Episode 3 The Beechgrove Garden

Hello and welcome to a brilliant spring morning

here in Beechgrove.

We want to get on with the work, starting with early potatoes.

A couple of weeks ago,

we looked at the thermometers in the ground.

The temperature was rising towards seven centigrade.

One of them was at eight, but we have to be sure

because that's a trigger point.

When it gets above seven centigrade, seeds will germinate

and the potatoes will start to grow and root into the ground.

Here we are, it's time to plant the early potatoes,

the variety is Casablanca.

The ground has been treated with fertiliser,

remember that need for a wee extra amount

of fertiliser because

of the leeching that has taken place but there's plenty in this ground

because it gets heavily treated with organic matter every year.

I'm putting in these earlies a foot apart.

30cm, if you've been metricated.

and they're down 7, 8cm.

So that should take them a wee while to come through and it protects them

from the frost. Now, later in the programme,

you will see my visit, at the end of March,

further north than here and the guys were already planting

their earlies there, but they were putting them a bit deeper.

The danger is frost, and that's the important thing.

We'll be sure as soon as they pop their wee heads above the ground,

we'll earth up the ground,

and keep these safe.

Otherwise they get quite a check.

The other half of the row,

the potatoes will be grown under black polythene.

Plant the potatoes through the polythene.

No earthing up necessary, so in fact

we could put them a bit closer together.

So where that is one row here of this variety, Casablanca,

we'll have two. We will have one there

and one there.

A lot less work. It will be interesting to see

the return in weight per square metre, later on in the season.

But I press on. Meantime, in the rest of the programme...

This week, and throughout the series, I'm helping two families

who've bought new-builds and want to transform a plot like this

into paradise.

And on today's visit menu, for starters, acquire a farmer's field.

And for main course, invite in a bunch of guys

who are dead keen on gardening,

and for sweet, beautiful crops at the end of the day. Stay with us.

Last year we collected some fresh seeds from the garden

and the emphasis was on fresh seed.

We collected Meconopsis regia seed

just after it had flowered and set

and we sowed it immediately

and we put this into the cold frame.

See the germination that you have there, all these wonderful

little seedlings which have come up

and have come right through the winter, really tiny.

We will prick these out and grow them on

and it will take about two years before they are big enough to be able to flower.

Chris, in the back end, in the autumn,

selected some seed of Sorbus reducta.

This it's different because this one needed a period of chilling,

so it was put in the cold frame

and that chilling in the cold frame

caused it to germinate this spring.

But this one at the end is completely

and utterly different and it is a bit confusing

if you don't know what's happening. This is Trillium seed

and this was collected in the middle of summer,

just after it was matured,

and there, sown underneath grit, is all we've got.

We've just got seeds lying there still.

That's been out in the cold, but it's just about to germinate.

It will produce a root this year

and then it will sit all summer without doing anything else

and then it will get another period of chilling

in the back end and over the next winter,

then next summer it will have produced a shoot above ground level.

So this one takes two years to germinate.

You see, in gardening you've just got to have patience.

And Chris will need patience this week. He's with the Robertson family

in Portlethen, where he is helping to transform the soggy turf

into their dream garden.

Anna and Andrew Robertson, and son Fergus,

moved into their new home in Portlethen in May 2013.

The Robertsons want Chris to help transform their new plot

into both a family space

and an efficient, productive garden.

It's a reasonable-sized space, isn't it?

Yeah, it's very good.

Just looking at fence piles, it's about ten-by-ten,

something like that?

I think so, yeah.

What is it about green vegetables and presumably fruit as well

that interests you?

It's achieving something.

It's nice to be able to grow your own potatoes or your own salad, and sit down and eat it together.

-And it always tastes better.

-Even if it's not worked very well.

Even if it is smaller and slightly crowded.

Our carrots are always interesting shapes.

I think the most encouraging thing is that you've got the perfect space for

fruits and vegetables, because there is plenty of light and most fruits and veg

don't like growing in the shade, so the orientation

-of the garden is great from that perspective.

-OK.

So I think, from my perspective,

certainly allowing this space to spill out as a hard surface

and have the transition between inside and outside,

step out onto a hard surface

so even when the weather is not great,

you are still encouraged to come outside.

We then have a more open space here,

you can bring a dining table out here,

this is the space where you can really the spill out and relax.

-And enjoy it.

-All this has been good news so far.

This is the bad news. I don't know if you can smell that,

but there is a real sort of malodorous...

Have a sniff of that.

Soil should smell very sweet.

In fact, it should just have a rather kind of warming

smell about it.

This is a soil which is seriously waterlogged.

This entire development is on what was previously marshland.

Whilst it is possible to impose housing,

what you have to remember is that the garden is marshland.

-So I think the thing to do for fruits and veg is to come up.

-Lift it, OK.

And to build raised beds. And you are much more likely to succeed.

This is a very rough sketch, maybe an extension

to the existing stonework there.

This area then becomes an area of lawn.

Yeah, that looks good.

Then we have some raised beds that create this geometric structure

-around the garden.

-That's amazing.

How do we get started?

The first thing to do is to mark out

the plan, transfer the sketch onto the ground.

Once the marking out is finished,

the turf that was laid can be lifted.

That can again be dug into the bottom of the bed at a later date.

The whole bed is then dug over to try and bring some life back in,

add a little bit of air back in

to this real quagmire of the soil.

As a by-product of the digging,

you get all this free rock.

Definitely a case of buyer beware, I think.

This is a very, very simple way of creating a very efficient

raised bed, there are essentially three components.

Against the fence to stop any soil spilling through,

we have the old scaffold boards.

That'll be the height of the soil up there, it gives you an idea of rooting depth.

The front edge has to be slightly more glamorous

because it's going to be on show, so these are just the pressure-treated,

rough-sawn timbers. They're loosely described as sleepers.

These are pressure-treated,

which means that the timber has been cut

and it has then been impregnated

with a preservative, with a toxin to stop any rot taking place.

The preservative that is used

is most likely to be a copper-based preservative.

If it is just for ornamental beds,

you don't need to worry about lining the inside,

but in the case of vegetables, especially root vegetables,

they are known to absorb a lot of minerals

and metals from the soil.

So what I always do is line just the inside face

with a piece of polythene, just staple it on the inside,

backfill with topsoil and then you're ready to start planting.

There is never a point in the year

when you can't be sowing something or growing something.

For the fastest crop, I would certainly go with

some of the leaf crops.

Speedy veg and lettuce, those sorts of things.

You can sow these outside later on,

but because we want a really quick crop,

what I would do is to sow these into small pots

and then harvest them as new leaves.

-Right.

-So you're sowing it,

you sow them quite densely in here,

let them get up to that sort of size and then just scissor the heads off.

As soon as you've scissored the head off, you go onto the next pot

-and the next pot and so on.

-OK.

So you keep sowing, and these sort of pots

you can sow right through the year.

You can keep them on the kitchen windowsill, no special treatment,

-but you can always have some baby leaves growing away.

-And it's nice.

Then we've got plants we can start off now,

so still a few frosts around, a few cool nights.

If you read the back of the packets, it says it's OK to sow them outside,

it is, but I would again get a bit of a head start

-and sow these on your windowsill.

-OK.

Don't need to put them in the heat of the propagator,

but on the windowsill with a polythene bag over top

and things like your leeks, your lettuce, your beets

and so on, those plants

will just get growing, get to this stage...

-Just to the plug.

-Then we can plant them outside.

-OK.

It really is a waste to go for huge containers of compost.

You are only sowing a few seeds at a time.

You're then allowing a few days' gap

and then sowing a few more seeds of the same type.

But you've got your seed compost in there.

Ideally, you want to give yourself a nice, firm and smooth surface.

If you use an empty pot,

give it a bit of a shake till it settles

and then very gently tamp it down.

What you're doing is just evening it out

so that all the seeds are then sown at exactly the same depth.

Then what a lot of people do is they sow the seeds.

But after you've sown the seeds, you then have to water,

which then distributes the seeds, so the thing to do

is water now, so if you hold on to that,

we'll get the watering can.

The temptation is just to put the watering can over and then tip

and you'll see what happens

is you get a big glug of water all over the place.

So much better to start the water off, come on to your pots

and then off again, because the rose on the top here is nice and fine.

Whenever you're watering, start off the pot,

tip it, move it onto the pot and then move it away again.

That avoids really compacting the soil.

Depth of seed

is the next thing that completely confuses everybody.

How deep should you plant them, how much soil should they have on the surface?

With something like beetroot, when you have a look at the size of the beetroot seed,

it's a reasonable size. You do not really need too many.

Level it off and then, if you want to,

you can just move them around, give them a nice, even spacing.

You can see there's about 20 or so seeds in there.

Just sow a few at a time, let them succeed.

The more space you give them, the more opulent the plants will be.

In terms of those, generally we would say about two and half times

the size of the seed is the general rule.

And all you do is gently sprinkle that over the top.

The next most important thing, because they all look the same

when they have soil on the head, stick a label in.

I, maybe through trying to over-care for things, over-water.

Most people really torture their plants as a result of too much tender love and care.

Watering is the number one problem.

Yeah, I've no idea.

Get used to using your fingers,

just gently touch the compost there.

You'll feel there's a little bit of moisture on it.

You feel it when you hold it between your fingers.

It's slightly damp.

-That's perfect.

-That's OK.

The opposite is these ones that we've just watered, these are really

wet and you can see that's quite heavy, you can squeeze

the water out of it.

-That's too wet.

-And that's...

That to me, at the moment, would be perfect.

Yeah, for a seed, not perfect.

So, in terms of sowing, all very straightforward.

-Keep them going.

-Don't over-water.

The worst things happen to all of us, so it really doesn't matter.

Just get another packet and sow some more and keep going.

Chris, I have to say I'm loving what you've done with our front lawn.

-I was thinking about just putting a few rocks on the top(!)

-Perfect(!)

Reinventing the notion of a rockery in the front garden.

It seems very extravagant to build raised beds and then import topsoil

but actually it's by far the most economical way of doing it,

to get it delivered from a topsoil supplier.

So we've had it dumped but also, what will bring that to life,

is this, which is composted garden waste.

It's raw, organic matter.

It's completely the wrong thing to try and grow anything in

but it is brilliant at breathing life back into even an imported topsoil.

The thing to do is spread this over the top of the heap

-and we will fill the barrels and carry it all round.

-OK!

Once the soil starts to go in,

you really get a sense of this being a garden,

rather than just a blank canvas.

You can see that we are over-filling the beds, so right up to the top

and it is largely because it will settle.

You'll probably get it to settle 3, 4, maybe even 5cm.

So it will really drop?

That's just all part of the normal compaction process. It's the soil settling and forming.

You have plenty of seeds and also packets of seeds.

Keep sowing those, and you have young plants in the cold frame.

Every seven to ten days, go through a new sowing regime,

because when we come back in a few weeks' time,

what would be fab is if all of this raised bedding is ready

and then those young plants you are sowing in the next few days

will now be ready to go out into this prime bed.

I'll make sure that I'm carrying on the next stage properly.

Yeah, and it should be just an absolutely verdant garden.

I am really looking forward to Chris going back and seeing how Anna has progressed with her seed-sowing.

Now this is the time of year when you can be doing a lot of pruning,

a lot of spring pruning,

and Jim, George and myself are going to be looking

at three very different plants

and at different reasons for doing the pruning.

I'm starting off with this eucalyptus, a beautiful snow gum,

one of the hardiest.

But when we had some very severe winters back in 2011,

2012, this was a massive tree and it had to be pruned

right the way down.

This is the result - wonderful growth.

I want to keep it as a shrub.

So what am I going to do?

What you can actually do is coppice it,

and what I mean is you cut it

really hard back, all of the branches,

down to two or three buds.

But because it is such a wonderful plant,

because it is evergreen and a focal point

in the seaside garden,

I've decided to go for a halfway house,

so I'm going to leave half of the branches like they are now

and I will select the other half and do the coppicing.

I want to start with this one because it's encroaching on the paths.

And just to take a bit of the weight off before I go really go down,

I'm in with the loppers.

And then I can go in with the pruning saw.

I'm sure you can imagine this will take me quite a while.

One of the most admired shrubs in the garden last year

was this Hydrangea paniculata variety,

Vanille Fraise,

with gorgeous creamy flowers and a little touch of strawberry pink in them.

Absolutely stunning.

It flowers in the late summer

and therefore it flowers in the same sort of wood as roses.

We cut roses down in the spring, up comes the new growth

and flowers at the end.

This is much the same but the treatment is slightly modified

because you're trying to create a shrubby effect here.

The first thing you do when you look at these things

is congested branches, and you want to get them out.

Look at that one there.

It's rubbing against this major branch here

so I already have the secateurs in there and I want to get that out,

so I'm going to remove that.

And it takes on a different shape.

But what I really wanted to show you was this.

There's a flower from last year.

That's died back there, the top buds are here.

The sap will come up here and it will burst these buds first.

It's what's happening lower down that I'm interested in

because I think that this shrub needs to be pruned back

to here, OK?

Take that one out.

Because the sap's still going to come up through there

and it will encourage these dormant buds to open,

so you get a much better shape.

Then you go round this bush and you take off...

there's another one...

Buds up here, but there are dormant buds further down.

Down to about there.

So, in other words, you're adopting a sort of

spur pruning system as you would use

on apples and you are trying to avoid

great, long stems that are bare and have nothing on them.

The buds are in pairs, so if I cut that back to there,

we are going to get two shoots,

with one of these gorgeous flowers at the end of each one.

So, much the same, but with apples.

We have three different apples here and I will show you three different little techniques.

This is one which is a single shoot, where it has developed

from the graft union at the bottom, and growing straight up.

All the growth is at the top cos that's where the apical dominance is.

Take away the apical dominance, then you'll get the shoots developing from further down.

I'll take the secateurs to this and just cut it at that bud there.

That way, it will all bush out and we will have a grand plant.

On this one,

we may have seen this in our own gardens where we have neglected

a tree perhaps for a year

and we get this long, sparse piece of growth

and a little shoot at the top. So what we do with this one is,

we're going to cut it back there,

taking the top off, and that way, we will encourage shoots to develop.

But also what I'm going to do

is to take a file to this one, teach it a lesson.

These dormant buds which are down here,

I want to make them into fruit buds, so if I take this file and rub it

on the underside...

of the bud, right down to the bark,

then that bud thinks it's in mortal danger, it's going to die,

so it will produce a fruit bud because it doesn't want to die,

it wants to reproduce.

This one here is a reasonably well-balanced plant.

It has lots of growth, lots of nice shoots,

but it's not quite right. What I want to do with this one is balance it better.

That's a nice shoot there. What I want to do is take this one back

to a bud there, so that balances that out.

Then, because we have apical dominance here

and it will inhibit things underneath,

all I'm going to do is take one off there.

That will then develop into

a properly structured tree and that's what you want

when you're pruning, a properly structured tree.

Take the time at the beginning.

That way you won't have any problems with it being overcrowded later on.

Back at the end of March, Jim went north to see some new allotments

and some enthusiastic allotmenteers.

For my first visit of the new season,

I haven't had to travel all that far away from Beechgrove.

I've travelled north to Aden Country Park

on the outskirts of Mintlaw

to check out a brand-new community gardening project.

Now, then, Leigh, you are the chairman of the organisation

that runs the allotments. What do you call yourself?

It's The Aden Community Allotments Association.

How have you been in existence?

Just under two years.

It has obviously taken a bit of money

to put this all together here,

cos there are fantastic sheds and fences to keep the deer out,

who owns the land?

Aberdeenshire Council own the land, it was fields that were tenanted.

Splendid.

And then we secured funding from the Climate Change Fund.

£77,000 worth of funding.

Wow! Cos the fence is a real boon to keep out what you don't want in here.

And these sheds! What goes with the shed?

The water buckets and the compost bins, and we also have a community shed and composting toilet.

Good heavens! And how many allotments?

44 that have been taken, 47 in total.

And I assume that this is your one?

Yes, this is our plot.

Let me see round it.

It is extremely well advanced, I have to say.

Let's do a wee, quick tour.

Fruit trees?

-Yes, potatoes...

-Already in the ground, I take it?

-Yes, covered up.

-In the far bit there?

This is going to be our brassicas

and this one will be our peas, legumes, and our onions.

You have your own work squad, I see.

-I do...

-They follow you everywhere?

-Yes, this is our four children.

-And dead keen?

Yes, very keen.

I'm going away to talk to Gavin, because I do believe

you've got a problem.

Well, we've been working this plot for a few months now

and we have collected rather a lot of this.

To the scientist, it's Agropyron repens, to everybody else,

it's couch grass.

We have a bit more if you'd like to see.

-Indeed...

-Right, that's one bucket.

Oh, wow.

We have rather a lot of it.

This is nearly all couch grass.

-And the question is...

-What do we do with it?

You're doing, I think, the right thing - composting,

on its own.

You don't want to contaminate anything else

because it takes a bit longer, perhaps.

I think there's too much soil and you need a layer

maybe nine inches or ten inches deep.

And then a sprinkling of soil which acts as a kind of starter

because it is all the bacteria and everything in it.

And then make sure that it's moist.

Right, keep it moist.

And treat it like a normal compost.

It might take longer than it would to make ordinary compost.

-OK.

-A year, plus.

That's the way to do it.

You've got to keep working, it's a bit cool.

I like the patio!

And this is definitely raised-bed city.

We have just come from an allotment which is the biggest-sized,

20-by-20 metres,

to the smallest-sized, ten-by-ten.

And Sandy's busy.

How are you this morning?

I'm fine, how are you?

Good stuff, you've made good progress since you came in about.

We're getting all the weeds and the stones out.

THEY LAUGH

And these tatties are just splendid.

-Absolutely.

-Well, this is the Harmony

and that's the Red Dukes

and that is Maris Piper.

The ground is coming on fine.

Aye, it's coming on perfect now.

I'm only really trying to bide my time till I can get round to

this contraption here.

This is what took my eye.

I take it you made it up yourself. How does it work?

Obviously, it's a cloche.

That's just a half-inch water pipe

and I drilled the wood and put in sealant

and screws into the side to hold them in.

That saves the water going down.

They're on hinges at the back here.

Oh, I see! Ya beauty!

Absolutely splendid, and look at that ground

ready to go. The young yins

will be round asking you about how this is done,

they'll be fair watching you.

They'll have to find out the hard way, the same way as I did.

You're supposed to be mentoring them, for goodness' sake!

Aye, they'll find out.

This is so intriguing, I will be back to see you later.

Well, well, well, the guys with that plot

have done the right thing.

Wonderful farmyard manure!

Wonderful soil conditioner.

How are you doing, Josh?

-Good, Jim.

-Good to see you.

Looks as if you're playing catch-up.

I am indeed. I only acquired this

-three weeks ago.

-Oh, crikey.

It looks as if you've had a wee problem with some water.

I have indeed.

JIM LAUGHS

When the digger was in putting this fence in,

it compacted the soil

and the water just sat,

so stick the fork in, turn it over...

It's making a difference, though, isn't it?

It is beginning to dry out. What are your plans?

I plan to have some fruit trees here

at the front there.

Then some raspberry canes and fruit

bushes along the edges that have wind shelter.

Sounds as if it's in the genes.

-It is a little bit.

-Go on, tell me.

My great-grandfather, grandfather and my father

all grew up and worked on an orchard down in Kent.

You'll find it a wee bit harder in this part of the world.

What's the day job?

I work on the estate, I'm an apprentice.

Well done, you.

I'm doing the bedding plants at the moment.

Well, I think we better go and have a look at them.

Thanks for that, I'll be back to see this.

Hopefully it will be improved by then!

Oh, sure thing!

Aden Country Park is home to another very important enterprise

and that is the production of bedding plants for the communities all around.

To answer my questions, we have the man in charge, Jack, here.

How many bedding plants do you produce?

-300,000 a year.

-Wootcha!

-That's a fair heap of plants.

What sort of area in glass and poly do you need to house them?

There's 15 poly tunnels here.

They hold about 50,000 plants each.

And that's a fair bit of work to keep that filled up.

It is indeed. How far do you have to take them?

Is it all of Aberdeenshire?

The whole of Aberdeenshire get this.

There's about 80% of plants here are grown for the communities.

-And the other 20% is for the council's own use.

-Yes, of course.

That's basically all to do with Scotland in Bloom, Britain in Bloom,

so you are the man that starts the chain?

I start the whole lot going.

Do you feel the pressure?

Oh, aye, a lot of sleepless nights in here, I'm telling you!

We'll be back when you're just ready to send the stuff out

-to see what it's like.

-End of May will be great.

-Thanks, Jack.

They talk about tiptoe through the tulips, but this is tiptoe through the daffodils, isn't it?

They're good, aren't they?

We put these in the glass in the autumn times.

What was the parameters?

The parameters were 100 bulbs,

five of them were all the same price,

20 pence a bulb.

Two of them, these two here, were ones we picked up at the supermarket,

only six pence a bulb.

And your comment on them, then?

Straightaway, the one behind us here with the trumpet mix,

I think that looks really nice

because it is quite a variety of similar heights.

-Give you that.

-This is quite good, this is the cheapie.

This is the cheapie and I think that one works well as well

because it's a good mix, whereas that cheapie,

it's meant to be a mix and they all look the same.

But this is good - same height, all the way through.

I love that one, George,

the Split-Corona.

The one that I'm not too sure about is the one behind us there.

It's just a guddle. They are all at different heights and different sizes.

It doesn't sit well, I don't think.

You'd want to sort them out.

If you'd like any more information on this week's programme,

it's all in the fact sheet.

-That's it for this week. Till next time, goodbye.

-Goodbye.

-Goodbye.