Episode 6 Gardeners' World

Hello. Welcome to Gardener's World.

About half an hour ago I thought I would come out,

it was drizzling a bit and chilly, but I will get some planting done

because I have a lot of young plants that I want to get into borders.

The drizzle has now returned to sleet which is turning to snow.

The forecast is terrible.

We will battle on, and if it gets too bad I have a potting shed

and lots to do in the greenhouse and seeds to sow as well.

And tonight's programme is packed with stuff.

This week, I will be showing you how to use perennials grown from seed

to enrich your borders.

Growing any plan from seed is the cheapest

and most satisfying way of raising plants.

And Carol shows us how to grow them perfectly every time.

There is no real mystique to sowing seeds,

but you always must bear in mind four important factors.

Compost, light, temperature and water.

Rachel returns to Didcot to visit the army wives and lends them a hand and making their cut flower garden.

That is amazing after five days.

This is an Aquilegia, 'Lime Sorbet', which I have not grown before,

but have seen pictures of and really want it,

so I bought a pack of seeds last year and sowed them.

They will be just right, the colour scheme is white with

touches of green for the Wall Garden.

The Wall Garden is the first bit of the garden we made,

and the colour scheme here is distinctly soft.

We have whites, pinks, lemon yellows,

all the colours that we don't have in the Jewel Garden.

And so anything I am adding to it wants to fit within that scheme,

and I think these Aquilegias will do well.

The important thing is that I grew them from seed,

this is a perennial plant, it will last and self seed itself

very freely.

But it is very, very easy to grow perennials from seed

just as weather you grow annuals or vegetables.

Anybody can do it.

You don't need a greenhouse, just a windowsill will do fine.

And the range of plants you can get from the seed is much,

much greater than anything you can buy as a plant.

So, immediately you get into the practice of sowing from seed,

the whole repertoire increases hugely and also the number of plants.

Look at these, three trays of plants, all planned for the Wall Garden.

Sown last year. We have two different types of Verbascum and one type of Aquilegia.

That is three packets of seed.

Probably not all of three packets, total cost no more than £10.

I have got myself 60 plants for 10 quid. That is really good value.

Talking of Verbascums, I have two types.

I have Polarsummer, which is very apt for a freezing cold April day

and one I haven't grown before called 'Spica'.

I love Verbascums or Mulleins but they are not ideally

suited to our soil, which is rich and heavy.

They grow best on rather poor, free-draining soil.

If you have a piece of ground where other plants are straining a bit,

Verbascums are ideal

and will give you a dramatic and beautiful display.

If you didn't sow any seeds yourself last year, there are still lots of

small pot grown perennials available now.

Amongst my own favourites are Geums,

Oriental poppies, and Anchusa,

all of which will provide vivid colour later in the season.

I am using these Aquilegias to create a sort of rhythm and ripple

running right around this Wall Garden.

It is great that I have plenty to do that.

But last summer, we went to visit a grower who is growing

flowers from seed on a scale that is unimaginable for most gardeners.

Brian Herrick has been developing the gardens

and sustainable farmland at Barcroft Hall in Somerset for the last 10 years.

In 2010, an opportunity arose to diversify his range of crops even further.

This was an area of land that we had recently acquired

which was in a bit of a state.

After we cultivated it, we were just about put in some normal arable crops,

but it demanded more than that

and what we have then decided to do, my wife and I, was to put it out to wildflowers.

The plan was to create a wildflower meadow that people could come and visit.

A variety of annuals from around the world were planted in huge swathes.

Never our intention was just to have indigenous flowers,

we wanted to show the diversity.

I work very closely with a butterfly expert

and together we chose the right species of plants to put in,

not only to give the right colour and attraction to insect life,

but also for the longevity of the plants and to make sure that we

had the right plants coming up at the right time.

Weeks into the flowering

it just looks like an impressionist painting.

And now it has gone into a different phase entirely.

We are seeing more yellows and whites

and splatterings of blue coming through.

And there is an annual wild flower, we are seeing its birth and death.

If you're a purist gardener, you would think,

"I would never put that colour with that colour."

But it really does work and everyone has really enjoyed it.

There are favourites of different people here.

There are favourites of the children,

they are looking at a lower level and looking

at the Rose mallows here.

And they love the Corncockles and the Camomile,

and they certainly love the Cornflowers.

Adults have a different taste altogether.

They are more into the poppies,

and the little red Scarlet flax over here,

which is my favourite.

And the Cape daisy, which we have here.

It is not just flowers here,

we really wanted that connection

between farming and what we have done here,

we didn't want to be seen just as the flower farmer

so whilst all this was going on and we were sowing all this

we also came out with bags of barley,

our bags of wheat and we swathed the wheat and the barley around here.

And it really does work well because you can see here

there is barley here and it is looking lovely within the flowers.

Lots of people have asked us, how do we do it on a smaller scale?

You can easily do it.

You're either going to sow it in an area that is already grassed

or sow it on an area that is already cultivated.

Either way it's got to be clean.

We either clear the grass or the weeds away.

There are several methods for doing that.

The first and easiest method would be to use proprietary herbicide with a sprayer.

Or you can use black plastic to cover the grass,

or indeed newspaper with a mulch on top,

and when the lights does not get to the grass, the grass will die and you can cultivate it later on.

If you do not want to cover it with black plastic or newspaper

and do not want to spray it, there's only one method

and that is to use good old elbow grease and dig off the turf.

It is March-April time, and we will cultivate

the soil as best we can and get it down to a lovely fine till

ready for the broadcasting and distribution of the seed.

We will broadcast it at a density of around three or four grams

per square metre.

After we have done all that we will roller it in hard or

stamp it down with our feet and then

we just wait for the flowers to appear.

I think that next year we will fundamentally do it the same if we can.

We have learned a lot.

Everyone likes particular flowers and have said,

"We would like some more poppies" and things like that.

So what we are trying to do is to do what our visitors have asked us to do.

And I think more poppies, certainly.

Since making that film, Brian is making another 'Field of Dreams'

in Japan as part of the Tsunami recovery process,

to inspire and fill people with the beauty and peace that the field in Somerset has done.

What I have noticed from that is that it was a marginal piece of land,

it was a piece that was really not very good.

It shows that you can turn a corner that you don't know what to do with into something really beautiful.

That is what I intend to do here.

This is what we call 'The Mound', it is where we have heaped

all of our subsoil and rubbish from paths and the pond excavations that have come here.

And I am going to pull this up this summer,

make it circular and then plant the banks, that should be pretty steep, with wildflowers.

And I can start sowing those wildflowers now.

and the really good bit is that I can sow them indoors.

I am soaked. That weighs a ton, it is so wet.

The seed I gathered for The Mount is rather different

to the Field of Dreams, which is this carpet of colour.

The Mound obviously has a slope, so therefore it has drier

and wetter parts, and also a different orientation.

One side will be quite shady because it is north facing, or south facing,

east facing and so on, so it needs to be a mix, which will include

plants like Primroses,

which will be great for the shadier, wetter part at the bottom.

Cowslips, which will do better near the top of The Mound,

where the drainage is better and it gets more sunshine.

But we have things like Red Clover

which is a grassland flower,

Ragged robin which you get on the edges of the fields

around here and so on and so forth.

We can add to that.

There is an initial investment in buying the seed,

but it is nothing compared to the cost of buying plant

and once you have then you can collect seed from them.

Here are envelopes of seeds that we have collected last year,

so for example, we have Digitalis from the back of the Wall Garden,

that's Foxgloves. And you can see here that if I take one of the seed heads

and break it open, the seeds in there are tiny!

Minute little seeds.

I think that what is so extraordinary about this is these titchy little

brown seeds will give rise to a three or four foot tall spiral of flower.

By sowing the seed, you, the gardener,

become part of that magic and rhythm of growth and regrowth and reseeding.

That is thrilling. That really is the big thrill of gardening.

I take a seed tray and use my basic seed mix, which is a peat free

potting compost mixed with quite a lot of vermiculite and a little bit of leaf mould

and then just scatter the seed thinly.

The rule of thumb is that it is better to be too thin than too thick.

And that is pretty much it for these. After all, these want to grow.

They grow well in the wild, but it can be a little daunting if you are starting out.

This week, Carol is giving us

the low-down on how to get your seeds to work every time.

My garden is full of plants that I have grown from seed,

and occasionally, you come across something that you

grew from seed but it has reached maturity,

like this Trillium chloropetalum.

It is such a picture.

But sowing seed is not always a straightforward process.

We have received loads of e-mails

and letters from people whose seeds are far from flourishing.

We went to see one of our viewers to find out exactly what her problems were.

My name is Margaret Scott, we have lived here for 15-20 years.

I enjoy nothing better than to potter in the garden all day long.

My problem is that I would like some help with my seeds.

With the propagator, do I leave these vents open or closed?

When should I take the lid off? Why has this compost gone green?

Why are those seeds not germinating?

Which compost do I choose at a garden centre? Do I use a special one? That is my problem.

There is no real mystique to sowing seeds,

but you have always got to bear in mind four important factors.

Compost, light, temperature and water.

The first thing to consider is compost.

What are you actually going to sow your seeds in?

It can be a little daunting when you turn up at the garden centre

and there are so many to choose from.

What you're after is one that calls itself a seed compost.

The point about it is that it is going to be fine.

That is what your seeds need.

It is going to be free draining and absolutely sterile.

When you fill up your seed tray, really fill it up.

You want the seeds as they develop to have that whole depth of soil to put down the little roots.

And then just firm the whole thing down

so it is flush or just under the level of the side of your container.

Seeds come in all sort of shapes and sizes

but the great majority of them are fairly fine.

Occasionally, you will get something that is big.

Things like sweet peas, beans, or stuff like this Calendula.

This is an Indian Prince that I saved from the garden last year

and each individual seed is quite a size.

With them it is worth giving them their own module space.

One seed, just sewing them like that but with these fine seeds,

the process is quite different.

This is a Larkspur Kingsized Scarlet, and when I'm sowing seed like this, fine seed,

I go around the edge of the tray first of all.

The whole idea of doing this is, A, the seed is evenly distributed

and B, you do not sow too many.

It pays to be sparing with your seed.

I am just going to cover it with grit now.

People say, well, don't you have to put compost on there first?

Perhaps in the case of things like tomatoes, it is worth spreading a very fine layer of sifted compost

so the seeds just disappear, but even then,

afterwards, I use grit. I am just going to cover the surface of the tray.

I prefer using grit because it is heavier

and there's no build-up of algae on top of it.

Margaret was using vermiculite. It doesn't really matter.

People say, "You have just said you don't cover the seed!"

But plenty of light can still get through all of the individual little stones here.

The next stage is to water them.

Pour around an inch or two of water into the bottom of the container

and then gently place in your seed trays, allowing the water to

slowly soak the compost but not wash the seeds away.

This is the sort of propagator that Margaret has.

I find them very useful for people with limited space who want

to get things going really quickly.

Margaret is very concerned about when and whether

to actually use these vents and open them up.

They are not very big, they do not let a lot of air in there.

I think a better idea if you are getting condensation in there is to take the whole thing off, shake it,

get rid of all that moisture and then return it if necessary.

What is happening, when you keep this lid on,

there is lots of moisture in there.

You're cutting down on the lights but also creating very turgid sort of conditions in there.

I think that is the problem with this greening of the compost

and the vermiculite.

I think that Margaret should be a bit brave

and take this lid off when she sees the seeds have germinated.

Once the first leaves start appearing, you are ready to

prick out your seedlings into modules or a pot and grow them on for a bit

until they are ready to stand on their own two feet.

Margaret, I hope that gives you a few ideas about what could

have been going wrong and how to put it right.

The very best of success to you in the future with your seed sowing efforts.

It is lovely growing things from seed, it is wonderful to see

that those tiny seeds germinate and grow into great big strong plants.

But the best thing of all is when you bring your grown-up plant

out into the garden and take it for a walk and find the perfect

spot to put it in for it to join your garden community.

I am pruning this honeysuckle,

which is one of the jobs you can do in the rain.

And didn't the weather look nice down in Carol's garden?

Not like it is here, because I know you can't see cold on television

but believe you me, it is freezing.

However, I will get this done, this will warm me up.

This is Lonicera Fragrantissima, 'Winter flowering honeysuckle.'

Absolutely delicious little white flowers with beautiful fragrance.

And now is the time to prune it,

because it flowers on wood made the previous year.

I.e, wood that will grow from this spring and summer onwards.

There is no point in trying to make it look too fancy, I just want

to remove some of the oldest wood and that will generate new growth

and we will get a fresh flush of flowers.

You can see that last year, I cut part of this right back down to

the ground there, but it has thrown up these new shoots.

So you can just cut them right off and that will reshape it.

It will always be a fairly scrubby plant, so I will take out

part of it, thin it a bit and then take stock of when I have done that.

After removing any crossing or deadwood,

you can rejuvenate the plant by pruning up to

a third of the oldest stems, cutting them right at the base.

Other early flowering shrubs such as Flowering currants

and Forsythia are precisely can be treated in the same way.

This can all be shredded and added to the compost heap.

Last week, Rachel went to Didcot to meet a group of army wives

and help them set up a cut flower garden that they can

make from seed which will come to fruition in just a year.

She has gone back to see how they are getting on.

The 11 EOD regiment is the British Army's specialist counterterrorist bomb disposal unit.

The work they do is highly controlled and specialised.

As part of the regiment's welfare, the Army has set up

a community garden for families and military personnel at the barracks in Didcot Oxfordshire,

and I am back to check on progress.

I am looking forward to seeing what has been happening here.

It is only five days since I was last year.

These raised beds, they have definitely topped them up a bit more,

but I think they need a bit more compost,

so we will sort that later on.

There were greenhouses... They have moved. They have been shifting things about. Let's have a look.

After five days, I do not think you would expect to see much happening.

We have a little bit here on the Cosmos,

just starting to come through.

The Statis, lots of little shoots there. And the Zinnias.

We definitely have leaves there. And they are sowing seeds inside so we'll have a look at those

and see how they are coming along.

'The majority of the work is being done by the Army wives.'

This is where the party is happening!

I thought you would be gardening in this lovely weather.

It is nice to see you all, I thought I would come and see how you are getting on with the seeds.

I know you have sown some here. Sasha, you were in charge.

-Let me see what you have done so far.

-Oh, OK,

-How it is getting on.

These ones have been left inside.

Right, oh yes. That is remarkable.

In five days to have gotten all that...

And here, lots and lots of them. They are leaning towards the light.

One day of dealing with that is just simply on a daily basis,

turn them around and that will force them to straighten themselves up again.

Are these sweet peas in here? They normally take a bit longer.

From what I can see...

Oh, no. You have, you have, you have!

No. One, two...

-That's amazing after five days.

-Thank you.

The beds have been filled with a good quality mix of soil and compost,

but they aren't ready for seeds yet.

The mix is still full of air and needs consolidating

before any seeds get sown.

-Can you do that?

-Yes.

-Yes, I think you can. So hop up on here.

And in the corners.

That's looking good, but I think what we're going to do now is make

what we call a fine till,

which is just a nicely prepared seedbed on the top.

So if you just take a rake through it,

you're just evening up the surface.

Really good weather today, as well, for it. Whoopsie! For sowing seed.

Carry on filling up the other beds,

and we'll do exactly the same thing all the way round.

OK, Rachel, you're not going anywhere.

Now, you were really keen on growing the sweet peas last week.

Yeah, that's right, yeah.

-And we've got masses, haven't we?

-We do.

So what I thought was maybe in the middle of these raised beds,

we could put some sort of support and grow them

up there in the middle, get some nice height.

-That would be lovely.

-They'll look pretty.

About that far apart, something like that.

'It's as easy as using hazel poles

'and garden twine to create supports for the sweet peas and climbers.

'We have seeds germinating indoors,

'but I also want to show how to sow seeds directly into the soil.'

I think probably what we'll do here is just divide

these spaces into the four quadrants, if you like.

And put something different into each one.

'There's nothing easier than making seed drills

'in the surface of the soil with your fingertip.'

Now, the reason we're going to sow these in rows is that

when the seedlings come up, you'll be able to tell

which ones are seedlings, hopefully, and which ones are weeds.

I'm just going to take a tiny pinch in my fingers

and just try and very thinly spread it along each row.

'But enough talking and more doing.

'And it seems that the garden has already had a positive effect

'on the families.'

I've just started doing some more gardening.

I think doing this one has inspired me a bit.

I love doing this. It's therapeutic.

I'm a bit of a haphazard gardener, I just throw it in,

so I'm getting some good tips here.

Give the sweet peas a little water as well,

just by the base of the hazel.

Good luck. I think you're off to a great start, and I'll see you soon.

-Bye!

-Bye!

I tell you what, it won't be long before that is a MASS of colour and

Rachel will go back in a few weeks to see how they're getting along.

Now, these veg in the greenhouse are getting along really well,

as they always do at this time of year.

It's really the best way to grow salad crops,

in this very lean period before the outdoor stuff has got going.

There's good spinach and rocket and lettuce and corn salad,

and the radish that I sowed direct is also shaping up nicely.

It needs a bit of thinning.

It doesn't have to be too radical, because you can eat the things...

Pull that up.

In fact, you can eat that. Or keep them.

And just work down the row, thinning them a little.

Now, whether you grow flowers or prefer to grow veg,

here are some jobs you can get on with this weekend.

If you sowed your sweet peas last autumn or early in the year,

the chances are that by now they've become strong

but rather straggly plants.

It's a good idea to pinch out the leading shoots,

just above a pair of leaves.

This will encourage them to become strong, bushy plants that will

grow much more vigorously after they've been planted.

I spotted my first lily beetle the other day,

which was on a giant fritillary.

They will munch fritillaries to shreds just as readily as any lily.

They're bright red, so thankfully easy to see,

because the only way to get rid of them is to look for them,

hand-pick them and then destroy them.

Your carefully sown young seedlings can be destroyed overnight

by a greedy slug or snail, so it's important to regularly check

beneath seed trays, plugs and pots to remove any that you find.

With all this seed sowing,

inevitably, you're building up a backlog of seedlings,

and it is important

to keep them moving, and that means pricking them out

and making sure that they grow in slightly richer compost

and also have more room.

You know the time to prick them out

is when they develop a true leaf, and you can see here on this cosmos -

this is cosmos "Bright Lights" - that the true leaf has appeared.

These are the seed leaves,

but the true leaf is characteristic of the mature plant.

It looks like a cosmos leaf.

Then I know that there are roots underneath.

Now, always when you handle a seedling, you hold it by a leaf

and not by the stem.

There we go. It's got really quite substantial roots on it.

As long as the plant itself.

I'm going to prick those into plugs rather than individual pots,

because they'll grow perfectly well in a plug

and then can be potted on later.

And this is not a seed compost.

It's got a little bit of added goodness,

a bit of garden compost so that the plant grows a bit stronger.

If I take that and then just work it in.

This is a perfect rainy day job, quietly working through this.

It looks like it's going to rain for the rest of today.

But whatever it's like,

rain or shine,

I'll be back here next week, so I'll see you then.

Bye-bye.

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