Letter H The A to Z of TV Gardening


Letter H

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Hello and welcome to The A To Z Of TV Gardening.

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We're on a mission to dig up the best advice and guidance

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from all your favourite programmes and presenters.

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So join me as letter after letter, one by one,

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we explore everything from flowers and trees to fruit and veg.

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

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And we start with a flower that has a wide range of colours,

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a very distinctive scent and it can look great in a bouquet.

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This H is for hyacinths.

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'And we're off to Cambridge, home of the Hyacinth National Collection.'

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I think the thing that makes me a complete and utter hyacinth nut

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is the fact that every spring

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you see the first little coloured shoots

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appearing among the green

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and then two weeks later,

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the whole of the world round you seems blazing with colour.

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This is the little species hyacinth

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that grows in the wild in northern Iran and Iraq,

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brought over into Europe in 1573

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and all the varieties of hyacinths

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have been raised from this one species.

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My national collection at the moment comprises 170 varieties.

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Some of them are fairly recent.

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Some, in fact, are seedlings that I bred myself.

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But the most important ones are the very old varieties

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that were around in the catalogues perhaps 200 years ago

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that would otherwise, unless they were conserved, be lost for ever.

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Always the rarest category of hyacinths were the double yellows.

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I was under the impression

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that the last ones disappeared nearly 100 years ago,

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but lo and behold, when I got in touch with the lady in Lithuania,

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she'd got this beautiful sunflower

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and this itself dates from pre-1897.

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I think one of the most beautiful flowers I've ever seen and extremely rare.

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This variety, Diana, is my own raising.

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It's taken me 12 years to get from one bulb to eight bulbs,

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so unfortunately, it will never go into production

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because it is very difficult to propagate.

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Normally in the last weekend in March,

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I open up the fields to the general public

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and they come along literally in their hundreds.

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And to move around amongst them, hearing the comments,

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the "ooohs" when they first smell the perfume,

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and to couple this with the fact that I'm saving things from extinction,

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is very, very rewarding.

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Of course, to me, there is a great deal of irony in this

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because a number of years ago, I lost my sense of smell completely.

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But my memory does take me back to the days

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when I could smell them,

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particularly just before dusk

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on a lovely, warm day, working among the fields,

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completely immersed in this beautiful fragrance.

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It's an unforgettable memory

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that will live with me for the rest of my life.

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'So, for how to plant hyacinths, here's Monty Don.'

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The scent of hyacinths can be delicious but it also can be a little bit much,

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and I think one bowl in the room is enough and it's dead easy to do.

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Get yourself a terracotta bulb pan.

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Put a crock in the bottom to make sure the drainage is good.

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Talking of drainage, it doesn't really matter what growing medium you use,

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because it's not providing nourishment for the hyacinth. That's all in the bulb.

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What it is providing is a rooting material

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and something that will retain moisture.

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Now, this is Delft Blue.

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You can pack the bulbs in.

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I've got 12 and I'll get all 12 into this container.

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These have been prepared simply by chilling them,

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which tricks it that it's winter.

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If we just put a little bit of extra compost in between them

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and then water them lightly and put them into a cool, dark place.

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It doesn't have to be extra cold

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but it shouldn't be above ten degrees.

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And just keep them lightly watered.

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And when you start to see the shoots appear...

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..about two or three inches long,

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then you can bring them into light.

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The bulb thinks it's spring, it puts on a spurt of growth,

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the flower bud develops quicker

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and then just at the point when it's ready to open,

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you bring it indoors and that extra heat

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will make the flower open faster and you'll pull out that lovely fragrance.

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Then when they've finished, put the whole pan outside and forget about it

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until the foliage has died down, then you can gather the bulbs,

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keep them for next year and plant them out into the garden.

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Now we're looking at a feathered phenomenon

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that's hitting the world of gardening. This H is for hens.

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'And here's a man who couldn't be happier with his ones.'

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# I'm singing boom, chick-chick, cluck-cluck-clucking

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# All day long, don't you know?

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# Yeah, don't you know?

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# I'm singing boom, chick-chick, cluck-cluck-clucking

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# All day long, don't you know?

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# Yeah, don't you know?

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# Now, sometimes you give me loving and sometimes you give me dough #

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As far as chicken-keeping goes with me,

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it started as a hobby when I was ten years of age.

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It became an occupation,

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I'm not going to say a great living,

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when 14, 15 years ago, I took two heart attacks with cardiac arrest.

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They actually gave me three months to live at one stage.

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And I just had to have something to do to keep me going.

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And in honesty, the chickens have kept me going.

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I have a great saying. "You don't have to live in the country

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"to follow a cottage economy."

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You can have a small garden,

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you can grow your veg and you can keep your poultry.

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The food miles - nil.

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No matter what colour chicken you choose, they're all green.

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I'm old enough to remember when everybody had a vegetable garden

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and a pen of hens in the garden. The knowledge was passed over the hedges.

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Everybody... I'm not saying they were experts,

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but they were knowledgeable poultry keepers.

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And consequently,

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-it's a thing we're losing.

-CHICKEN CLUCKS

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-Oh, Flash.

-HE LAUGHS

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# Everybody's talking about chicken

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# Chicken's a popular word

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# Everywhere you go you're bound to find

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# Chicken ain't nothing but a bird #

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The only thing you really need to keep a chicken happy

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is, I would say, water before food,

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because if they are ranging, they'll find a fair bit of food.

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But it'd be water, food and a small amount of grit.

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One of the things that people ask, "Are they going to wreck my garden when I get them home?"

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Chickens will wreck your garden if you don't use a bit a common sense.

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I think when you've got small seedlings, yes, they'll be tasty, so protect those.

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They clear up all the slugs in the garden.

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We also have the droppings, which we use as an accelerator on the compost.

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I wish something had happened when I was 30

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to kick me into touch and make me do this.

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I've never been so happy in my life.

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I'm so content here.

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And in an evening, when everybody's gone home

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and I can get a pint of shandy

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and just sit down here and listen to the birds and look at the chickens,

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I am so delighted. There's nobody happier on this earth.

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