Grow Your Own & Edible Garden Show

Wow, what a month it's been. After a slightly quiet and slightly nervous January, where workloads were looking a little low - February exploded into a massive work meltdown. To be honest, in January I was thinking OK, no worries, at least I can spend more time in the garden/on the allotment. As it turns out, at the moment the garden is something that 'exists' somewhere outside my office!

I signed up to be a tutor for MyGardenSchool.com - an online horticultural teaching facility, which meant sorting out scripts and images and going off to record the scripts for use in the online tutorials. They'll be going live by the beginning of April, so sign up if you want to learn from the master!

The RHS asked me to write another book for them in the practical gardening series - this time on pruning. Of course, I said, how long have I got (thinking four weeks, like the last three books)? 10 weeks was the reply - 10 weeks, wow - more than double the last three. However, three weeks into writing, I get an e-mail saying that schedules have been changed and I need to get it all finished in three week's time. A bit of a shock - but still 50% greater than previous books. Today I'm tackling pruning fruit.

Scotts Miracle-Gro has just asked me to help their Interactive Manager manage the website - lovethegarden.com - and work on their e-mail campaigns and e-newsletters, among other things.

The 'other' things include doing talks and demonstrations for the company at The Edible Garden Show on March 18-20 and the Capel Manor Spring Gardening Show on April 2-3. If you're going to either show come and say hi!

I have promised myself a trip to the allotment this weekend. I'll probably need to take a machete!

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.

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!

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!

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.