Jersey Plants Direct just added these new products

Begonia Destiny Patchwork 50 Plants + 20 FREE £11.99
An established favourite with our customersThese early order Patchwork Collections are made up of 6 separately sown and labelled colours giving you the opportunity to create your own uniquely designed planting scheme. Limited AvailabilityOur best selling Begonia Destiny is an established favourite. This strong upright bedding plant has fully double flowers in a colourful mix of red, orange and yellow. It is a profuse flowering plant and will provide colour in your garden all summer long. Orders must arrive by Saturday 31st December

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Order these fantastic plants today at Jersey Plants Direct. Very pretty bedding plants, traditional geraniums always look great in summer. Order early to get this fab price.

Geranium Parade Patchwork 50 Plants + 20 FREE £10.99
Colourful long lasting displays from this favourite geraniumThese early order Patchwork Collections are made up of 6 separately sown and labelled colours giving you the opportunity to create your own uniquely designed planting scheme. Limited AvailabilityThis is a beautiful coloured geranium that will bring lasting colour to your garden throughout the summer. The large flowers in reds and pink will brighten your borders from June to October. A well loved Geranium! Orders must arrive by Saturday 31st December

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Rosemary at Thompson & Morgan

You can buy seeds and plants at Thompson and Morgan. Or you can do what I’ve just done.

I bought a packet of rosemary from the herb section of my local supermarket. I only wanted a couple of pieces for a recipe I was doing but had to buy a whole bunch. I decided to freeze some and then just as I was putting some in the freezer I decided I’d have a go at rooting a couple of pieces. I was pretty sceptical whether they’d take as I dind’t know how long they’d been in the shop.

But I stuck two pieces in a small vase of water on the windowsill in my kitchen and waited. After about 10 days I noticed one had started to root, a few days later so had the other. After a couple more days I carefully potted them up. Result! I now have two rosemary plants that cost me virtually nothing! I should have tried more! I am almost tempted to buy a whole pack and try and root the whole lot! If nothing else they would be good for selling for fund raising for our allotment!

Of course I might just have been lucky and got the right pack of rosemary pieces, but if you want to try you’ll only be spending 69p or so and you’ll have plenty of fresh rosemary to cook with!

Just seen this site Seed Swappers

Very interesting idea – you tell them what seeds you have to swap and ask for a few if you see any you fancy. Good for people who don’t know a lot of local gardeners!

Great brid seed offers from Jersey Plants Direct

12.75kg Choice Sunflower Hearts £28.98
Packed with nutrition great for birdsUse all year round in seed feeder. Good for: Almost all garden birds. Fantastic New Low Price – WAS £32.99 NOW £25.98Reward the birds in your garden with the 4kg Choice Sunflower Hearts. These Sunflower Hearts are packed with nutrition and make a great change for your garden birds. Husk free so no mess.

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This year I managed to grow a pumpkin!
It was a bit of a funny shape and not enormous but I turned it into a halloween pumpkin and some trick or treaters took photos of it!

I printed a template and taped it on and carved the pumpkin through that.

I can’t remember which site I got my Angry BIrd pumpkin carving template from but it might have been this one

Mine are still doing well although they are very perfumed they’re not very sweet. I only have a small patch of raspberries in my back garden and a couple of plants in the front but this year has been massive in terms of fruit picked.

Jersey Plants Direct have raspberries available to buy. Plant a few in your garden and you’ll be picking fresh raspberries yourself next year!
They are probably one of the easiest fruits to grow and indeed cope well with neglect. If you planted them on a bit of land and left them to it they’d be quite happy. The birds don’t seem to eat the fruit either which means no netting needed unlike other fruit that needs caging.
Delicious in flans or just with cream, or even eating them as you pick them on a hot summers day, raspberries are one of my favourite fruits. In the supermarkets they are horribly expensive – about £2 for 100g. For days on end this year I picked about 400-500g of fruit each day from a small patch of raspberries so they make good economic sense to grow in your own garden. The plants will give fruit year after year.
Turn them into jam to preserve them, or bottle them in vodka! I’ve got a small sample of raspberry vodka to try this weekend – they’ve been in about three weeks so I will have to report back on how good it tastes!

Raspberries Rubus Heritage (Red) 3 Plants £12.99
An abundance of great flavoured raspberries
Raspberries don’t mind a bit of shade as long as they have well drained soil. The more sun you can let them have though the better. The fruit is sweeter when it’s had plenty of sunshine. You will delight in picking your own raspberries, fresh from your garden – from plot to plate within a few minutes. Eat fresh with cream or make into pues and flans or turn into jam and enjoy this amazing fruit all winter.This raspberry plant produces an abundance of great flavoured fruit. Good all round disease resistance. Ideal for cooking.

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Garlic, onion and marigolds are all meant to help – so try planting your carrots in rows between lots of these.
This takes forward planning though! Although you can buy marigolds as garden ready plants and pop them in.
Sow thinly so you don’t have to thin out the carrots – this avoids creating any carrot smell which attracts them.
Plant in tubs high up. Get plenty of sandy soil and good drainage but water often and feed. This is supposed to work because carrot fly won’t fly over a certain height. Some experienced allotmenters think this is nonsense. Sow them thinly by mixing the carrot seed with dry sand and sprinkling this into the prepared seed drills.
and sprinkle that in the drills

Some species are supposed to be much more resistant to carrot fly. Some farmers plant after a certain date in Spring to miss the carrot fly which happens in two lots – spring and autumn. By careful planting in theory you could miss them entirely.
Barrier methods might also work – fleece stapled to canes around the bed can help.

Jersey Plants Direct have these carrot seeds available.

Carrot Flyaway F1 500 Seeds £2.99
natural sweet & British bredThis variety is a popular, naturally sweet, British bred carrot.

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There are lots of garden magazines available and they can be useful resources full of seasonal hints. Some come with free seeds! If you love reading about gardening then a subscription is the cheaper way to buy magazines. Pick your favourite and start getting a gardening magazine delivered every month!

Amateur Gardening from Magazine Group £41.49
In Amateur Gardening you will find everything you need to know to create a beautiful garden. Each week you’ll learn from the experts – like Peter Seabrook, Bob Flowerdew and Anne Swithinbank – as they pass on their hints, tips and gardening secrets. Step-by-step you’ll discover how to grow champion vegetables, perfect flowerbeds and stunning borders. In fact, there’s always something new inside Amateur Gardening, whether you’re a novice or a green-fingered expert.

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Harrod Horticultural have these cane tops to stop you hurting yourself on canes in the garden as well as a range of canes in different sizes.
Some people prefer making wigwams of canes for beans and some people like a tunnel. To make the tunnel you need to make like a tent frame shape with two canes and tie them at the top. Firm them in well and put another two in a foot or so apart. At the top do the same and then put a cane across the top. If you have long canes you can go across several sections. FIx this top cane on as it stablises the structure. Runner beans will race along the top. There are often discussions about which makes it easier to pick the beans but it’s down to personal preference I think.

If you’re using them for tomatoes make sure they are sturdy enough as tomatoes weight a lot!

Cane
Caps (pack of 10) – £2.75
Simple but very effective these Cane Caps will protect your eyes from the tips
of the many bamboo canes used in the garden for plant support purposes and are
one of those little greenhouse and garden essentials you just can’t do without!Made
from rubberised plastic the cane toppers plastic will fit sungly over bamboo
canes of all sizes and the dark green colour ensures they blend into the garden
surroundings but still offer eye and facial protection. Use the bamboo cane
caps year after year and even though they’re supplied in a handy pack size of
10 cane caps you can never have enough of them!

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