Episode 7 Gardeners' World


Episode 7

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Transcript


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Hello. Welcome to Gardeners' World.

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We're at that lovely time of year

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when the garden is changing almost by the hour.

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But there is still a real sense,

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certainly here in the Jewel Garden anyway,

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of the orchestra warming up - it's not yet really playing its tune.

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It's changing all the time,

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but at the moment it's all just different levels of green

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with touches of intense colour, like the crown imperials,

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like the Euphorbia characias. Just a few tulips starting,

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but there could be twice as many tomorrow, and by next week,

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probably they'll all be out - the change is happening so fast.

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This week, Nick Bailey is on the trail of Shakespeare's poisons

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and love potions.

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Cupid's arrow fell on a little white flower,

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turning it purple with love's wound, hence its power as an elixir.

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We catch up with Frances Tophill to see how her

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veg trail is going at RHS Rosemoor.

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And last year in April, we went to Pashley Manor

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where their annual tulip festival was in full swing.

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Are the tulips going to come out on time?

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Are they going to be desperately early?

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Are they going to be late?

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You know, people think I'm 85, and actually I'm only 58, you know.

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And seeing as we're celebrating all things Shakespeare,

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it's fitting that I'm continuing my new veg beds

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because they are woven exactly in the style that

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vegetables were grown in and during Shakespeare's time,

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which coincidently was exactly the period that this house

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and garden were first made.

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But first, I'm going to sow some flowers in the new cutting garden.

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Now, what have you got?

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What have you got?

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Those are the seeds I was going to sow, Nellie!

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Right.

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I was going to sow Bupleurum in my cutting garden...

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and I'm not any more.

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Come on.

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Right, our second attempt.

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So, not Bupleurum, but bells of Ireland,

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which again are grown essentially for their foliage.

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I've covered the ground just hoping it will keep it a little bit drier.

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So, rake that off. That's not too wet.

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There we go.

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Using a board as a spacer, so I need to be that far away from it.

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Now, bells or Ireland I always treat as a hardy annual.

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Sow them direct after all frost has passed, but here,

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even though it's fairly cold and wet here,

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we've never had any problems with them.

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My biggest problem are dogs eating your seeds before you can sow them.

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Draw my drill.

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As ever, it is quite important to try and sow these thinly.

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Get the last one out.

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It's funny how the last seed will stick in the crease of the packet.

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There you go.

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And then just sprinkle them along.

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Now, this time of year, the soil tends to be damp and warm,

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so it should germinate fast.

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I wouldn't expect to see anything for a few weeks.

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So, what bells of Ireland will give me, Moluccella,

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is these greens which fade into a kind of almost yellow,

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which against either bright colours or very pale colours

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acts like a really good foil.

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You need that levelling influence in any kind of flower arrangement

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and therefore in your cutting garden.

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I'm going to add now some plants. This is ammi, Ammi visnaga,

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which is like a kind of posh cow parsley.

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It has a slightly rounded umbel of white flowers

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made up of hundreds of little florets.

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And then, as you can see, very loose, finely cut foliage.

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I'm just going to put a row along here.

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And I'll use my measuring device again

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and just plant them out.

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Ammi, whether it be Ammi majus or Ammi visnaga,

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grows much better if you sow it in September rather than spring.

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You can get seed and sow it as late as early April,

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but it never develops half as well.

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So, if you haven't sown it now, buy it as a plant and then buy some seed

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and grow them yourself for next year.

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Around the time of Shakespeare's death in 1616,

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tulips began to be amongst the most valuable things on this planet

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and people made and lost vast fortunes.

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And this beautiful flower became a symbol of greed and wealth

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and man's insatiable desire to possess

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that which it thinks is most valuable.

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Well, here in the Spring Garden,

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I try and use tulips in a completely different way.

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I want them to weave in and out of what else is going on,

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to blend, to highlight,

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so you got the lovely lily flowered West Point.

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It's yellow and these petals curve up and they twist and they open out.

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And the Spring Green, which is chunkier,

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but delicate because you get this green flash on a white background,

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so you get this spring lightness of touch.

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Now, of course, tulips are magnificent

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and now we can just enjoy them as a flower, but very people grow them

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in such quantity or with such panache as they do at Pashley Manor.

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And we went along last year when were at their very best.

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I've always, since the age four onwards,

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been interested in gardening.

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We moved here in 1981...

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when it was, to say the least, a bit of a muddle,

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but we have the most wonderful views and beautiful countryside.

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My life is surrounded by the garden.

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It's enough to keep me fully occupied every waking moment.

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That is what I really enjoy.

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It might interest you to know how this tulip festival started.

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A friend of ours telephoned me to say,

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"Do you realise what this year is?"

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I said, "Not particularly."

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And they said,

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"It is the 400th anniversary of the first tulip to be landed in Europe.

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"I think you should have a tulip festival."

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So, roughly, that's what we did.

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And we slowly increase the size, so we went for the second year

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we were very proud of having 5,000 tulips in the garden,

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and the next year 7,500,

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and then we got over the 10,000 a year or two later.

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This year we planted best part of 25,500 tulips.

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I think it's 107 different varieties.

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One of the things that's exciting is

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the anticipation of the build-up to it.

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Are the tulips going to come on time?

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Are they going to be desperately early?

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Are they going to be late?

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You know, people think I'm 85, and actually I'm only 58, you know.

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One of the great joys of this garden is Keith, our head gardener.

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Keith has worked with us all his working life

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and he came as a schoolboy in the holidays

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and then he went to horticulture college and then he came back here.

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And I appointed Keith at a very young age to be head gardener.

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This board here has one of my favourite colour combinations

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of tulips with the green star here

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with the green streak as a lily flowered.

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And then you have the white as well with it,

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which is just almost a pure white version of it,

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so they create a really nice combination together.

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And we found it's a real winner over the years.

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Tulips in containers can be really good.

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You can create a really good, long lasting effect

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if you double layer your planting.

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Put one layer of tulips in quite deep into the pot, add two

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or three inches of compost and then another layer of tulips above.

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And the lower ones come through behind the higher bulbs

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and you'll get a much longer flowering period

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and helps to fill the pot and makes it feel really dense and full.

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With the tulips, we'll use underplanting,

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predominately forget-me-nots,

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cos they'll come in most of the ranges of colours for the tulips.

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We also use red Bellis in the hot borders.

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You have a bit of a love-hate with them, I suppose,

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because they're superb at this time of year,

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they give us such a good show with this volume of tulips in the garden.

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But we're almost cursing them at times because

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it's putting us so far behind,

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but they're certainly something we're never going to be without.

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When we lift the bulbs off, they finish flowering,

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they'll be boxed up and donated to local charities,

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things such as hospices and nursing homes

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and they'll plant them in their grounds

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and then we'll have a brand-new,

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fresh batch of bulbs for the next season

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to guarantee the perfect flowering.

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One thing is whether I have a favourite tulip.

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It depends, really.

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I suppose I would say Queen of the Night,

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that near-black tulip.

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It's so elegant and so distinctive.

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But I particularly enjoy a tulip called Angelique,

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which is very attractive,

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and happens to be my wife's name,

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so it all fits in nicely.

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I'm often asked whether I mind our garden

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being filled up with visitors.

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They answer is, certainly no, I don't.

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They spur us on to try and see that we do a good job.

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And it's pleasure to show people something which

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frankly we're quite proud of.

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Pashley Manor is open for its tulip festival until the 7th of May.

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If you go to our website you'll get all the details of how to get there

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and what time it opens and all that kind of thing.

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Hopefully I'll have this done long before the 7th of May.

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This was how vegetables and herbs would have been grown

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from medieval times right up till the Stuart time,

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at the end of Shakespeare's life.

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And then things started to change in the 17th century.

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And when this house was built

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this is how the garden would have been made,

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with woven beds - I've used hazel,

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just normal bean sticks that you can buy, hazel bean sticks,

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and chestnut posts.

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And I've done these four beds,

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but I'm going to make another little one now.

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And you start with a post, which have been sharpened

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and I've cut down to size, but you can see they're pretty substantial.

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Quite a lot has to go in the ground

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because there's a lot of pressure by the sticks.

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The upside of that is they're really strong.

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And chestnut has two huge virtues.

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The first is, it's really good at surviving in wet soil.

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Makes brilliant posts, it doesn't rot.

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Well, if it does, it does so very slowly.

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And the second virtue is, it's dead easy to split.

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So, if I get a splitting axe like that...

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And that's it. I've got two posts.

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That's the easiest bit of the whole operation.

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The absolute critical thing if you're doing this yourself is

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to get your post, whatever you use, dead straight.

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You'll have to forgive me, I'm going to huff and puff.

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Here we go.

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And who said...

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that gardening...

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was a sedate activity?

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So, I'm going to start that end,

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and what I'll do is, so it doesn't break,

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you twist at the same time as bending.

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So, nail the top corners to stop them springing up,

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and then cut the excess posts clean.

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That's all there is to it.

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A few weeks ago, Frances Tophill started a trial,

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at RHS Rosemoor in Devon, of vegetable seeds,

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and we went down there to see how she's getting on.

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A few weeks ago, at the beginning of April, I sowed ridge cucumber,

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sweetcorn and tomato seeds to kick off the veg trial I'm running,

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to find out which varieties give the best crop

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and, crucially, the best taste.

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The cucumbers and sweetcorn aren't ready yet...

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..but the tomatoes got off to a flying start.

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Our tomato seedlings are up and ready to be pricked out.

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Now, basically, you can see in this pot, it's quite congested.

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We have six in here, and there's not enough room for them to grow -

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but, as well as that, there comes a point in every seed's life

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where it's used all the goodness form the endosperm in the seed,

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and now it really has nothing to live on.

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So, I'm potting it from this low-nutrient compost

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into something a little bit more nutrient rich.

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So, we've got a slow-release fertiliser in there,

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just a basic multipurpose compost.

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This is Tumbler F1,

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which means it's very good for going in a hanging basket -

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which is great, because all our tomatoes will be, eventually,

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going into hanging baskets -

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but, for now, they need to go into this slightly bigger pot,

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where they will grow on a little bit more.

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The idea with this is we want to get as much root out as possible -

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always pull these plants out by the leaves.

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If we crush this stem, the plant will not grow back again.

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So, a damaged leaf isn't the end of the world -

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a damaged stem is bad news.

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And gently pulling,

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so we have as much root as can be with the plant.

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That can just be gently pushed in.

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Generally speaking,

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when you pot something from one container to another,

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or even to the ground,

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you want the soil to be at the same level in the pot

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as it is in its new position, but with this tomato,

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I'm actually going to bury it a little bit deeper -

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it's about half an inch of extra compost -

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and that just stops this plant from getting too leggy once it grows up,

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makes it a more robust specimen.

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And that's it.

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A bit of water, and I'll put this back into the polytunnel,

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where it'll get bigger and stronger until it's ready to be hardened off.

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If you want to join our trial, then it's not too late.

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You can go to our website for a list of the seeds that we're growing,

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and you can let us know

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how your plants are getting on via our Facebook page.

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You can have that bit, there.

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There we go.

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We'll be going back to Rosemoor

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to see how Frances is getting on very soon.

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And this is done for the moment, this little bed, here.

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It's designed for growing lots of lovely vegetables,

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and, so, I think I'd better start.

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Now, in honour of the Tudor nature of these beds,

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and also Shakespeare's birthday and death,

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I think we should have a Tudor vegetable in here first.

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I'm going to plant some skirret.

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In Shakespeare's time, it was a very common root vegetable -

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in fact, right the way through from medieval England

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up until the 19th century,

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most vegetable gardens would grow it,

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both for its vegetable,

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which is somewhere between carrot and parsnip,

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and also for medicinal purposes -

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it was used as a poultice for sores,

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and people believed that it warded off the plague.

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They would fry them in butter or roll them in flour,

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and they were sweet - and that was the key,

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because remember, this is a time before sugar was widely available.

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So, any sweet root vegetable was highly prized.

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You'd simply plant them so that they're level with the soil,

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and they will die right back in winter.

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And if I put them here, this will stay here.

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They like good drainage, but also plenty of moisture.

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Well, they're going to get plenty of moisture, that's for sure.

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As part of our celebration of Shakespeare's birth and death,

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Nick Bailey has been looking at

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the horticultural and botanical references in his work.

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I've been head gardener here at Chelsea Physic Garden

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for six years - but that's just a small blip in the garden's history.

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It was established in 1673 to train apothecaries

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in the identification and use of medicinal plants -

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in other words, they needed to determine between

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the good and the ill, the poisons and the potions.

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A huge step towards this understanding came in 1597,

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just as Shakespeare was hitting his stride as a playwright

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when John Gerard published his Herball,

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a general history of plants.

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It really would have been the most extensive

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book on botany at its time.

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Now, it's unclear whether Gerard and Shakespeare

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would have been aware of each other, but they were certainly neighbours,

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they moved in the same in the same social circles,

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and it's been that an illustration in the front cover here

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is of Shakespeare - the only illustration during his lifetime.

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Now, if this is true, it would mean that there's a stronger link

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between him and this bible of botany.

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So, let's look at some examples of plants,

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potions and poisons in the works of the bard,

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and see if Gerard can help identify what exactly they were.

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"No warmth, no breath, shall testify thou liveth.

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"The roses in thy lips and cheeks shall fade to paly ashes,

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"and in this borrowed likeness of shrunk death,

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"thou shalt continue two and forty hours,

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"and then awake as from a pleasant sleep."

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So, what was this mystery substance?

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One likely candidate is Atropa belladonna,

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also known as deadly nightshade -

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but which in Gerard's Herball is known as sleeping nightshade.

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Gerard says that while a small amount leads to madness,

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a moderate amount causes a dead sleep -

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just what Juliet was after.

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There's plenty of skulduggery in Denmark, too.

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"Upon my secure hour, thy uncle stole

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"with juice of cursed hebenon in a vial,

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"and in the porches of mine ears

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"did pour the leprous distilment."

0:21:160:21:19

This time, Shakespeare explicitly identifies the substance used -

0:21:210:21:24

hebenon, or henbane.

0:21:240:21:26

And, again, Gerard is a possible source.

0:21:290:21:33

It causes an unquiet sleep, and is deadly to the party.

0:21:330:21:37

Henbane really can be deadly, but the reason we grow it here

0:21:450:21:48

is because of its historic medicinal use.

0:21:480:21:50

Of course, I'm wearing gloves to protect my hands

0:21:500:21:53

while I'm collecting the seeds, and, if we break down that seed,

0:21:530:21:56

we've got where the most toxic, toxic part of the plant is,

0:21:560:22:00

where the poison is.

0:22:000:22:01

Now, later in the play,

0:22:020:22:04

Hamlet kills Ophelia's father,

0:22:040:22:06

and this, of course, triggers Polonius' son

0:22:060:22:08

to seek revenge on Hamlet.

0:22:080:22:10

Poison is, again, the chosen method,

0:22:120:22:14

but this time on the tip of a sword -

0:22:140:22:17

and, for Gerard, the ideal concoction for this

0:22:170:22:20

kind of foul play was aconite, or wolfsbane.

0:22:200:22:23

He writes, "Wolfsbane is a deadly medicine,

0:22:250:22:28

"wherewith the hunters poison their spears, darts and arrows

0:22:280:22:32

"that bring present death."

0:22:320:22:34

Now, like henbane and like atropa, aconite is very, very poisonous,

0:22:400:22:45

but the difference is,

0:22:450:22:47

this is actually a useful garden ornamental.

0:22:470:22:49

You can see the buds are starting to form just here,

0:22:490:22:51

and it produces this really intense, deep, deep blue flower -

0:22:510:22:55

all round, a great garden plant, well worth growing -

0:22:550:22:58

keep your gloves on.

0:22:580:22:59

Of course, it's not all tragedy in Shakespeare.

0:23:020:23:06

There's the odd comedy, too -

0:23:060:23:07

and, once again, plants loom large,

0:23:070:23:10

often in the form of handy love potions.

0:23:100:23:12

"Fetch me that flower, the herb I showed thee once.

0:23:140:23:17

"The juice of it, on sleeping eyelids laid

0:23:170:23:19

"will make or man or woman madly dote

0:23:190:23:22

"upon the next living creature that he sees."

0:23:220:23:25

Love-in-idleness is, in fact, Viola tricolor,

0:23:270:23:29

which has a long history of use in herbalism.

0:23:290:23:32

Shakespeare's story has it

0:23:320:23:34

that Cupid's arrow fell on a little white flower,

0:23:340:23:37

turning it purple with love's wound -

0:23:370:23:39

hence its power as an elixir.

0:23:390:23:41

There's no evidence in Gerard or anywhere else

0:23:440:23:47

that Viola tricolor has any love-inducing effects.

0:23:470:23:50

In fact, today it's more commonly used

0:23:500:23:52

to scatter across the tip of a salad just for pretty adornment.

0:23:520:23:56

I've tried it, and I must say,

0:23:560:23:57

it's had no perceivable effect on my love life.

0:23:570:24:00

The thing that I love about Shakespeare

0:24:060:24:08

and plants is you feel that he's describing them

0:24:080:24:12

from personal experience - it's intimate and it's personal,

0:24:120:24:16

and that really comes through in all his work.

0:24:160:24:19

But one plant that was around in his time -

0:24:190:24:23

it was introduced just about the time of his birth -

0:24:230:24:26

was the potato,

0:24:260:24:27

and I'm sure he wasn't intimate and personal what that,

0:24:270:24:30

because it was regarded with suspicion

0:24:300:24:32

when it first arrived - and, in fact, for the next 200 years,

0:24:320:24:36

as food only fit for animals or the very poorest.

0:24:360:24:40

And the delicious potatoes that we savour now

0:24:400:24:43

certainly wouldn't have been a Shakespearean experience.

0:24:430:24:46

However, the ones that I've been growing in bags

0:24:460:24:50

have been doing well,

0:24:500:24:52

and it's time for the next stage.

0:24:520:24:54

You may remember that I planted a couple of seed potatoes

0:25:010:25:05

in this bag a few weeks ago.

0:25:050:25:07

I put them in the greenhouse, kept them watered -

0:25:070:25:10

and they've grown, they've really grown well.

0:25:100:25:12

This is about 18 inches tall. They are romping away.

0:25:120:25:16

But as soon as you see them reach the top of the bag,

0:25:160:25:18

it is important to earth them up.

0:25:180:25:21

I'm just using a normal, peat-free compost,

0:25:210:25:25

and just pop them around the growth.

0:25:250:25:29

You won't harm the growth in any way by covering it up.

0:25:290:25:32

I'll let this grow back up another foot or so,

0:25:320:25:35

and then I'll top it up again to the top of the bag,

0:25:350:25:38

and that will maximise the quantity -

0:25:380:25:41

and hopefully the quality - of the tubers I harvest.

0:25:410:25:45

But remember, keep them well watered.

0:25:450:25:48

That is the key to good potatoes.

0:25:480:25:51

Now, you may not be growing potatoes in a bag,

0:25:510:25:54

but here are some other jobs you can do this weekend.

0:25:540:25:58

Now is the ideal time

0:26:040:26:05

for planting out any kind of potatoes.

0:26:050:26:08

If you're short of space, a very good way to grow them is simply

0:26:090:26:13

to make a hole in the ground and pop them in using a grid pattern -

0:26:130:26:18

and this is especially good if you're growing them in raised beds.

0:26:180:26:22

The new growth of the potatoes won't appear for a few weeks,

0:26:260:26:30

so, to use the ground to the maximum effect,

0:26:300:26:33

plant out seedlings of lettuce, rocket, or sow some radish -

0:26:330:26:38

and this will grow and be eaten

0:26:380:26:41

before it gets shaded out by the potatoes.

0:26:410:26:44

If you haven't yet cut back your pelargoniums,

0:26:460:26:48

this is something you should do now,

0:26:480:26:50

and this will stop them getting leggy

0:26:500:26:52

and encourage nice, strong, fresh growth.

0:26:520:26:55

Also, give them a feed - liquid seaweed is fine -

0:26:550:26:59

and feed them once a week

0:26:590:27:01

for the next few months.

0:27:010:27:03

If left to its own devices,

0:27:050:27:07

sage becomes a woody shrub with fewer and fewer leaves,

0:27:070:27:13

but if you cut it back hard,

0:27:130:27:15

this will produce a mass of fresh leaves

0:27:150:27:19

that are ideal for cooking with.

0:27:190:27:20

Now, don't compost the clippings.

0:27:230:27:26

Either use them in the kitchen

0:27:260:27:27

or, if you've got a fireplace or a barbecue, put them on that,

0:27:270:27:30

and they'll fill a room or flavour the food with the most

0:27:300:27:34

beautiful fragrance of sage.

0:27:340:27:36

LAMBS BLEAT

0:27:380:27:40

Come on.

0:27:470:27:48

Now, you want a drink, too, don't you?

0:27:480:27:51

Nellie will give you a hand.

0:27:510:27:54

We've got a couple of orphan lambs...

0:27:540:27:56

Get down now, this is not for you.

0:27:560:27:58

..which we're having to bottle-feed, because the mum died,

0:27:580:28:03

and we're having to look after them.

0:28:030:28:06

Which my son, who is a sheep farmer,

0:28:060:28:11

has delegated to me for the next four weeks.

0:28:110:28:13

Go on, there you go. There you are.

0:28:130:28:15

The dogs are rolling all over the chionodoxas,

0:28:150:28:18

which I planted last year for the first time.

0:28:180:28:19

They're a little late, but they're coming up.

0:28:190:28:22

Everything is bursting out.

0:28:220:28:25

Well, from all the varied animals here at Longmeadow, and me,

0:28:260:28:31

that's it for today -

0:28:310:28:33

and I'll see you here next time. Until then, bye-bye.

0:28:330:28:37

Come on, let's go back.

0:28:370:28:38

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