Spring on the allotment

True to my word, Sunday was spent on the allotment. Although we've had a slow start and didn't go there for weeks for one reason or another, I'm amazed at how good it looks. Hardly any weeds, and what there were came out really easily.

The main reason for going was to (finally) plant out the garlic, shallots and onion sets - both red and white.

We'd also been given a couple of blackcurrant 'Big Ben' bushes by Suttons and these needed planting out. This spectacular new blackcurrant has huge fruit - double the size of other varieties - and is very high yielding too. The fruits are produced early in the season and are sweet and juicy. Plants show good resistance to mildew and leaf spot.

After a spot of weeding and tidying up we'd more or less finished for the day - apart from harvesting a whole load of leeks, a load of cut daffs and some pretty unspectacular celeriac. They may have looked unspectacular but they have made some really delicious cream of celeriac soup.

It was interesting to see who and how the other plots had changed. The plot run by the school kids had disappeared and the gravel and raised beds were replaced with a standard plot. The greenhouse a few plots down had been completely de-glazed - apparently by the lovely youth of the area! New people had started two plots up from us - Clare picked them a bunch of daffs as a welcome present. But there was one standard - Bruce the site guardian - and his cultivator. His plots are the most cultivated anywhere, but he loves to rotovate other plots too if you let him. He can never understand why we say no. But we can never understand why he likes rotovating couch grass!

Spring resolutions under way

My new spring resolution - spend more time gardening not thinking about it, is working a treat. Yesterday I spent most of the day in the garden or doing things connected with gardening. Although, the spanking the Red Devils took from the Scousers did split up the day and make me sit indoors enduring torture - plus the texts from Liverpool supporting friends.

Most of the gardening time was spent making a start on getting the veg garden up and running.
The garden frame has been sitting on the raised beds all winter, so the soil was lovely and warm and welcoming for some early crops. So an early row of rocket, a row of beetroot 'Detroit' and one of lettuce 'Stoke' (a variety from the Heritage Seed Library) have joined the broad beans sowed last week.

Outside I put in a row of salad onion 'White Lisbon', Continental salad mix, radish 'Amethyst', celtuce and carrot 'Egmont Gold' (another from the Heritage Seed Library) plus some 'Early Purple Sprouting' broccoli in a seed bed.

I'm also testing a new product - the Seedbed Roll from The Master Herbalist. The company produces a couple of different types and I've used the English Summer Salad - a mix of lettuce and salad leaves. This is a professional way of growing veg that is meant to produce better and faster germination, stronger growth and needs less water and no chemical controls. The seed comes pre-sown on a biodegradable paper mat that is covered in a clear layer of compostable film that conserves moisture and warmth and acts like a propagator. It'll be interesting to see how it performs.

Finally, Clare and I set up our exotic veg seed sowing production line - filling pots, firming compost, writing labels, sowing seeds, covering with vermiculite and watering. We've sown our first batch of indoor tomatoes, aubergines, sweet and chilli peppers, basil and courgettes. Last year we sowed too much too early and all in one go - this year we're doing things more carefully and steadily to prevent the seedling mountain we suffered last year.

Well, The Archers omnibus has just finished, the sun is shining and it's a proper spring day out there, so we're off to the allotment. Twice in quick succession - the allotment won't know what hit it! But there's lots to do and we've got onions, shallots and garlic to plant as well as some new fruit trees and bushes.

Stir crazy

At least I think I might be going that way. What with an excess of work, excesses of weather and the fact that the EU decimal 100-hour day hasn't yet been introduced, I haven't had much/any/enough time in the garden recently.

Last weekend I managed a couple of hours - much of which was spent dealing with/tidying up the ivy-covered tree stump that came down in the snow; luckily it hadn't done much damage - apart from bending the frame of the lean-to greenhouse a tad. The lawn had its first cut of 2009 too, after nearly killing myself with the annual raking and scarifying. I even managed to sow a couple of rows and a couple of trays of broad beans, including an old heirloom variety called 'Martock'; don't know it, never grown it, but who cares!

Today was definitely - "right, I'm going to the allotment whatever happens" day; bad choice really. Apart from the fact that it was blowing a gale, it started raining/sleeting/hailing/snowing and was just flippin' cold. Never mind, I got quite a bit of tidying up done and even dug over quite a lot of it too. Message to self: must spend more time there this year; message from self: then don't take on lots of other/new projects as well.

Now, if only the clocks would go forward and that 100-hour day was introduced...!

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!

Snow blindness, snow panic

At this time of year gardeners panic about one thing - snow and what it'll do to their plants. Well panic not - it'll do very little damage per se. It's the cold and frost you need to worry about!

Even hardy plants can suffer from extensive periods of cold, freezing weather, especially if they're growing in containers (even the hardiest of plants can be killed if their rootballs freeze solid for weeks on end) and even more especially if the cold is combined with strong winds.

In fact, snow on the ground provides some insulation against cold, freezing weather and is a blessing in disguise. Until it melts that is, and the garden becomes waterlogged!

I guess there is one thing to worry about snow - snow loading. That is the weight of snow on branches and the foliage of evergreens bending them down to ground level or even causing them to snap.

I've had one casualty in the garden so far. An old tree stump covered in ivy became so snow loaded that all the ivy has bent away from the stump and flopped all over my lean-to greenhouse. It needed a prune anyway and this has given me the incentive to go out and do it - maybe this weekend if I don't freeze to death when I go out there. Being a gardening journo I spend most of my time sitting on my bum in a nice warm office.

The only thing that will panic over the stump/ivy situation is the robin who has nested in there for the last three years. But with some 'judicious' pruning I should be able to save its nest site for years to come.

Keeping Pest at Bay 2

Following my blog on November 5 about the future of garden chemicals, the future is now looking bleak following legislation passed by the European parliament.

MEPs voted overwhelmingly for the proposals for a Regulation on the Placing on the Market of Plant Protection Products. At the same time, they also voted in favour for the Sustainable Use of Pesticides Directive. Basically what this means is that under these new Europe-wide rules, substances that are potentially dangerous will be taken off the market. No bad thing? Well, the definition of 'potentially dangerous' is being disputed by a number of organisations and professional bodies.

It looks like, although again no-one seems completely clear on this yet, the regulations will come into force towards the end of 2010.

Chemicals on the list that are used by gardeners include bifenthrin (widely used in pesticide sprays), mancozeb (a broad-spectrum fungicide), systemic weedkiller glyphosate and metaldehyde, used in slug pellets.

The list of possible losses includes:
Weedkillers: 2,4 D, amitrole, dichlorprop-p, glufosinate, glyphosate, mecoprop-p.
Pesticides: bifenthrin, deltamethin, pyrethroid insecticides, methiocarb and metaldehyde.
Fungicides: mancozeb.

Even so, some of the bigger companies supplying pesticides to gardeners, especially Bayer Garden, are fighting back by producing new pesticides for gardeners. The company is introducing a couple of new products this year. Probably the most notable is Lawn Disease Control. Us gardeners haven't had a fungicide for lawn problems for several years now - and I've certainly noticed an increase in red thread disease in my lawn, so hopefully this new product will help keep this under control.

I'll keep you posted on anything new that happens.

Garden Monkey - RIP

It's the end of an era - a sad day for the gardening community. The Garden Monkey has decided to stop blogging - well, at least for the short-term anyway. He/she wants to spend more time on work that makes money! We'll all miss him/her and their delightful look at the gardening world.
But everything has a silver lining - perhaps now we'll be able to work out GM's identity - by checking on who is producing more paid-for work.

On the other hand, the directors of the RHS are embracing new technology. They're going to take part in a live online forum on January 20 from 9.30am to 12.30pm. If you're interested and want to take part, go to http://mygarden.rhs.org.uk/forums/310.aspx
It should be interesting and hopefully revealing.