Great Gardening a Thoughtful Book of the Month Title

Thoughtful Gardening: Great Plants, Great Gardens, Great Gardeners by Robin Lane Fox

What to Expect in the Book of the Month

• As you would expect from a Fellow and Tutor in Ancient History at New College Oxford there are grand opinions and insights.
• As Garden Master of the college gardens the practical nature of the author lends the book to problems with badgers, to how to take root-cuttings or choose flowering trees. (A bit grand for my taste).
• Thoughtful Gardening ‘combines a principled view of the craft of gardening with dozens of new ideas for planting and visiting, and touching reminders of the power of literature and art to deepen what we see and realize in gardens of our own’ according to the blurb.

Who Wants to Read ‘ Thoughtful Gardening ‘

• Robin Lane Fox has written a weekly gardening column in the Financial Times since 1970. He has many followers who will be interested in this book his third gardening book but first for many years.
• The book is fine for dipping into and need not be read as one work.
• One reviewer says the book is suitable for the traveler who expects to visit or know about gardens in other countries
• ‘Thoughtful Gardening: Great Plants, Great Gardens, Great Gardeners’ to give the book it’s full title probably sums up the target audience as having great expectations.

Buy from Amazon

Quick Thoughts of the Month

• It looks like the Greats are what to read in Oxford. Sadly this is not one of my classics.
• ‘Thoughtful Gardening: Great Plants, Great Gardens, Great Gardeners’ contains 368 pages for £12.99. This and 40 years of learnered experience probably make this book good value.

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Gardening Aprons and Tool Holders

This year I have found 3 trowels when emptying and spreading my compost heap. I am not claiming that a tool belt or pocketed apron would have prevented me loosing them in the first place but you never know.
Apart for comments about the small size of this apron it gets good reviews from Amazon buyers. They are particularly happy with the price (£8.25) and the functionality.

I have no discernible system and carry my secateurs, string and bits and pieces in numerous pockets of an old gardening jacket. When I get warm the jacket comes off. As I say no system.

There is a wider range of Aprons available from Amazon. There are some Laura Ashley ones for ladies and some more robust ones that the picture above. Have a look at the range.

If I was investing in an apron I would want it to:

carry tools but also a mobile phone and note book and pencil in a dry zippered pocket .
protect me from sharp prickles and cutting leaves and stabs by my own tools.
keep my gardening clothes protected from the worst of the dirt.
keep out of the way of my activity and actions.

Tool Belts and Holsters

I am not sure about tool belts that hang in front of me when I am gardening but there is a range of products available in garden centres, Homebase and B&Q
I like the look of the Felco holster and will put one on my wish list. amazon

Looks like I will have to belt up!

Garden Spring Clean Products

Read about our ‘Quick Fix Garden Spring Clean’ tips.

Free Products to Help Garden Spring Cleaning

• You have already supplied the first product with your brain power and resolve to spring clean.
• Elbow grease is one of the most useful products you can imagine. It is even more use if applied in a preplanned, focused and logical manner.
• A willing or paid helper may be the next product on your list. Make sure who is calling the shots or the helper may delegate to you!
• Local councils collect your refuse so ‘Dustbin it’ or throw it on a compost heap with a tidy lid.
• Plant out in neat rows any early or overwintering seedlings. This looks tidy and you can aim for the natural planting look when plants growth really takes off.
• A sweeping brush is essential and could be made as a besom out of birch twigs but I would splash out on a bought brush.

Product Reports and Articles

Path Cleaning and Cleaners
Garden disinfectants
Best Weed Killers
Wood Care
Fence Care

Calcified Seaweed Treatment and Benefits

What is Calcified Seaweed

• Calcified seaweed is dried seaweed and lime or other calcium based salts
• Calcified seaweed is an organic substance without any nasty chemicals. There is concern that it is no longer approved by the Soil Association for use in organic growing, due to concerns that the harvesting of this material is not sustainable and has adverse effects on the marine environment.
• Seaweed is rich in minerals, encourages beneficial soil bacteria, helps improve heavy soil structure and neutralises acid soils.

Uses of Calcified Seaweed

• As a soil improver and clay breaker it breaks up the heaviest clay without damaging soil pH.
• As a compost accelerator it speeds up the breakdown of organic garden waste.
• Seaweed adds trace elements and minerals to the soil.
• Calcified seaweed neutralises acid soil
• Adding seaweed is beneficial to bacteria and is used in lawn treatment.

Maxicrop Organic Cal-Sea-Feed Calcified Seaweed 6kg tub from Amazon

Vegetable & Fruit Gardening Book of the Month

The RHS’s ‘Vegetable & Fruit Gardening’ new book edited by Michael Pollock will be published on 1st February. As you would expect from Britain’s leading gardening charity and authority on horticultural matters this work will be comprehensive.

What to Expect

• Everything you need to know about growing your own, fruit and vegetables. Kitchen gardening advice from the experts at the RHS.
• Practical advice on growing over 150 vegetables, herbs and fruit with the new edition of RHS Vegetable & Fruit Gardening
• You’ll find easy-to-follow step-by-steps of tried-and-trusted techniques.
• Specialist tips on seasonal tasks, yields per crop, sowing and harvesting times and controlling pests and diseases.
• Organic options and traditional gardening practices are combined with up-to-date methods to guarantee success.
• ‘The definitive guide to successful growing.’

Who Wants to Read RHS Vegetable & Fruit Gardening

• This is not a primer but it is accessible to those who are new to growing their own crops. It will form a good basis for a number of seasons of home grown food production.
• Allotment holders and those with an established vegetable plot will find new plants and ideas to augment their current skills and output.
• The book collector wants to keep up to date with the current RHS thinking. This is an excellent book for local libraries to stock. (If libraries still buy books)

Buy from Amazon

Quick Thought of the Month

RHS is a charity but has become very commercial in the recent past.
RHS should donate a large number of appropriate books such as ‘Vegetable & Fruit Gardening’ to libraries through out the UK.
This helps budding gardeners, increases the RHS brand awareness and fulfills part of their charitable remit.

Terracotta Pots – Best are British

I like UK made terracotta or clay pots. Good pots are made frost hardy and should last through all the British seasons. Imported pots have often been made in warm climates where they do not know the meaning of cold never mind frost.

Why Clay Pots not Plastic

• Old pots do sometimes collect a white salt deposit on the outside. You can see that on the photograph or the old pot collection above. As long as the pot is washed in a solution containing a disinfectant they can be reused indefinitely.
• Pots are porous and let in air to the roots.
• Evaporation from the clay pot keeps the roots cool. Plastic and particularly black plastic boils the roots of your plants.

Tips for Maintaining Plant Pots

• Avoid pots getting top heavy in windy conditions. Too much plant growth can get caught by a wind, blow the pot over and smash the pot. For tall plants weight the bottom of the pot.
• Pots can freeze to the ground and this weakens the bottom of the pot until it falls off. Use bricks or special feet to stand the pot on during winter.
• Keep the outside of decorative pots clean or algae and moss will be encouraged and discolour your pot.
• If you want to artificially age your pot coat it in Yoghurt to encourage green algae growth.

Amazon offer

any number of plant pots. They come in all shapes and sizes but terracotta pots are few and far between. Perhaps it is because they are heavy and expensive to deliver, all the more strange that we see Chinese pots in many garden departments at DIY stores.

If you break your pot do not despair you can make a feature like the one below.

English Roses Book of the Month

David Austin roses are not the cheapest to buy but they are up there with the very best. So with this book ‘The English Roses’ by David Austin himself. David is the creator of the English Roses, an entirely new style of roses that have achieved international recognition. They are available from the family business in Shropshire and from many garden center outlets.

What to Expect in ‘The English Roses’

• This revised edition includes 23 new rose portraits of the newest rose varieties by David Austin Roses.
• Some of David’s descriptions are a little too glowing, since he fails to acknowledge some of the roses serious shortcomings.
• Rose lovers will love its pictures alone, since it includes photos of the flowers with a substantial piece of the lower foliage, and each rose description does come with a line drawing of its growth habit.
• Comments about group plantings and recommendations concerning minimiums for plantings of each variety to get best effect are a good feature.

Who Wants to Read ‘The English Roses’

• Owners of the earlier edition may want the extra content of new rose introductions in the last 10 years or so.
• Rose lovers and those seeking scent in the garden will absorb this book.
• There are many books on roses and this fits in with a collection of books on the subject.

Available from Amazon

Women Who Gardened

Gardening Women: Their Stories from 1600 to the Present by Catherine Horwood covers over 2000 years from Flora the Roman goddess of plants to today’s media gardeners. It of necessity concentrates on the last 400 years.

What to Expect in the Book of the Month

• An interesting feature is about the battles fought against male-dominated institutions.
• The history of women illustrators of botanical books is dealt with a some length .
• One reviewer called the book a ‘forking over’ not a ‘double digging’ but it is hard to cover such a large topic in a way that suits everyone, even with 450 pages.
• The trials and triumphs of the women who gardened are often covered by lists and light coverage. Gertrude Jekyll and other famous women gardeners are well covered in other works but more could have been said about some of the lesser known women gardeners

Who Wants to Read ‘Gardening Women: Their Stories from 1600 to the Present’

• Women gardeners traditionally grew vegetables for their kitchens and herbs for their medicine cupboards. Anyone who wants to know who taught young women about gardening twenty-five years before women’s horticultural schools officially existed, can gain from reading this book.
• Students of horticulture should be appraised of the roles women have played in the development of gardening.
• Sociologists may find the research a bit skimpy but for a gardening tome there are ample references and scope for further study.

Buy ‘Gardening Women: Their Stories from 1600 to the Present’ by Catherine Horwood from Amazon

A bit more challenging is Radical Gardening: Politics, Idealism and Rebellion in the Garden also available from amazon

Quick Thoughts of the Month

• Women do a lot of work in the urban and contemporary gardens of the UK and deserve recognition for their efforts. This work could have gone much further and done more.
• The RHS and Kew have promoted the idea of women gardeners and now have senior executives within their traditionally male bastions.
• Many garden authors and women writers on gardening write on the subject from an upper middle class perspective. Lets have a book on women gardeners that gets down to earth!

Organic Blend Manure

Organic Blend manure is a trade name rather than a description. Obviously there will be organic materials in the manure because that is what it is all about.

Pros and Cons of Packaged Organics

I am a bit concerned that the packaging fails to prominently identify the animals in this farmyard.
Farmyard animals may have been treated with medicines and chemicals that are expelled in to the manure and I do not think this is Organic in the true sense of the word.
A ‘special blend of organic nutrients’ could be blood fish and bone or just a way of saying horse muck.
‘Contains humus’ well lets not be surprised!
‘Invigorates’ roses, flowers fruit and vegetables Mmmm some claim.

On the plus side the manure should be sterile (unlike the stuff I collect from the stables).
I would expect the manure to be weed free (unlike the stuff I collect from the stables).
The manure is more friable and textured (unlike the stuff I collect from the stables).

Buyer beware ‘where there is muck there’s brass’ to mix two sayings. Vendors (retailers and manufacturers) are out to make a profit whilst gardeners are out to make a great garden and in my case without too many plastic bagged products.
If you can’t acquire your own ‘Organic’ may not be worth the extra price but it enhances the feel good factor and may do your garden good.

Organic Top Soil

I am not an advocate of buying Top Soil especially in small quantities.

What is Top Soil

• Top soil is the upper layer of soil in your garden.
• Top soil is the part of your garden soil that has the highest concentration of organic matter, humus and micro-organisms.
• Topsoil is where most of the plants roots grow and thrive.
• Deep top soil would be one spade spit deep up to 10″.
• Shallow top soil may be all you have when gardening on chalk or heavy clay soil but 2 inches is a minimum.
• Sub soil is the compacted uncultivated soil under the top soil. The quality of this soil is varied and not so good for growing your plants

Why and When to Use Top Soil

• Top soil is the natural home for plant roots.
• In a newly built house the top soil has often been removed to facilitate the builders. I have bought lorry loads of top soil to cover the sub soil that builders have left uncovered.
• Increasing the depth of top soil when you garden in difficult conditions such as limestone or rocky areas also require large quantities.
• Some soils suffer from erosion of the top soil by wind or rain and it needs to be replaced and protected from further erosion.
• Top soil, like that in the bag photographed, can be used in pots and containers, leveling lawns or making compost.
• Top soil may be used to replace old diseased soil such as that with rose sickness.
• There is no added nutrient as there is with John Innes. This may be important when setting up a special bed for plants that do not want fertilizer such as many alpines

Organic top soil is another of my less loved phrases. Soil is mainly inorganic carbons and elements. The humus content may be free of chemical treatments like pesticides and fertilizers but top soil is just muck.