Get a Royal Bargain with January RHS Offer

I think sometimes people are put off by the RHS. The Royal Horticultural Society can make you shudder with inferiority, and many amateur gardeners contemplating joining an organisation avoid the RHS altogether. It’s not that it’s a bad organisation, far from it, it’s the cream of the crop and therefore unworthy of an amateur gardeners association.

BUT, if you take the effort to look at the RHS you’ll discover that whilst it may have had a stuffy and slightly snobby past, it’s modern gloss is a lot more stripped back to basics. Of course, if you attend Chelsea or Hampton Court Palace garden shows, you’re sure to come across some of the ‘old skool’ folk. However, if you’ve ever wanted to see battling grannies and a free-for-all scrum no matter what your horticultural expertise is, just visit Chelsea’s sale day as the fight’s break out over £1 fushia’s.

Currently, the RHS has a promotion allowing you to get three months for free and, if you buy before January 31st you’ll be able to get in before the prices go up. This is by no means a sales pitch – I’m not even a member – yet. You can get free access to 140 RHS Recommended Gardens throughout the country. You get The Garden magazine every month; another means of horticultural inspiration. And, if I’m honest this is best feature of all, you get free email and telephone advice from RHS experts for your plants! That’s an absolute god-send if you ask me, and something which is never particularly highlighted and is practically priceless.

With prices at just £36.75 until the end of January, whereupon prices creep up to £51, getting in now will certainly offer a great start to the year. With an annual fee costing less than 11p a day, I’m about to join the elite and enjoy all that horticultural Britain has to offer.

The 52 Week Salad Challenge

I’ll admit, I’m a bit slow on the uptake. Two weeks of jury service, writing clients coming out of my ears, and my sister about to drop a sprog has found me suddenly near the end of January without really knowing how I got here. Thus…getting to grips with the inspiring new challenges for 2012 has also passed me by, until now that is.

Over at Veg Plotting, the marvellous 52 Week Salad Challenge has started. Want to stop buying plastic wrapped green leaves at your supermarket? Fed up of finding festering packets of forgotten Iceberg and Rocket at the bottom of your fridge? Well, this is certainly the challenge for you.

VP has outlined some inspirational content over at the 52 Week Salad Challenge. Every fourth Friday of the month shall now be known as ‘Salad Days’, when leaves are harvested and VP will update with the progress from her patch,  ideas for new seeds to sow, new recipes to make and general musings to get you going. You can also follow VP on her @Malvernmeet and @VegPlotting twitter handles, and use the #saladchat search.

Getting into the spirit things I’ve started the challenge myself, though a little late! With the first salads sown, and with promise of a harvest within three weeks, I’m champing at the bit to see the first germinations of 2012.

3 Dates for Your Horticultural Calendar

With 2012 upon us, it’s time to think about the multitude of horticultural extravaganza’s ahead.  I’m not talking about the flower shows and country fairs here, I’m talking about the bizzare, eccentric and quirky exploits that you may not dare to enter!

1. Big Garden Birdwatch - January 28th/29th

The Big Garden Birdwatch is back again as the RSPB attempt to get a complete picture of bird populations throughout the UK. With the recent few days of bad weather, birds of all varieties are sure to have been flocking to gardens as frozen ground and water limited their access to food. For just one hour at the end of January you can simply take the opportunity to sit quietly and watch the world go by. Count up all your feathery friends and send your results to the RSPB over the internet. Easy. After an appalling survey last year, I’m hoping that my results in 2012 might be a little better.

2. International Sunflower Guerilla Gardening Day 2012 – 1st May

May 1st, 2012, will mark the sixth outing of International Sunflower Guerilla Gardening Day; a time when we must all take to the street’s on mass and plant seeds EVERYWHERE! The main premise behind this day is to highlight the importance of greening up our local neighbourhoods by planting in tree pits, forgotten council flowerbeds and random patches of dirt in desperate need of some green. Again, 2011 was a disaster for me as, no sooner had the little seedlings germinated, than a council man came along and weedkillered the lot. This year I’m having a backup plan by sowing some seeds at home in pots too.

3. World Naked Garden Day – 5th May

Also in its sixth year, and following close on the heels of Sunflower Guerilla Gardening Day, is World Naked Gardening Day. Now, I’m not encouraging you to combine the two – I think there’d be more than a few arrests that day. Nor am I encouraging you to completely strip off much to your neighbours horror as I’m sure a few of mine were. Whilst some hardcore enthusiasts might say it’s about taking everything off, I say it should be more about finding yourself at one with nature. If you’re not comfortable facing those stinging nettles and thorns in your birthday suits, dispose of shoes for the day and feel the earth beneath your toes. Throw off your tops and let the sun get to parts almost never seen before. And, if you want to go the whole hog but have a nervous disposition, find a secluded shed or greenhouse in which to potter!

MyGarden.org

Whilst November, and even December, may have been atypically mild for a British winter, the past week has seen hard frosts finally descending, stopping all but the most hardiest of plant growers in their tracks. Whilst you may be sowing under glass, or using hardy salad crops, the climate outside isn’t exactly calling most of us gardners to spend hours pottering our flowerbeds. And, if you’re looking for somewhere to spend a few hours, MyGarden.org is perfect.

Like many other websites with this garden theme, you can create your own garden plant list whereupon you’ll get monthly mails with what to do in your garden. This is a great incentive to actually get out and do things, and whilst it’s a yearly planner not taking into account actual current conditions, it’s a nice kick in the bum to get out and do something. I’ve found it to be the easiest website to use, with the newsletters actually helpful as opposed to instantly being filed into the ‘delete’ bin. Meanwhile, the ‘Gardners Around Me’ is a nice little feature so that you can meet and chat to other like-minded individuals in the vicinity. And, you never know, this might lead to a little plant and seed swapping later in the year if you’re really lucky.

I caught up with Lieven Gekiere, the inspiration behind MyGarden.org to find out a little more about this new and green finger friendly website.

What brought MyGarden.org into being and what was the concept?
MyGarden.org is a platform that originated in the minds of a few enthusiastic Internet users with a passion for gardening. The purpose was to share our garden virtually with people around us. This way, we hope to do cross-fertilization, sharing our knowledge and also to discover beautiful gardens around us.

How did the idea develop? It all started on Twitter. As social medianoobs, we not only want to share our social life, but we also want to map the life in our garden. Even in the year 2011, the garden life on the internet is very passive. The gardener always has to search for answers to his problems. To change all this, we took our courage and wanted to walk a new road. Can we create a system that delivers the info to the gardener? …Yes, MyGarden.org was born!

Why do you think people will love MyGarden.org?
MyGarden.org is a new way to share your garden and garden experiences with other gardeners. It the Facebook for gardeners. You can post status updates, share photos and videos, exchange plants, etc …

What’s your favourite feature of the website?
My favorite feature is the personal calendar you get when adding your own plants to your digital garden. You’ll get notifications of garden tasks, specifically for your own garden and plants. You can subscribe to an iCal/Outlook/Gmail calendar feed and always stay up-to-date on your tasks and todo’s in your garden !

What does the future hold for MyGarden.org?
There’s a Facebook App available and the MyGarden.org Android and iPhone/iPad app will be available soon.

MyGarden.org is probably one of my favourite garden social networking websites that I’ve come across, and with the ease of accessing it through Facebook and smartphone (a necessity for any social network to survive), it could become very popular over the coming months and years. And, whether you want to utilise it just for the gardening tips for your own plant care, or want to indulge yourself in some extra green fingered social networking, MyGarden.org is certainly worth a visit.

Grow Your Own Sugar

If you, like me, are keen on growing a few things that not only taste a hell of a lot better than shop bought produce but are pretty much free, then growing your own sugar might sound like an amazing prospect. And, well, it is an amazing prospect. I don’t have a huge amount of sugar in my diet but I like a sprinkle on my porridge, I like a muffin or twenty, and once I’ve cracked open a packet of biscuits there’s no hope that even one will survive.

I’m not talking about growing your own field or beet here, or attempting to fill your garden with sugar cane. A small and quite literally sweet garden herb is making a comeback and offers the chance for ZERO calories – Stevia.

If you have’t heard of this herb before I’m not surprised as, until this year, it wasn’t available in the European Union. There remains a lot of contention both politically and medically over Stevia resulting in a vast difference in availablity depending on the country you live in. Japan has used this herb as a natural sweetener since the 1970′s whilst Brazil has been using Stevioside extract as a food addiditve since 1986. However, many other countries including Switzerland, France and Australia banned all Stevia herbs and extracts until the current 21st century. For Stevia’s full history, the Wikipedia page has a good overall view, with arguments for and against the previous ban of this herb.

Turbulent past or not, Stevia is now available in the UK as a natural sweetener which can be added to tea or even dried, ground down and used in baking. Though the particular packet I was supplied with said that they were ‘easy-to-grow Seeds’ this is a slight fasle pretence as I’ve only have about 30p% germination rate. Plus, they’ve been slow growing to the point where this year there certainly hasn’t been any harvest. However, with the possibility of growing and harvesting my own, zero calorie sugar replacement at home, I’m going to persevere with this promising plant.

A quiet winter allotment

Mr McGregor is a guest writer for Notcutts. He has been working in the gardening industry for over 27 years and loves to share his passion for all things horticultural, whether its top gardening tips or guides to growing your very own kitchen garden.

When autumn turns to winter our attention shifts to lifting and storing harvested crops so we can cook them throughout the winter months. However, produce can still be grown during the dark months. Brassicas, sprouts, hardy lettuce, spring onions, chinese cabbage, carrots and beetroot if sown now will be in abundance when the going gets lean. As yields are still being grown in our allotments (a quiet winter allotment; right) they will still be in need of some TLC, which will include protection from those pesky birds as well as the frosts. This can be an extremely challenging time as winds can quickly pick up and blow netting or cloches away, rendering your precious crops defenceless against hungry creatures.

Jobs to do in November

• Lift and store crops
• Regularly check stored crops
• Dig over and incorporate manure
• Cover over empty beds
• Plant a green manure crop
• Compost plants and falling leaves
• Plant out onion sets and garlic

If you like the idea of taking on an allotment, I would suggest renting or buying one in December. This is the perfect time of year to obtain such a glorious piece of land because not much is growing, allowing you to take all the time you need to prepare the soil.

You’ve taken on an allotment, what’s next?

Preparation.

There are three main types of weed you need to contend with, couch grass, dock weed and bind weed. Couch grass are wiry roots you find in the soil and can be remove by simply digging up the ground and bagging it up. Once bagged and tied up leave it to anaerobically rot down and later incorporate it back into the ground so the soil never loses out on all the nutrients (it’s an organic fertiliser).

Another weed you may come across is bind weed, which is a string like root. A time efficient way of removing these tough weeds is using a fork rather than a spade as this ensures you won’t break any of the roots.

If you come across dock weeds (or compfrey as shown; left) you need to dig up the main tap root. As these roots are so thick and long they can take a lot of nutrients out of the soil, which is vital when wanting to grow healthy yields. Once you have removed the tap root, rot it down by placing it into some water. This can later be used as a liquid fertiliser.

After removing all the weeds, you want to take a good look at your soil. If the soil is compacted you can take that to be a good indication that there isn’t enough air in the soil, which can prevent water from accessing plant roots. Another good indicator for healthy soil is if you find life forms such as worms in the soil. If you find a handful of worms in a single clump of soil then you know the soil is in a healthy condition.

Once you have dug up an area and removed the weeds I have found this trick (below) to be extremely useful, especially when it comes to suppressing weed growth.

Tip: Lay down cardboard on every area to act as a weed suppressant. It’s important to do this because when you dig up the soil you bring up weed seeds to the surface, which will then germinate. Once you have laid down the cardboard put a layer of compost on top of it. Worms will not only break down the cardboard, they will also eat to the surface of the compost, doing all the digging for you.

Mr McGregor

Plant Pick – Japanese Spiraea

In the autumn, gardens may be looking a little bit bare and unfriendly. If you’ve taken note over the growing months of where you have gaps, it is the ideal time to put in some new shrubs. These will bound into life when the warming spring months arrive, filling those border vacancies so that next year your garden looks even fuller and more vibrant than it has ever done.

If you’re looking for a fantastic shrub which will not only bring flower but also a foliage change throughout the seasons, then Japanese spiraea species are ideal. I separate these species from the rest of the spiraea family simply because they have some specific traits which I truly love, and whilst other spiraea are also fantastic garden plants, it is Japanese spiraea that I know and love.

Bronze beginnings for spring growth

Budding in the early spring, leaves are a fiery bronze as supple new foliage develops. Colours which are most notably seen in the autumn months will bring your borders alive and pull your eye, especially when planted as a backdrop to various and beautiful spring bulbs. As the seasons progress the leaves will change to a lime green as this plant puts out clusters of pink or white flowers like little clouds floating amongst border vegetation. And then, as autumn closes in, changes occur again, bringing a deepening green and purple hue to leaves before they finally give into the frosts and fall to the ground.

Lime green summer leaves for great contrast

Species such as Firelight, Candlelight, Magic Carpet and Golden Princess are beautiful specimens and worthy for any garden. Shrubs are often the backbone of planting and with spiraea you get something fresh and new every season. And if you want a diverse plant which also works fantastically well as a backdrop and contrast plant, Japanese spiraea is for you!

Name: Japanese spiraea (varieties Candlelight, Firelight, Magic Carpet Golden Princess)

Thrives In: Happy in most aspects apart from full shade. Full sun or partial shade are ideal where you’ll get the true vibrancy of flower and foliage that this shrub brings to the garden.

Yearly Care: Prune back leggy and overgrown specimens immediately after flowering. Maintain shape when leaves fall in the autumn.

Growing Medium: A very hardy specimen, Japanese spiraea will grow in most locations where soil is well drained and tolerate acidic, alkaline and neutral substrates.

Quick Tip: Use small specimens in pots where they will offer patio interest throughout the year. As shrubs grow utilise them in borders to offer dramatic contrast with other foliage and as a backdrop for smaller flowering plants.

Cooking Dear? Who Dear? Me Dear? NO Dear!

When I was first approached to write on a cooking blog by @rachydivanerd I was rather flattered but amused. I’d jump at the chance to offer guests posts on other people’s blogs now and then, but pretending I was interested in cooking was a bit of a stretch of the imagination. I mean, I shovel food down my neck constantly, but cook? No!

However, I was much relieved when I was actually asked to post about growing veggies, self sufficiency and horticultural type content. That I can do. So, without further ado please feel free to head over to Dough-Rae-Me and take a look at this new blog which is full of fabulous cakes, recipes, foodie thoughts and a little bit of me!

‘I’m slightly bemused to be writing here, on a cooking blog that is. Whilst I inhale food like air, find myself drawn to patisserie windows, devouring items by sight alone, I cannot and do not cook. I find the whole effort of cooking a complete time waste and I’d far rather be sampling goodies made by other people than being smothered up to my elbows in greaseproof paper, baking tins and flour. I watch that section in Masterchef where contestants go to the professional kitchen with unease because that, surely, is my actual hell. I only work out and run marathons so that I can fill my face with doughnuts and puff pastry, and the mere mention of a cupcake will have me moving faster than any fire alarm would. And, if on the VERY rare occasion that I do actually cook something more than toast or tuna pasta, I’ve eaten most of the ingredients before they’ve made it near the oven…..READ MORE

I’m Up For an Award

I don’t like to blow my own trumpet that much, but I’ve been nominated for the first Horticultural Channel.tv awards. As previously reported, The Horticultural Channel.tv is celebrating it’s first anniversary by launching their new awards show, offering the chance for gardeners around the world to support their favourite blogs, television shows, presenters and even products.

Within just two hours of opening the public vote Sean James Cameron, creator of The Horticultural Channel.tv, revealed that over 1,690 votes had been cast. “This is the first time that members of the public can vote for their favourite gardening TV/radio series, best presenters and also favourite blogs, forums and authors,” he added.

If you’re here, reading this blog, then I’d really appreciate your support. You can vote for me under the blog category and, whether I win or not, it’s a great achievement to be recognised in this awards debut year.