COME GARDENING
The magazine of the National Blind Gardeners Club
Editor: Val George Technical Editors: Tim Spurgeon and Lucy Morrell
Readers: Tim Spurgeon, Val George and Lucy Morrell
Subscriptions: Lucy Morrell Copying and mailing: Rita Goodall
Series No 101 April 2007
EDITORIAL………………………………………………………………………………….Page 2
ANNOUNCEMENTS – a new Getting on with Gardening guide………………………Page 2
MARKET PLACE–heritage seeds, and exotic colour…………………………………..Page 3
READERS QUESTION– a climber for a sunny pergola……………………………….Page 4
GARDEN WRINKLE 1 – distinguishing plants from weeds……………………………Page 4
NEWS FROM READERS – photography help, gardening past, tomato ripeness
and labelling……………………………………………………………………………….. Page 4
FOOD GARDEN–an unfamiliar crop……………………………………………………..Page 7
GARDEN WRINKLE 2 – mowing straight, to cones…………………………………....Page 8
FLOWER GARDEN – June Earl’s garden……………………………………………….Page 8
BLIND GARDENER OF THE YEAR 2006 - first prize-winning entries……………….Page 9
GARDEN WRINKLE 3 – training blackberry canes……………………………………Page 16
GREENFINGERS – looking ahead (to climate change)………………………………Page 16
GARDEN WRINKLE 4 – a barrow tool tidy……………………………………………..Page 16
CASSETTE LIBRARY…………………………………………………………………….Page 17
TAILPIECE……………………………………………………………………………… .Page 17
Please send all correspondence, including changes of address, to:
Thrive, The Geoffrey Udall Centre, Beech Hill, Reading RG7 2AT
Telephone: 0118 988 5688 24-hour answerphone: 0118 988 6668
Email:
Registered Charity Number: 277570
EDITORIAL
Welcome! The first-prize-winning entries for the 2006 Blind Gardener of the Year competition are included in this issue; well done to everyone. Marion Watts won both the Wildlife Gardener and Inventive Gardener categories with her entries – a fantastic achievement. And thanks to all the other inventive gardeners who have written in with their tips, or responded to queries from the last issue. We have had so many very useful items for the magazine that we can’t include all of them this time. We are holding onto them for future issues.
ANNOUNCEMENTS
News from Thrive
As some of you may be aware, the three-year Big Lottery funding that Thrive and RNIB received to develop a national service to visually impaired gardeners has now come to an end. By the end of April, we will have heard about thefunding application to take the service forward. These include funding to enable us to run the gardening weekend, roadshows and workshop days. We will let you know the outcomes as soon as we can. However we have just heard that we have been awarded a grant from the Sylvia Adams Trust to run a new series of roadshows.
Getting on with Gardening books
The new edition of Getting on with Gardening, the essential guide to gardening with a visual impairment, is now available. This guide for blind and partially sighted gardeners has just been rewritten by Thrive and is published by RNIB, with funding from the Big Lottery Fund.
The new, extended edition is published in two volumes and is packed with tried and tested techniques gathered from visually impaired gardeners over the past 80 years.
Volume 1 has information on seed sowing, potting, gardening outside, tools and equipment, raised beds, preparing the ground, planting and watering.
Volume 2 expands the gardener's knowledge with sections on taking cuttings, container growing, more gardening outside, protected growing, pruning, the lawn, pests and diseases and labelling.
Both volumes have large, clear diagrams in print or tactile versions, and a wealth of tips from gardeners including the winners of the Blind Gardener of the Year competitions. Getting on with Gardening is available in large print, on Daisy CD, on audio CD and tape and in Braille.
Each volume costs £5.00 to members and £7.50 to non-members.
Here is an extract from Volume 1 that we hope you will find useful for the new growing season:
Potting on
This term is used to describe the transfer of a plant from one pot into a larger one, to give it fresh compost and more room to grow. With most plants, it is best to pot on into a pot that is one size larger. Some plants have low-growing or fragile leaves that make potting on a little difficult; however, here is an excellent method for potting on all plants.
Before starting, make sure that the plant that you want to pot on is well watered - preferably a few hours before potting on.
To begin, take the plant you are potting on and knock it out of the pot. With plastic pots, the easiest way to do this is to squeeze the pot sides to free the roots from the pot. Place your fingers under the leaves of the plant and across the top of the pot so that the plant stem is between your index and middle fingers. Turn the pot over and gently tap its rim on the edge of the table or surface you are using. This should release the plant from the pot into your hand. Set the plant to one side.
Take the larger pot that the plant is to go into and put it on a level surface or in your compost tidy tray. Place a small amount of compost in the bottom so that when you place the smaller pot, that the plant came out of, inside on the compost, the tops of the two pots are level. Now fill in the space around the smaller pot with compost (it doesn't matter if compost goes into the smaller pot, as this is just acting as a mould). Gently press down the compost between the pots and give the larger pot a tap to make sure there are no air pockets. Now give the inner pot a little twist, holding it with the thumb and forefinger of both hands, and lift it out. This forms a pot-shaped hole that you know will fit your plant exactly. Now simply drop the plant into the hole, gently tap the pot to distribute the compost and water in to settle the compost around the plant.
When potting up plants or planting a container, always leave a space between the top of the pot and the compost. With plastic pots there is a ridge inside the pot where the compost should come up to. The space will allow plenty of room for watering. If the compost is level with the top of the pot or container the water will flow off the compost before it has a chance to soak in.
MARKET PLACE
Heritage seeds
Peter Barry from Builth Wells is growing some heritage seeds for the first time this year - carrots, beef-steak tomatoes, peas and cabbage - and has promised to let us know how he gets on. If you are growing any old fashioned varieties, do let us know how you fare - and if they taste different, or have different growth habits from the modern varieties.
Find out more about The Heritage Seed Library from Garden Organic, atRytonOrganicGardens,Coventry,WarwickshireCV8 3LG, telephone 024 7630 8210 or email
Exotic summer colour
Try something unusual and add colour to your borders this summer with Tithoniarotundifolia or Mexican sunflowers. They have vibrant gold, orange and yellow daisy like flowers with furry stems and slightly crinkled roundish leaves. ‘Arcadian Blend’ is a selection of shades from Thompson and Morgan. 50 seeds for £2.19, postage and packing £1.49 telephone 01473 695225 or visit
Plants of Distinction sell the shorter ‘Fiesta Del Sol’, reference 2281, that costs
£ 1.65 with £ 1.50 postage and packing. Telephone 0870 460 9445 or visit
READERS QUESTION
A climber for a sunny pergola
Elisabeth Standen from Bristol emailed recently asking for ideas for a climber to train up the pergola in her garden to provide some shade and give perfume.
Lucy suggested a Trachelospermum, which has small shiny evergreen foliage and cream fragrant flowers in mid to late summer. The foliage gives the added interest of turning bronze in the winter. It is moderately vigorous and easily controlled. Trachelospermum can also be grown in a container. Plant in a 30-40 cm (12-16inch) pot for the first year and then repot into a final 45-70 cm (18-28 inch) pot after that. The repotting will not be easy as the plant will be tied in to the pergola or trellis, but persevere as you will be rewarded with a stronger plant. Use John Innes No.3 compost each time you pot.
You could treat yourself to a good sized plant from Crocus the mail order plant company. A 3 litre pot costs £14.95 with £5.95 postage and packing. Telephone 0870 787 1413 or
email:
787 1413
GARDEN WRINKLE 1 - from Spring 1995; Buckinghamhsire Association for Gardening with Disabled People recommend that to help to distinguish between weeds and wanted plants in an herbaceous border you can place a brightly coloured old biro or felt pen in front of each wanted plant.
NEWS FROM READERS
Mark Smith from Norwich lets us know how he got on with the compost aerator we featured in CG 99, Autumn 2006:
Being a great believer in the benefits of composting and now having three large compost bins on my allotment, I eagerly ordered the aerator and had a good feel of the item to
familiarise myself with how it worked. I then put it to the test in my number 1 compost bin.
The aerator is a bit like a walking stick, with an L-shaped handle at one end and two small blades on a turn screw at the other. When the blades are inserted into the compost they fold up; when you pull on the handle they open up to help aerate and turn the compost
material.
After using it several times and getting to grips with the technique, I began to feel slightly disappointed that it only had the L-shaped handle, as it was not really possible to use both hands at once, as the handle was too short to pull up and turn the compost. Although I am quite tall, around 5ft 11in, I found I was only just tall enough to stand over the compost bin, insert the aerator and then pull it up to aerate the material inside.
While the concept is excellent, the aerator hasn’t quite done what I hoped, and really needs something like a T-shaped handle to exert the force needed to pull it upwards. You need quite a lot of strength to use this, but it is good exercise!
Thanks to Mark for his comments – a disappointing trial for a promising idea…
Pauline Kontani, of London NW2, offers some help…
In response to Ursula Mudhar, in a recent edition, who wanted to photograph plants that she can’t reach, I too am both physically disabled and visually impaired and I also photograph things I can’t get close enough to see.
I have an ancient (pre-digital) camera – a Minolta Dynax 5000i, which has both automatic focusing and a zoom lens. As I cannot see anything through the viewfinder I am completely dependent on the auto-focusing! The zoom lens has a ribbed bit that you turn to move the lens. I turn it so that the lens section of the camera is as long as possible – this is the maximum 200m setting. Then I simply point – as best I can - and leave the rest to the camera. I do take a lot of ‘extra’ photos, as obviously I don’t always get the ‘pointing’ bit of the procedure quite right. This results in a proportion of dud photos – but generally, enough to be useful.
You need a camera where the auto-focus really does focus. Some ‘automatic’ focus cameras just focus on an average distance – which is no use at all for our purposes! I found the auto-focus on Minolta cameras the clearest – but I expect it depends on what suits your sight.
I suggest trying a really good old-fashioned camera shop – if you can find one - as they will be able to advise. I can’t offer any help with digital photography as I am unable to use a computer – but friends have tried to show me digital photos and I find them very unclear compared to the old fashioned kind of photo.
I should like to say how grateful I am for the help Come Gardening has been with labelling my pots of seedlings recently. After last year’s disasters I had decided not to order any seeds this year, but after the help your readers offered I now have a big box of seed packets and a supply of hairpins and different shaped buttons so that I can tell the small pots apart. I feel confident of success this year. Thank you all.
Val adds: good single lens reflex digital cameras are now coming down in price as second-hand models, and have accurate auto-focus. When you’ve taken your pictures, the camera can be connected to a computer and you can view them full screen size and also zoom in, as necessary. Favourite pics can be saved to the hard drive or onto disk – and also printed. These cameras offer a quality on a par with non-digital. Tim adds: If you want a digital camera, get one with at least 6 million pixels. This will give very clear, good quality photos.
Maura Walsh, of Desborough, Northants, sent these ideas to Lucy:
With reference to the advice given in a recent gardening tape about how to pick tomatoes and also on labelling seeds, I have the following hints that might be useful to other gardeners.
In the summer I grew Alicante tomato plants in pots on the patio. When the tomatoes were large enough, I asked my husband to check them each day, but not to tell me which were becoming ripe. I checked them as well, and by feeling the fruit I could tell the various stages, from being hard, to soft enough to pick. Also, I noticed that as they ripened they began to smell like a tomato and they were easier to remove from the vine. I checked with my husband and I was 95% correct in my experiment and guesswork!
Unless I raise my plants in root trainers and transfer these straight to patio pots, I have found the following advice useful for labelling pots. I use round plastic pots for flower seeds and square pots for vegetable/salad seeds. I then use raised stick-on ‘bump-ons’ that come in various bright colours and are available from the RNIB. These are mainly used for labelling household and kitchen items, but could be useful for gardeners with limited sight.
I mark the pots as follows –Marigold – round pot with 1 bump-on; Sunflower – round pot with 2 bump-ons; Peas – square pot with 2 bump-ons; Parsley – square pot with 1 bump-on.
As I label, I tape record what I am doing so that I can refer back at a later date.
I hope this might be of help to other gardeners.
Norman Waddington offers this adviceon identification of seedlings:
In a recent magazine, Pauline was asking for different ways of identifying seedlings in trays. Here are some ideas!
There are many different sizes and shapes of seedtrays. Perhaps it might be an idea to use the larger trays for seeds of large perennials. Smaller, A5-size trays could then be used for smaller seeds, or for seeds of small plants.
Another idea is to plant large seeds individually in peat pots. They can then be planted on directly into the ground, thereby minimising damage to young root systems.
Labelling is an individual thing; I don’t know if the lady concerned has any residual vision, or if she can read Braille. To help her identify her seeds, she could, perhaps, put a small cane with a different shape attached to it in each tray.
I use my computer to list what plants are in particular trays, and number my pots according to size . This may be too complex for some people, but the system could be simplified to meet their needs.
George Wilcockson from Sutton-in-Ashfield sent news by tape about a new gardening group in Nottinghamshire:
The group meets at Brackenhurst College and has lots of ideas and plans including creating raised vegetable beds, a chamomile seat and growing tomatoes on straw bales using the ‘hot bed’ system. They hope to receive funding in April to enable the fourteen members to travel to the college by minibus. We wish the new group well and look forward to hearing how they get on.
And thanks to George also for this lovely spring poem…
BLUEBELL
Bluebell, bluebell, stay a while
Please my senses, make me smile
Before the May-fly’s on the wing
In time to hear the cuckoo sing
I sense the silence of your ring
Are you telling me it’s spring?
Bluebell, bluebell, shades of blue
Heavy with the morning dew
You tang the air, you please the eye,
You’re kissed by bees and the butterflies
Bluebell, bluebell, please say you’ll stay
If only for another day.
For its for you I long this day
Is this some kind of love affair?
As you flower in very nature’s death
You fill my senses with your breath
Bluebell, bluebell you will always be
A pleasure deep in my memory.
THE FOODGARDEN
John Saunderson enjoys an unfamiliar crop:
I like growing something unusual each year and vegetable spaghetti is both different and very useful. When I mention its name, I often get the response, “You are joking!”