't just chuck them away after flowering but keep them growing), bonsais (by the dozen) dropping leaves - mainly due to overwatering - and cyclamen not flowering - or flowering very well if the callers were showing off. One caller had flowers on 30cm long stems - a tree cyclamen.
One caller wanted my thoughts on composts and fertilisers for his crops on the allotment - not an easy answer to give in two minutes - especially as he had spoken to other people, read several books and they all contradicted each other/gave different advice and his head was in a spin. My 'Hodge's guide to soil & plant feeding in two minutes' seemed to sort things out for him. One of the things he'd read was that he needed to apply ammonium nitrate now, followed by sulphate of potash in February, followed by ... I just told him to chuck a couple of ounces of Growmore around. As you'll see I like to make things simple.
Sadly, we then had follow-up calls asking why I hadn't featured feeds for this situation or that plant or the other condition. My suggestion of a two-hour programme dedicated to compost, manure and fertiliser didn't go down too well with the powers that be at Essex - surprisingly. Some people say I speak a load of old compost all the time anyway.
Another caller then wanted 'Hodge's two-minute guide to potting composts', which opened a whole new can of worms - almost literally!

Tomorrow I'm off to BBC Radio Cambridgeshire to do their gardening slot at noon with the lovely Philippa Pearson. More muck & magic?

Thanks for all the rain - and snow

I'm so pleased that February has been cold, wet and windy. If it had been nicer, I would have been feeling guilty about not going out onto the allotment. But with sticky, clay soil, any work done there would just cause problems with soil structure.

Instead, I've been up to my neck with work. Writing and editing the RHS Allotment Journal has meant I've been burning the midnight oil, but it's more or less finished - just writing December's copy left to do.

I've also been continuing my Garden News tests and my garage has now been turned into Hodge's Gardening Emporium - 37 pairs of secateurs, the National Collection of Horticultural Fleece, boxes of just about every kind of granular fertiliser on the market and now six or seven small electric lawnmowers. My next request will be for bags of potting composts. I just hope I never need to actually get anything else out of the garage or I'll cause a product avalanche!

From March 3, I'm going to be presenting Garden Bargains on Ideal World three days a week. IW is launching a new channel, and Garden Bargains will be on from 1-6pm every day of the week. So, if you love doing your garden shopping from the comfort of your sofa, tune in and start buying!

Yesterday, I was down in Essex on Ken Crowther's gardening show on BBC Essex. As usual, an interesting mix of questions - although there was an emphasis on houseplants (I wonder why!) with amaryllis and orchids taking top popularity position. A lot of people wanted to know what to do with amaryllis after flowering. The easy answer is keep them growing for as long as possible to help feed the bulb for next year's flowering. Keep the compost moist, feed every 10-14 days and only remove the foliage once it starts to die down naturally.

Another popular question was what to do with shrubs and other plants damaged by frost and snow. Again, the answer is simple - leave well alone and wait until growth starts in spring. Once you know which branches are alive and growing, you can prune out and remove anything that's dead. If nothing regrows (but be patient and wait until the end of April or even May) - then the plant is dead and it's time to dig it up and put something new in its place; maybe from Garden Bargains!

Enjoy your garden - if you can get out in it, that is!

Twitchy fingers

Yesterday's trip to Chelmsford to guest on Ken Crowther's gardening programme on BBC Essex, revealed a nation (well, a county) desperate to get gardening. Good news that gardening is still alive & kicking in this cold spell. Possibly, bad news that we tried to curtail people's impatient, itchy, twitchy fingers to get started. Basically, for most jobs it's too early, so stay indoors and browse the seed catalogues and get your orders in. Oh, that's such a gardening cliche for this time of year.

Strangely, we had a lot of questions about pruning. A lot of people have noticed snow damage or plants growing out of control and we gave them the OK to get cutting back, but not drastic hacking as cold weather could cause further damage. Quite a few people wanted to prune cherries and other Prunus species - this is definitely a no-no as bacterial canker can get into the cuts and cause extreme damage - even death. Even more strangely, I didn't use this opportunity to promote my book on pruning. But I did use it to promote my new series of product review features in Garden News; the March Tried & Tested is on secateurs! We even had a question on how to use fleece and again I managed to surreptitiously (or not) promote the February's Buyer's Guide on fleece!

We also had a lot of questions on fruit, veg and grow your own. Not strangely, I did use this opportunity to promote my new book, the RHS Allotment Handbook, which is on sale in February. Oh, I'm such a self-promoting tart! Well, no-one else is going to do it for me.

Other questions included aphids on honeysuckle (even in this weather?), propagating chrysanthemums, flower buds dropping off orchids, clivias and amaryllis not flowering and growing lavender indoors.

Anyway, we had a good time and had a bit of a laugh with the listeners, which, after all, is what it's all about.

King Ken of Essex

Yesterday, I was with King Ken, Ken Crowther whose BBC Essex gardening programme won The Garden Media Guild Local Radio Broadcast of the Year Award on Thursday's Awards Lunch in London. It's a great programme, with wonderful listening figures and a worthy winner of the Award. Well done Ken.
As usual, we had a wealth of gardening questions to answer - despite the lure of Christmas shopping and other weekend delights.
Winter-flowering pansies were a hot topic. One listener, keen to be infected with the gardening bug, had sown his own from seed, but wondered why the plants were so small and hadn't flowered. Sadly, he hadn't sown the seed until August, so the plants hadn't had time to develop into large enough, flowering plants.
Similarly, another listener had grown Brussels sprouts from seed, but again the plants were small with no delicious sprouts. Again, late seed sowing - and possibly using a late-cropping variety - was to blame.
This question initiated the Great Sprout Debate - do you love them or hate them? What's the best way of cooking them to get an edible sprout, rather than a pile of mush? Personally, I steam them.
Other grow your own questions followed. How best to overwinter an olive?; why were pears soft and mushy on the inside?; what to do with a sweet potato plant that someone had just been given (and how to keep it alive until planting out time in June)? But the best question of the day went to Trevor who wanted to know if he could use an old bath to grow mushrooms! We suggested using it to cover the manure to keep it warm and exclude light for the mushrooms to grow. Trevor promised to let us know how he got on - and bring us some mushrooms to eat if it worked. To quote the great Ian Dury (the Essex boy of The Blockheads fame) - 'Clever Trevor'!

Problems in Essex

Yesterday I whizzed down to Chelmsford for my regular spot on Gardening Plus on BBC Essex with Ken Crowther. As usual, it was rammed full of gardening questions and problems - as well as some interesting observations.
Grow your own is still as popular as ever, as lots of questions were on fruit and veg.
As with most areas of the country, Essex is plagued with unripened tomatoes. The usual banana skin trick or putting in drawers with an apple were all suggested as remedies. And, of course, making green tomato chutney with everything that doesn't ripen. Back at Hodge Towers, I've been making a gallon or so of tomato sauce with my beefsteak and other larger tomatoes that are excess to requirements. Not that I'm showing off; they've only just started to ripen and it's too cold for salads.
Apple, pear and plum pruning questions were also popular - people just seem desperate to prune their fruit trees when, in fact, most are best left to get on with it unless it's absolutely essential.
Passionflower fruit is obviously ripening this year and listeners wanted to know if they could eat them. Well, you can, but there's not much of it in each fruit and it tastes insipid; I do know some people who make a jelly out of it - but it doesn't taste of much.
Plants dying or wilting because of the dry weather also seems to be a problem in the South East - hydrangeas and rhubarb being two that came up. Both were growing in light soils, but even heavy Essex clay soils are suffering as soil water reserves have become exhausted.
When you do Q&As you always get people who want to show off their prowess. One listener only managed to get five out of 26 penstemon cuttings to root (I said well done for getting five to root), another listener phoned in to say all 50 of his cuttings had rooted, but did impart the wisdom of his success - rooting in pure vermiculite and making 1inch long cuts down the stem to improve rooting.
The best question of the day? Is there a lawn seed mixture that is dog resistant and will tolerate urine damage?! Well, of course, ryegrass mixes are tougher than those made up from fine-leaved grasses, but they won't tolerate 'liquid dog fertiliser'!

Ideal bargains

Being a bit of a 'media whore', I love working across all the various communication channels - and this weekend was no exception. Saturday at BBC Essex and Sunday presenting Garden Bargains on Ideal World shopping channel on TV.
I love radio as a medium - people have always said I have a great face for radio. Even though you can't see your listeners you do get a real sense of being in direct contact with them and talking to them in their living room or garden. Ken Crowther's Gardening Plus programme is a three-hour gardening 'fest' and I've been guesting on ken's programmes for around 15-16 years. It's always a lively show, with lots of people phoning, texting, writing in and e-mailing their questions to us and this weekend was no exception. In fact, we had to limit everyone to one question - some people like to get their money's worth - in order to fit everyone in. Sometimes we get asked a lot of the same or similar questions, which is useful for me as it gives an idea of trends happening in people's gardens. This week it was more bitty with no clear groupings of questions/problems - although smelly waterbutts did come out on top!
The Garden Bargains programme is a manic two-hour show selling a huge range of garden plants and products. This week we had more than 20 products to get through - from succulents and angelonias to fruit trees, a vineyard collection, raspberry and strawberry plants. The fruit always sell well and it's a sure sign that grow your own is still proving to be a real winner with home gardeners.
I'm back on Ideal World tomorrow evening and again next Sunday. All I need is the list of things we're selling and then I can start building up my enthusiasm tomorrow morning.
Today looks like being dry (oh please!) and I'm hoping to get a chance to shoot over to the allotment for a few hours - that's if it hasn't floated away in all the torrential rain of the last few days. I've just had another BlightWatch alert, so I need to check the tomatoes and potatoes for signs of damage - please, let's not have another year like the last two!

Rhubarb, rhubarb, rhubarb – and agapanthus

I’ve just got back from my latest stint on Gardening Plus with Ken Crowther on BBC Essex – another action-packed, three-hour programme with loads of questions, comments and problems to solve. And lots to eat – this time a local frozen yoghurt manufacturer brought in some delicious tubs stuffed with fruit and fabulous jersey and Guernsey milk creaminess. The programme always flies by and it wasn’t long before the three hours were up. We did have to keep cutting across live to the build-up to Jade Goody’s funeral though.

It’s weird how themes of questions start to emerge. Whether it’s because someone asks a question and then everyone else thinks: “Oh yes, I’ve got a question about that plant too”, or whether it’s because that’s the way it is, I don’t know. Anyway this week it was mainly rhubarb and agapanthus – although fruit and other plants in containers came in high up the list as well.

The rhubarb theme had many sections. Most revolved around poor, spindly crops and what to do to put it right. Others were about rhubarb going to seed – already! One phone call was about using rhubarb leaves in the planting hole for brassica plants to prevent clubroot. Luckily, for us, it was a comment that it worked, not a question about whether it can be used. The reason? Because as rhubarb hasn’t been passed as a garden pesticide we can’t recommend its use as such. Crazy, but true. Another text message was about the poisonous virtue or rhubarb leaves – yes, they are, so don’t eat them!

The agapanthus questions were about getting good flowers, should they be grown in pots rather than the ground as this keeps them potbound and so flowering well, the virtue of splitting them and how to look after them generally.

Back home and it’s a glorious April day, so I’m off into the garden.

I’ve got some lawn care to get on with. After the winter wet, there’s been a spot of die out and general grass thinning, so I’m going to oversow the whole lawn with grass seed to help thicken it out. It needs a good feed, and there’s a bit of weed to control – mainly speedwell, which is never easy.

All my plants in containers need a little TLC too. So I’ll be topping up with fresh compost, feeding with a controlled-release fertiliser and using Sulphur Soil, both from Greenacres Horticultural Supplies, on all the lime-haters, especially blueberries and Japanese maples. And some of them are in need of a good drink too. I know the feeling, so it’s gardening and beer sipping for me this afternoon.

Spring has sprung on BBC Essex

I've just got back from my latest guest appearance on Gardening Plus on BBC Essex with Ken Crowther. And although it's a one-and-a-half hour drive down to the studios in Chelmsford today it was a great journey. Sun shining - shades on - lovely and warm - reaching 12.5C on the car thermometer - and lots of plants bursting into new growth. All in all, a bit of a change from the miserable weather of the last few weeks. Don't get me wrong - I love the snow and the cold of winter - but it's just great to see spring is on it's way - hopefully.

And maybe it was the spring-like weather that ensured we were inundated with phone calls, e-mails and text messages. In fact, I'm feeling mentally drained it was so busy. An interesting selection of questions too, not just the run-of-the-mill when do I do this. Some of the questions - and answers - sparked further questions and replies - always a good sign of a healthy show.

One of the great things about gardening is that there aren't always exact answers to everything - sometimes if you do something that isn't the 'set book' answer and it works, who cares?

Ken and I had a couple of disagreements today, which has resulted in the listeners going off and running some experiments for us. At least, they say they will and I hope they do and come back to us with the results.

The first related to cutting back newly-planted raspberry canes to ground level to take away the old growth. The idea being that it encourages more new growth from ground level. I said I would, Ken said he wouldn't; so the listener has agreed to do both to her row of plants.

The second was about pruning some really old roses - around 45-50 years' old - that have been neglected and not pruned for several years. Ken said he would just cut them all back hard right down to around 23-30cm (9-12in). I said I would tidy them up, removing all the dead, weak and crowded growth, then cut them back by about half, cutting back harder next year if necessary. As the listener has around 25 bushes she agreed to do half and half and come back to us.

Some people think I'm mad - and it is a question for debate. When I told someone last night that I was leaving at 7.15am (on a Saturday!), would be driving in total for three hours and doing a three-hour live programme they said I must be paid well to do it. When I told them I wasn't paid anything but did it because I enjoyed it, eyebrows were raised and the loony comments were made. But I do enjoy it, although some good British sterling in the pocket would make it even more enjoyable!

Where has the year gone?

Is it really the middle of autumn already? Judging by the first frost last night I guess it must be. Maybe it’s my age. But this year has just shot past and I’m already getting ready for the winter onslaught.

I’ve spent the last few days starting to put the garden to bed for the winter. I’ve started digging up all the half-hardy bedding plants, potting them up individually and putting them in the greenhouse. What was full of tomatoes, peppers and aubergines is now rammed to the gunnels with bedding, tender bulbs, succulents that can’t take winter wet and just about everything else that needs protection. I’ve still got the dahlias, cannas, hedychiums and colocassias to find some room for.

On Gardening Plus on BBC Essex on Saturday, we were inundated with calls, e-mails and texts from people who are all still keen on getting the best from their gardens and desperate for some timely advice. Whether it’s because they want to talk to a human being or whether they’re yet to discover the wonders of the internet I’m not sure, but there still seems to be a place for the ‘old fashioned’ means of information gathering.

Gardening clubs also look like they’re holding their own in the massive tide of new technology. Although, sadly, it seems that it’s the older gardeners who still attend their local club regularly – there aren’t that many where I turn up to give talks that have a good representation by younger (that is under-50!) gardeners. Again, I think it’s having human interaction and having a real place to gather socially that keeps them going; even social networking sites, forums and blogs and other recent web developments can’t offer that – not yet anyway!

So, although I’m firmly in favour of the joys of virtual gardening, let’s hear it for the old technology and the great British tradition of gardening clubs, magazines and local radio stations.

Gardening Plus...

We had a busy day on Gardening Plus on BBC Essex yesterday. I think the wet weather meant everyone was indoors catching up on their gardening advice – rather than outside actually doing it.

The morning started with some interesting pictures of an unidentified plant – Cannabis sativa or marijuana, the seed from which had come from a batch of bird food. The owner thought it probably was and was off to destroy the plant.

There were quite a few calls, texts and e-mails from people whose trees, shrubs and woody climbers had suddenly died this summer. Although difficult to do an exact diagnosis over the radio, the likely culprit is phytophthora root rot – a soil-borne disease that has become prevalent this year due to the wet weather and waterlogged soil.

One listener wanted to know how to control rust on pelargoniums that had spread from her hollyhocks. This sparked an interesting discussion that, although some diseases, such as botrytis, will spread from different plant species, others, such as rusts for instance, are specific to a particular plant or group or plants. So, rose rust only attacks roses, onion rust only attacks onions and other members of the allium family, pelargonium rust only pelargoniums and hollyhock rust only hollyhocks. Rusts are some of the most difficult diseases to control; carefully picking off affected leaves and spraying the rest of the plant with Dithane being just about all you can do – or assigning the plant to the dustbin if all else fails.

Another disease that provoked some interest is a new one in the UK – impatiens downy mildew, which appeared in 2003/2004 and kills busy Lizzie plants. Full details are available on the RHS website.

We had a call from someone who had taken over a neglected allotment and whose potatoes were riddled with wireworm and wanted to know how to control it. Sadly, there aren’t any cures, but wireworm are usually only present on undisturbed soil, and so tend to decline as the soil is cultivated – in a few years they should disappear altogether. We then had a text from a listener who said they controlled them by cutting old potatoes in half and part burying them in the soil. The wireworm start to feed on the potatoes and they can then be lifted and the wireworm removed – or fed to chickens, according to the texter.

Probably the most interesting call of the day was from a man who was trying to grow his own field mushrooms at home. He had cut an old mushroom into pieces and buried them under the turf of his lawn. He wanted to know when he’d start to get mushrooms. I answered it was more likely if rather than when as I doubted this would work. However, he was convinced it would and we asked him to keep us informed when he saw his first mushrooms – and to send us some!

Radio, radio

It's weird how I can go for weeks without doing any radio programmes and then they come round like proverbial buses.
On Monday I was recording my monthly pre-record inserts into Jane Smith's Saturday breakfast programme for BBC Radio Cambridgeshire. I'm so glad we now pre-record them as they go out at 7.45am ish and I used to hate having to get up at that time on a Saturday to do them over the phone. And after a heavy night out on Friday I'm sure they didn't sound that great either! We've also started recording a new item called granddad's garden (I'm not so hot on the name - being a young chicken and all that!). It's aimed at trying to beat the credit crunch by going back to first principles, doing things like they were in the olden days and so saving money.
Next on the agenda is a trip down to BBC Essex on Saturday for Ken Crowther's Gardening Plus programme. This has replaced Jane Smith's phone-in for the Saturday morning hangover slot; they used to start at noon but now they start at 9am and it's a one and a half hour drive down to Chelmsford. Never mind - it's all good fun. Just must remember not to overdo it this Friday night!

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!

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!

Radio questions

It has been a busy radio week for me - Gardening Plus (the new name for Down to Earth, which is now three hours long) on BBC Essex and the Thursday phone-in and Dougan Does Gardening on BBC Radio Cambridgeshire.
Along with the usual "How do I kill this or that bug, disease or weed?" (rose blackspot is still a major concern for gardeners, even at this time of year) and "Why is this plant dying?", I've had some questions that may give some credence to changing climate.
Listeners have asked about looking after outdoor mimosas, lemons, olives, palms and even prickly pears - and this is the UK! The latter question came from a listener in Cambridge who had even managed to eat a few of her own prickly pears from a plant she had brought back from the Canary Islands earlier in the year. This was followed by a listener in London, who originally comes from South Africa, pointing out how they're basically a weed in that country because they propagate themselves so easily; chance would be a fine thing!
And, of course, there are always those willing to admit to the biggest of faux pas!; planting a monkey puzzle tree right outside the house in the front garden, planting a willow right next to a drain and someone even admitted to planting and growing pampas grass - the shame of it!!!