Thompson & Morgan have these nuts trees that would be a great addition to any garden
Walnut ‘Lara’ – 1 tree £39.99
Walnut trees make a magnificent feature for the larger garden. French Walnut ‘Lara’ is a spur bearing variety and slightly more compact than others, although it will still make spectacular proportions. This early bearing walnut produces excellent quality nuts with a unique creamy flavour from September. Walnut ‘Lara’ is propagated onto ‘Juglans regia’ rootstock. It is self-fertile and therefore does not require a pollination companion. Walnut trees may be slow to establish but will begin to produce nuts after about four years. Height: 12m (39’). Spread: 9m (29’).
Try in pots in the greenhouse or cold frame or try a few out in the garden.
Chard is known by several different names – Swiss chard, silverbeet, perpetual spinach, spinach beet, crab beet, bright lights due to it’s bright colours.
Swiss chard is high in vitamins A, K and C.
Chard is less hardy than perpetual spinach so if you only grow one of them, grow the spinach
Eat young leaves as salad and eat mature leaves steamed as a hot vegetable.
Chard White Silver 2 Seeds from Plant Me Now £1.49
Chard White Silver is a very versatile vegetable with edible stems and leaves. The baby leaves can be used in salads while cooked leaves are like spinach. Excellent source of Vitamin C.
Marigolds are quite the chirpiest plants you can have in your garden. They’re great bright colours – gold, yellow to orange which are just so cheerful to look at.
Jersey Plants Direct have some great options for buying marigolds.
MARIGOLDS: (Calendula):
These are used frequently for companian planting. They are believed to keep
the soil free of bad nematodes; supposed to discourage many bad insects. Plant
freely throughout the garden. The marigolds you choose must be a scented variety
for them to work.
French Marigold (T. patula) has roots that exude a substance which spreads
in their immediate vicinity killing nematodes. For nematode control you want
to plant dense areas of them. The effect has been shown in some studies to last
for several years after the plants died back. They help deter whiteflies when
planted around tomatoes and can be used in greenhouses – grow them in pots so
you can arrange them around the greenhouse. Whiteflies hate the smell of marigolds.
However they may stop your beans doing as well.
Mexican marigold (T. minuta) is the most powerful of the insect repelling
marigolds and may also overwhelm weed roots such as bind weed! It is said to
repel the Mexican bean beetle and wild bunnies! Can have a bad effect on some
plants like beans and cabbage.
Marigold Melody Patchwork 50 Plants + 20 FREE £11.99
All weather tolerant and early floweringAttracts Wildlife: These plants are great for attracting bees and butterflies to the garden. These 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 Availability.Marigolds (or Calendula) have beautiful large full flowers that last well once cut so are great for picking and bringing indoors to brighten up your home. Marigold Melody has traditional bright yellow and orange flowers and good all weather tolerance. Will flower all summer long.
I’ve seen loads of people’s runner beans and some have been at the top of the poles and some covered in flowers. Mine are about half way up!
Claire’s video about planting them is interesting.
Remember to put the canes in first!
Beans like lots of good stuff in the soil – work in as much compost as possible.
I like the way she starts them off with a tie to the stick so they get started. Perhaps that steadies them and helps them get a good start?
I always put two seeds per pot. I don’t think it hurts and then if one does get eaten then it’s not a huge problem.
Thompson & Morgan just added these new products
Runner Bean ‘Desiree’ – 1 packet (50 seeds) £3.69
In recent years we have introduced and developed vegetables that have achieved real steps forward in yield, flavour, space saving, disease tolerance; etc. This bean fits into this category and is outstanding in every way. Almost foolproof, it attains huge crops from a small area. Long, broad, completely stringless, very fleshy 25-30cm (10-12in) pods. Very heavy cropping, often averages 40 pods per plant. As it is a shy seeder there is more juicy fleshy edible area, which accounts for the exceptional flavour. Compared with other runner beans it is much more productive under dry weather conditions. White flowered.
Rolawn voucher code is available offering a 10% discount on all orders at Rolawn
Direct. The code is rolawntv and is valid until 26/4/2011.
Rolawn Lawn Top Dressing (0.73m³ Bulk Bag – 730 litres approx volume when packed) £117.98
Rolawn Lawn Topdressing is a high quality, sand based, multi-purpose lawn dressing, designed for use on Rolawn lawns. It can also be used to improve any utility lawn. It will enhance a lawn’s appearance, stimulate new grass growth, level an uneven lawn, improve drainage and tolerance to wear and tear and reduce thatch. Top dressing can be applied anytime, when the grass is actively growing.
If you’ve got a birthday present for someone who loves being out in the garden then look at this selection of gifts that can help them enjoy the garden more after the hard work is done! A pretty garden can be enjoyed long into the evenings in the summer.
Firebox just added these new products ideal for gardener’s birthday presents! Some nice little treats for making the garden pretty!
Solar Lanterns (6 Pack) £29.99
Add a touch of glimmer-glamour to garden soirees and wave goodbye to candles and cables with these solar-powered lanterns. Featuring concertina-style nylon shades and automatic dusk sensors, Solar Lanterns are like mini Tinkerbells minus the annoying smirk.
Jersey Plants Direct sell some amazing plants that offer great colour and great value. Here’s our top 5 Winter bedding plants!
Pansy Can Can
50 Plants +20 FREE for only £9.99
Fantastic value – you get 70 plants in total for under £10 and it’s free delivery. These plants are also garden ready and ideal for those who don’t want the messing about of growing on. They’re ready to go straight in to the ground! Plant these beautiful fluffy pansys in tubs, baskets, in garden borders – everywhere! They are perfect for providing your garden with great colour all autumn and winter through to the spring. Perfect plants that are cute to look at too – our absolute favourite is the Can can! It’s a pretty mix of colourings including white with blue face, strawberry sundae, lilac picotee, velvet picotee, cherry rose, black moon, blue, blue black, red leopard and crimson picotee.
Pansys provide great colour and don’t need full sun so are perfect for that shady border you never knnow quite what to do with it.
Primrose Rosebud 50 Plants +20 FREE for only £9.99
These lovely bedding plants will be despatched from mid August to October.
Again these are garden ready so you can just plant them out when they arrive. These are very pretty flowers with an unusal flower type that’s as the name suggests more like a rosebud than a standard primrose flower. Primroses are lovely flowers – they’ll work hard producing colour in your garden in the autumn and winter and give you colourful plants until late spring.
Lots of bright colours including golden shades, apricot shades, purple, red shades, rose, white and yellow that will make a great display in your garden
Wallflower Fortune 50 Plants +20 FREE for only £9.99 including free delivery
These plants are scented which is fantastic for your winter garden!
They’re a F1 variety which means they’ll always be exactly as the grower intended. The colours are a mix of yellows, primrose, red, scarlet and bronze, which will enhance your winter bedding schemes.
These garden ready wallflowers will arrive at your home between mid August and October.
Wallflowers make great plants for the winter bedding borders as they’ll grow to about 30cm tall making them one of the taller bedding plants you’ll have. They look amazing and are very pretty. Being scented makes them stand out and you’ll enjoy being outside in the garden during the winter when you get to smell them!
Pansy Grande Fragrance 50 Plants +20 FREE including delivery for only £9.99
Fantastic big flowers with colours include primrose, yellow blotch, white blotch, porcelain blue, orange and red blotch
Scented pansys with huge flowers will make a stunning vista in your garden this winter. These lovely bedding plants are garden ready plug plants so can be just planted out in their final positions. Plant up your winter flower tubs and hanging baskets with some of these lovely bright flowers.
Primrose Valiant 50+20 FREE including free delivery for only £11.99
These brighly coloured flowers are fully frost hardy and specifically bred for winter performance. Great range of colours mean they’ll brighten up the dullest border and can be grown in partial shade too – flowers are blue, primrose, white, red, rose and yellow.
These are a traditional style primrose and will look great in tubs or baskets near your door to brighten your way home as well as in the garden flower borders. They are garden ready plug plants so can be planted straight away without having to grow them on. They’ll achieve a height of 10 to 15cm and a spread of approx 10cm
The Roundup’s
Pump N’ Go Sprayer is 5L of weedkiller in an easy use container. It’s certainly
a weighty bit of kit in your war against weeds. It weighs 5kg when full, which
is comparable to a full watering can that you might be using to apply different
weed killers. It is an impressive item though.
To assembly you need to cut the two clips that keep it secure – when you cut
the one on the handle pay attention to where the pump handle is turned – when
it’s turned in right you can use it as the handle but when it’s free from the
clip it sits under you will find it acts as the pump. Once you see this it’s
very obvious! You then undo the clip on the wand and unwind the pipe from the
holder. The wand is easy to fully assemble – you press the small orange button
on it and pull out the nozzle until it’s full extended and it clips into it’s
hole.
When you finish with the weedkiller ensure you put this wand back into it’s
original position as this is what stops kids from playing with it, or it accidentally
discharging. Apply the tube to the container and you’re ready to go. This clipping
on of the nozzle tube is reversible but only under force. There’s no need to
take it off either. Refills are done through the cap on which the pump and handle
which unscrews.
Sensible but normal weed
killer precautions apply. Wear gloves and shoes you can rinse off if you
get any on. You don’t want to walk this powerful weedkiller over the lawn! Also
don’t do this on a windy day. You’re much more likely to get spray going where
you don’t want it to. So don’t damage your plants, or your neighbour’s plants
by using this on a very windy day. Ideally a calm dry day is what you need.
With it all set up you need to pump the handle about 20 times. This will give
you 3 minutes of spraying time. It’s not hard to pump either which was a pleasant
suprise. Having used some other pump action containers this was the easiest
by far. If you like you can put the bottle on the floor and still spray using
the nozzle so you don’t have to worry about carrying it – just pick it up and
move it along as you go. The spray is allowed out only when you press the release.
This release is very easy to control. This means you can spray only the weeds
you need spraying rather than having to spray constantly along.
You get a high level of control with the application. This saves you money
as you don’t waste any weedkiller! I did all the weed spraying I needed from
one lot of pumping. This makes it very quick and simple to use with no hassle
at all. The nozzle is put back into it’s handle and hung on the clip and then
tubing goes back on to it’s hanger too making it all very tidy to put away.
The container needs the pressure taking off before you put it away – do this
easily by undoing the lid a little and then retightening.
Roundup’s
Pump N’ Go Sprayer is very easy to use. The wand means you can stand up
and still be accurate with the spraying. It’s trigger is very responsive and
this makes for less waste. The whole package is very neat and you will effectively
and efficiently be able to spray all the weeds in your garden. Advantages are
that the spraying is effortless, there’s no constant pumping like you get on
some other spray systems. You don’t have to bend down – you just point the wand
so it’s less back breaking than weeding! And as it’s a spray you can get the
weeds you don’t want to pull up because of where they are! It’s suitable for
weeding along the edges of your paths, on your patios, around the egde of your
house and along fences. It’s especially useful if you have areas that you can’t
reach to weed as you can just spray the weeds and this will kill them. You could
in theory use it to target the dandelions on your lawn – it is controllable
enough to only get them – you’d just have to be careful not to tred on any you’ve
sprayed and then move the weedkiller on to your lawn.
It couldn’t be simpler or more fun. All you need to do is upload a snap of something you don’t recognise that you spot in your garden, to www.whatonearth.org.uk , and you will receive native varieties of wildflower which will encourage greater biodiversity in your back garden or flower box.
The aim of ‘what on earth’ is to spot, collect and identify as many species as possible over the course of the week, painting a fascinating picture of UK wildlife for us all to observe and enjoy. Organised in partnership with The Open University’s iSpot website, NSEW’s specialists from all fields of natural science will examine, identify and catalogue as many finds as they can over the course of the week and beyond.
That’s not all, a green roof will be awarded to a school in the area which has shown most support for National Science & Engineering Week’s ‘What on Earth’ campaign and uploaded the most pictures. So whether you are an avid nature watcher or you just happen to find something unusual crawling around in your garden take a picture and submit it towww.whatonearth.org.uk
So encourage your friends to take part in this scheme too! Just get out there and take a photo of the interesting stuff going on in your garden. Whether it’s a picture of the birds, the fox, the green shoots starting to sprout up through the cold soil, or buds on a tree…
We are so used to the myriads of flowers available in florists all year round, but sometimes we forget what English flowers are available during the spring.
The first flowers of the year are usually snowdrops, these brave little tiny white flowers pushed through in the coldest months. They unlike many other bulb flowers need to be bought “in the Green”. This means buying them whilst they still have stems. Virtually all of the bulb plants can be bought as just bulbs. It does take some planning to get the bulbs planted and in the grounds early enough for them to have a good flowering season. However once they are in there they stay. It takes many years before the bulbs become overcrowded and may require some help.
A sign that bulbs or overcrowded is when they don’t flowers much, and they have a lot of leaf overlarge compact area but very few flowers. If this happens to bulbs, then you should dig them up and separate them out. Replant them in much smaller groups. You may find you have lots of bulb should cannot use, pass this on to neighbours and friends. Do not find compost bulbs, as some of the more persistent full disclosure in your compost bin.
Daffodils are one of the flowers that indicate spring to most people. Their cheery bright heads of joyful, and will bring cheer and brightness to all gardens. There are a huge number of righties with different types of head, different colours of petal, and different sized flowers. There are tiny flowers are very cute, these look great in pots. There are ruffled varieties that have many flowers of tightly contacted petals. The colours vary from palest yellows to bright orange almost red colours.
Most bulbs need to be left until the foliage has died down. A sprinkling of general fertiliser once a year can help these plants. Some bulbs like tulips should be dug up and stored, to be replanted later again. Bluebells are very pretty and probably one of the most dominant bulbs you can buy. Once you have bluebells in your garden will always have bluebells in your garden. They seem to grow quickly and spread widely. They are however incredibly pretty and if inter-planted with other things your garden will look lovely all year round.
Pansy Can Can 
Primrose Rosebud
Wallflower Fortune 
Pansy Grande Fragrance
Primrose Valiant 