Gardening and Horticulture 01-2015

Gardening and Horticulture 

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 With spring just around the corner, GW is back for a new series. As usual, Monty will be at Longmeadow sharing a wealth of tips and ideas on how to keep your garden looking good all year long. In this episode, he tackles some urgent pruning and reveals some of the projects he's got in store over the coming months.

This year, Carol Klein will be visiting some of the nation's greatest gardens to find out why their beautiful borders work so well. Her tour starts at RHS Wisley in Surrey, where she takes a closer look at their glorious winter garden.
Joe Swift has the first of his three design masterclasses on how to make the most of a small town garden. And we travel to the Cape in South Africa to learn more about the geraniums we love to grow in our pots and hanging baskets.

1. Take pelargonium cuttings

Pelagoniums take very easily as cuttings, as long as you observe a couple of rules.  The first is to have a very free-draining compost.  Prepare the cutting so they are about 8-10cm long and remove all foliage except one or two leaves.  Insert them around the edge of the pot. The second rule is not to over water the cuttings but keep the compost only slightly damp.  If the compost become too wet there’s a risk of the cutting succumbing to rot before they strike.  Put them somewhere warm and bright they should take in about 3 or 4 weeks.

2.Chit potatoes

Chitting seed potatoes is simple but important if you want an early crop of new potatoes - that's first or second early varieties.  Simply place the seed potatoes on a seed tray or egg boxes and put them somewhere frost-free and light, and over the next few weeks they will develop green stubby shoots that will spring into action once they’re planted.

3.Prune autumn-fruiting raspberries

If you haven’t done so already, it's time now to prune your autumn fruiting raspberries. These produce their fruit on the current season's growth so take away all of last year's canes; cutting hard right down to the ground. When you’ve finished, give them a thick mulch to keep them free of weeds and help the roots stay moist in dry spells.

Gardening and Horticulture 01- 2015