Flexible gardening friend

I'm helping to launch a new gardening product - FIGO, your flexible gardening friend. For those of you who love a bit of DIY dalliance in the garden - building things to help make your gardening better & easier - then FIGO is definitely something for you.
The versatile three- and four-arm adaptors can be used with a range of bamboo canes and other poles to make loads of things for the garden - from wigwams and other structures for climbing plants to plant protection supports, cold frames, cloches and even fruit cages! In fact, just about anything you can think of - the only limitation is your imagination!

FIGO was invented and designed by gardener Sharon Wong, after a frustrating time trying to use an existing product. Sharon was fed up with sharing her vegetables and flowers with rabbits, pigeons and badgers, so she bought a product with claims that, ‘using a set of these connectors, plant protection cages that are strong and versatile could be built, quickly and easily using bamboo canes’. It sounded like the answer to her prayers. Her experience with them was quite the opposite, in fact, it was a long and frustrating process.
Not one bamboo cane in her vast collection fitted the holes in the connectors. Trying to overcome the problem, she shaved the ends of thick canes to make them fit. The task took forever. Having finally sorted a set of canes that more or less fitted, where the fit was not perfect, the canes kept falling out. She resorted to using tape, but it was still most unsatisfactory. After that, she decided to have a go at designing something herself!
We're currently testing and redefining the product to ensure it stands up to the rigours of the most avid gardener. FIGO should be available from garden centres and mail order suppliers from September. I'll let you know when they go on sale.

Today is the first day of the rest of your life

Well, actually that was yesterday! But having so much to do, I didn't get round to blogging. Same old, same old...
Because the plan to help write the RHS book on allotments looks like it's going ahead and the publisher, Mitchell Beazley, wants to take pictures on the allotment, I thought I'd better give it a spruce up. Although it's looking pretty good, there are some areas that need titivating.
So, I had a quick weed through, tied in and sideshooted the tomatoes and planted out some more peppers, courgettes and aubergines that didn't make it into the plots at home. A bit late I know, but I'm hoping for an Indian Summer and a later crop.
I also sowed a late crop of runner and French beans.
Then I harvested the garlic.
But most of the time was spent harvesting fruit: apricots - probably around 250 of the golden jewels - redcurrants, blueberries, gooseberries and raspberries.
The thing about a lot of fruit is that it's all ready to harvest in one go and, if you get a bumper crop, what do you do with it all? Simple, head to the Hodge fruit factory.
The evening was spent making raspberry and apricot jam, bottling stewed apricots, making apricot and blueberry crumble, redcurrant meringue etc., etc... The pantry, freezer and fridge are now packed to the gunnels with fruity delights.

More work on the horizon. I received confirmation that I'll be doing some telly work over the coming weeks - guesting on Garden Bargains on the Ideal World shopping channel. If you want to see me in action, then tune in between 11am and 1pm on July 19, 26 and August 2. I've got a couple of Tuesday evening slots too. Eat your heart out Richard Jackson!

The end of an era

Friday was my last day with the RHS and this weekend is the first to put the new life plan into operation.
Sadly, I think it's all gone to pot already.
First, I wanted to enjoy watching The Ashes: well, the England team have ruined that by not turning up and by playing total rubbish.
Second, I wanted some time off working to enjoy working/playing in the garden and on the allotment: well, I've been asked to judge the Garden News Gardener of the Year competition (I did that for six years while I was the Gardening Editor of the title and loved it) later this month and to write a book on allotment gardening by - yes, you've guessed, the RHS!
Anyone else out there want to help ruin my summer by piling on the work?!?

And now the end is near...

So much for promises and resolutions. I said this year I was going to make a major effort at blogging and what happens? I'm so busy I don't even have time to do half the things I want to.

Anyhoo, all that is about to change - no honestly!

After eight and a half years of managing/editing RHS Online, the RHS website I'm about to be made redundant! So, more than likely I'll have more time on my hands than I know what to do with.

The RHS has been tasked with making a 10% cut in its wage bill - making between 80 and 100 people redundant - and I'm going to be one of them. I suppose it could be worse - it could have happened in the winter. So now I can enjoy the summer in the garden and on the allotment and watch the Ashes on Sky and drink some beer. Every cloud...

More seed sowing - and growing on

The evening's are lighter and the days are longer, which means just one thing - there's time in the evening to do some gardening after getting home from work. So, with one hand carefully nurturing a bottle of Perroni, I've put the other to good use this week sowing more veg in pots and putting them in the propagator.

Joining the assortment of tomatoes, peppers, aubergines and courgettes already sown, we've now got aubergine 'Fairy Tale' and that good stalwart 'Black Beauty', tomato 'Burpee's Jubilee' and 'Falcorosso', chilli pepper 'Tropical Heat', 'Hot Portugal' and 'Georgia Flame' and cucumber 'White Wonder' plus a tray of celeriac 'Giant Prague'. The cucumbers have already germinated!

From the first sowing in March, all the tomatoes have grown well and these have now been potted up into 9cm pots and are lined out in the lean-to frame.

Outside the veg garden, I've taken the plunge and cut back all the artemisias, penstemons and hardy fuchsias - Clare has been getting impatient over the last few weeks as they were all looking decidedly floppy and untidy. Let's hope we don't get any severe frosts - fingers crossed.

And, as usual I've been on my regular pest watch patrols - looking for any nasties that are lurking and taking advantage of new, fresh growth. So far, nothing to report. Any I mean nothing. The slugs and snails are being taken care of by the army or frogs and toads in the garden and a liberal scattering of slug pellets. And I know that lots of people are talking about early attacks of lily beetle but so far nothing. About this time last year our Lilium formosanum var. pricei had been totally ravaged and gave up the ghost soon afterwards, but this year not a sign of damage. So let's hope it stays that way. I have given all the lilies a thorough spray with Provado Ultimate Bug Killer to offer some protection, but if the lily beetles were active, there would be some signs of nibbling - but so far nothing.

And now it's the Easter weekend, so in between entertaining friends and eating fatty choccy treats I'm hoping there'll be some time to get outside and get on with things.

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.

Sowing the seeds of success

Well hopefully. Although I've got to say it's a slow start - probably not warm enough for seeds to germinate properly and, as a result, not much is showing in the veg plot at home. Of all the things I've sown so far only the radish and broad beans are doing anything.

But onwards and upwards. With so much to do in the garden - and keeping true to my word (so far), not spending as much time as usual in front of the computer screen - I decided to take a day off work today. I also needed to recharge the batteries as the RHS website is going through a major overhaul and it's exhausting.

I spent a few hours on the allotment, doing some more weeding and tidying up. I also planted out a Coronet family apple tree, which came courtesy of Springfield Nurseries in Ireland. This joins the other two Coronets, which fruited magnificently last year.

Because things aren't germinating at home I've decided to give sowing on the allotment a miss at the moment. But at least the onions, garlic and shallots are making a breakthrough. And the potatoes are chitting nicely at home waiting to be planted out, probably - to keep things traditional - at Easter.

Instead we've decided to sow things in pots and modules here and then transplant them into the allotment later. So, there's three trays of leek 'Jaune de Poitou' (a lovely early yellow variety), one each of beetroot 'Burpees Golden Globe' and kale 'Nero di Toscana' and another follow-on crop of broad bean 'The Sutton'.

I've also put in a few more rows of salad crops outside at home - it must be warm enough now surely (but I've covered them with fleece just in case!) including carrot 'Early Nantes 2', radish 'Zlata' (a golden-yellow variety), cos lettuce and red-veined sorrel.

And I decided to sow a Westland Horticulture Instant Planter in the greenhouse with more cos lettuce (should grow quicker than outside), rocket and some salad leaves from the new collection from Lakeland.

But all good things must come to an end - I've now got to get ready to give a talk to a local(ish) gardening club. It's one I've never been to before, but they sound a friendly bunch and I always enjoy giving talks.