Letter O The A to Z of TV Gardening

Hello and welcome to The A-Z of TV Gardening.

Everything we're looking at today begins with the letter...

But first, let's learn the basics of an eye-watering crop.

'This O is for onions, and here's Monty Don.'

(Put that to one side.)

First of all, I think I need to rake that over.

If you remember, we had potatoes in here which I lifted.

These were Charlotte and they've been good,

but when I lifted the potatoes, I added compost, forked it over

and, although it's rather dry, that's good soil.

Over-wintering onions are sometimes called Japanese onions

because a lot of them have Japanese varieties.

I've actually got a couple of varieties I've grown before,

are reliable and I like the taste of.

And taste is always the important thing.

I've got two varieties. There's a white onion called Radar -

good, really tough, but quite delicate taste,

which I like very much -

and also Electric Red.

Red onions add colour,

they add glamour and also they tend to be slightly sweeter.

The best thing to do is just dib holes

about four or five inches apart.

Obviously, the wider apart they are, the bigger the bulb.

I don't like onions too big.

I think a tennis ball is perfectly big enough.

Let's do a row along there.

These will be ready for harvesting about June, early July,

so just a month or six weeks ahead of main crop.

But the theory is that you store your main crop now

and they will last you through to about April or May,

and then these follow on in succession.

There's very little else to do but do you need to keep an eye on them

because birds tend to come along,

they see this thing wiggling up and they pull at it.

It's quite common to come down in the morning and find them

scattered around, and that is birds.

The best way to counter that is to cover them with fleece

and weigh them down until you see good green shoots,

which means the roots have grown and anchored into the soil.

It doesn't always happen, so I'm not going to fleece them straight away.

Now you dib a hole to put it in

because there is a basswood plate that the roots grow from

and if you just ram it into the soil and almost screw it into the ground,

there's a real danger of damaging that

and therefore affecting root growth.

I actually quite often use my finger instead of a dib.

Although you could argue my fingers were made for dibbing.

Now I'm watering these in, just to make sure that the soil,

which is very dry, firms around the bulbs.

So I'm using a rose, rather than a direct jet,

which would just knock the bulbs out of the holes.

Right, that's a job done.

Next we look at a flower that is so common these days

that you wouldn't dream it was once on the brink of extinction.

O is for orchids.

Here's Mike Dilger, who's in Kent

looking for Britain's rarest wild specimens.

Alison Wright of the Kent Wildlife Trust,

what is it about orchids that people love so much?

-They're wonderful, aren't they?

-They're amazing.

I think it's just they're rare, they're usual,

they have fascinating habits.

They're just like the plant equivalent of diamonds.

-A girl's best friend.

-Oh, yes.

A guy's best friend, too, cos I like them.

And they're just diverse. Look how many species we've got here.

We have Fragrant orchids, just over there we have a Pyramidal.

Just starting to come into flower,

so it's showing its pyramid shape that gives it its name.

Because they can flower anything from late spring,

right the way through to late summer,

so it's a good time now - in the middle of June is great, isn't it?

The best time is now, when you have so many out in the flower.

But you can see them right the way through

-the spring and summer season.

-Wonderful.

Now, I reckon this orchid is at the top of everybody's must-see list.

It's the Bee orchid, of course,

and you can see how the lip perfectly resembles a bee.

It also smells like a female bee, so it attract bees to come in

to take away these little pollen sacs.

But this one's a virgin, because the pollen sacs are still stuck there.

'Ironically, it doesn't even need to attract a bee,

'as the orchid is perfectly capable of self-pollination.'

'Now this one isn't so colourful but believe me, it's a real treasure.'

Alison, what a cracking little orchid.

I know, they're amazing, aren't they?

It's the Man orchid,

and it's called the Man orchid for a very obvious reason, isn't it?

Yeah, if you take a close look at each one, you can

see that right at the very top, you've a little bonnet, like a head

and below that, two arms and two legs

just like a little stick person.

How rare is this orchid?

This is an extremely rare orchid.

It's really restricted to the Southeast.

Wow, why has declined so much?

-It was always quite uncommon, but now it's rare, isn't it?

-Yes, it is.

It needs chalk. We've had so much loss of chalk downland

since the Second World War,

-they think up to 90% has been lost.

-Really?

Added to that, it doesn't just like normal chalk downland,

it likes a little bit of scrub.

You can see all the long grass that we're in here,

just to keep it a little bit damper than most.

So it has really specific needs.

The thing I love most of all is,

you look up and they're like men here.

But you look right at the top they're like little boys coming out.

This should be called "man-and-boy orchid."

'Next stop is Park Gate Down, a diminutive reserve

'south of Canterbury that's jam-packed with orchids.'

Ian Rickards, reserve warden of this site,

I have never seen so many orchids.

The Kent Wildlife Trust must be very proud.

It's one of our real key sites, it's absolutely fantastic.

We've got tens of thousands of orchids on here.

I reckon I'm within three or four metres of about 200 orchid spikes.

Flipping sensational.

The density is wonderful, isn't it? And also the variety,

the number of different orchid species is just stunning.

Why is the site so good?

It's a combination of lots of different things. One,

it's an ancient, unimproved grass. It's never been farmed intensively.

The only farming that's gone on here is grazing

and that's happened for hundreds and hundreds of years.

-It's never been ploughed, has never been fertilised?

-No.

On most orchid sites, grazing is crucial.

When do you do it and what do you use?

We do it generally from as soon as the flowers have all finished,

which is kind of September/October,

then we bring on our livestock grazers,

which are Konik ponies or Highland cattle,

these old, really tough breeds, which can come in

and graze this site hard for three or four months.

And that's it, that's the management done for the year.

It's pretty straightforward.

It's a botanical ticker's paradise.

Let's wander off and see what we can see.

Check out this beautiful show-off.

This is the Greater Butterfly orchid.

Now, this usually smells...

but only in the evening. It has a lovely smell.

And that's because this is pollinated by moths,

so that's why it smells strongly in the evening.

So I think the Greater Butterfly or Lesser Butterfly

is a bit of rubbish name, really.

This should be called the "greater moth orchid."

'Now here's the real star that I've come to see.

'Once again, close up, the individual flowers have a quirky

'resemblance to something else.'

This is the creme de la creme of orchids.

It's a Monkey orchid and it's incredibly rare, isn't it, Ian?

It's a real spectacle,

cos there's only three sites in the country where it exists.

But if you look at the individual flowers themselves,

that's where they get the name "monkey" from, isn't it?

Yeah, they've got arms, legs, they've even got a little tail.

A little hooded head.

They're perfectly named, really. Absolutely perfect.

But I have to say, the star attraction.

Yes, yes. Definitely.

I couldn't agree more. A real gem there.

Well, that's all from us for today.

Hope you join us next time on The A-Z of TV Gardening. Goodbye.

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