Topic: The Gardeners' World thread.

[holyzombiejesus]

Longmeadow or bust! Tonight, spring officially is sprung and we've got Monty back. And his dogs. I really like GW, it makes me genuinely happy. That's despite myself, as it seems such a natural home for royalists, right wingers and xenophobes. But still I look forward to 8pm every Friday until the end of Autumn.

Things I like.

I like Monty, "the squiggle haired horticulturist", even though he seems centrism incarnate. I like the way he claws at the earth and looks like Gerry Love out of Teenage Fanclub.
Carol's earthy tones and the way she doesn't really fit in with the rest of the programme
Frances, especially when she had the allotment with that horrible posh crusty in Bristol (of course). I don't like it when she makes a herby drink and holds the mug with both hands but I'll let that go.

Things I love.

The time when they had Arthur Parksinson (the most beautiful man in the world) on. 

Things I don't like.

The country houses and big gardens (although it was good when they showed those steps covered in Mexican Fleabane)
That strange cold posh man in the wheelchair who does bits sometimes.
Children sending in films of their stupid thicko gardens
Joe Swift. Vile, bald, hat-wearing man.

Not sure.

Viewers films. Patchy by their nature, you get the occasional brilliant one like the man who had about 800 plants in his house and told barefaced lies about having friends round but often it's just a posh woman wanting everyone to know that she lets nettles grow.

Adam Frost. Seems ok but there's something about him I don't trust. Can really imagine him turning when he's had too much to drink. Vicious cunt when he's had a few.

[monkfromhavana]

Went to the Malvern flower show a couple of years ago and Monty Don was giving a scheduled talk and Q&A session to quite a large crowd. I have never seen a crowd of so many over 70s women so clearly besotted by a single man. It was like peak-era Elvis. If at the end he'd thrown his gardening gloves into the crowd I think an armed response unit would have had to have been called out.

[Huxleys Babkins]

Monty's a properly dashing gent and seems quite humble with it, even though he's rich as fuck. You could imagine an 1800's Monty, striding about his estate, beloved by the townsfolk because he's given them all work, pays well, and he went to parliament to stop their hovels being demolished to build a railway line.

I'll always have plenty of time for Joe Swift after he deftly dealt with some gammon twat at a Q&A who was trying to insinuate that Gardeners' World was obsessed with foreign plants and not patriotic enough and was challenging him to say something positive about Brexit "for the patriotic gardeners of Britain". Joe turned the whole crowd, most of which you'd imagine would read the Tory papers and have voted leave, on the tedious prick. I'm amazed he got out of the NEC alive.

[gilbertharding]

My late mother was very keen on gardening. and loved Geoffrey Smith, the tv gardener. She was very open about the fact that she would have left us all if he'd offered. Later on she similarly admired Geoff Hamilton, and took his death similarly to the way my generation reacted to Kurdt Kobain's passing.

She, much to my surprise, never took to Montagu Don Esq. and I don't know why.

He was good on This Time, wasn't he?

[Dex Sawash]

My wife cries watching this (and the pottery thing)

[seepage]

Things I don't like.
The country houses and big gardens

You wont like 'Gardening Together with Diarmuid Gavin' then. Every single place they visit is a huge country pile on a massive estate. We'd laugh every time they zoomed out to show the true scale. Is property a lot cheaper in NI?

[DolphinFace]

Monty Don purrs like a Rolls Royce. The absolute quintessential English man. I lay asleep at night hoping to dream of being in his garden with Nell and a cup of tea.

[Buelligan]

I like Monty, except for the way he says fresh.  He says it a lot and says it exactly the way my dear mum used to and it used to boil my piss then.  Apart from that, think he's the bee's.  Sometimes his gardens, The Paradise Garden for instance, look a bit shit, bit buggered by reality, which is actually endearing - I think the reason for it is he's trying to do something - make a hotter, dryer, garden in Herefordshire, so, a bit meh sometimes.  But beautiful species tulips in that garden, there were and also, he's obliged to garden for the future, when it could well be hotter, dryer and for people who don't live in Herefordshire.  Also like his plant choices generally, we have many in common.  And his aesthetics, plants and generally, remind me of my lovely grandfather.  So Monty, yes.

GW in general.  Love the fuck out of it.  Love that it shows newbs, properly, how to do basic stuff but in an interesting way, so everyone can enjoy it.  Love that it continues to change, embracing concerns like climate change or how to grow in a pandemic, newbie or not, plastic and what we need to do about it, bees, shit loads.  Love it that it has little specialist bits every time, galanthophiles, spindlewood obsessives, peony woman, exotic vegetable growing.  In France we call these little passing manic interests, lubies.  I love the way GW piques my lubies and I'm forced to learn everything about Hedychiums or double digging.  And it fills my heart with beauty and calm.

Not that mad on Mark Lane, he seems cold and hard and sour and joyless and his voiceovers never feel like he's in love.  I don't think I've ever learnt anything interesting from him.  Find Rachel de Thame and, I'm afraid, most of the other women (Carol excluded) a bit Blue Peterish and RdT pretty empty of interesting content to boot.  Carol's great obvs.  I like Adam Frost a lot, because he's so enthusiastic but now you've said that thing, HZJ, about his drunken violence, I still like him, heheh.  He's a great one, like Monty and Carol for the old excellent plant choices.  And Nick Bailey, also, for positivity and joie de vivre and plant knowledge. 

Anyway, fucking love this programme.

[Fr.Bigley]

Joe Swift's dad was funnier.

[Buelligan]

Heheh.  Very true.

[pigamus]

I associate it with Geoff Hamilton and waiting for Blackadder to come on

[DolphinFace]

Maybe a gardener here can help me because the only thing I've seen about fertilizers on GW was Monty soaking comfrey leaves which isn't of use to me.

I want an organic fertilizer which I can use for flowering plants in borders and pots including herbs. Previously, I've just dug compost into the borders before the perennials begin to grow, however now I'm going a bit container mad and probably need to give them a feed.

I was heading for



which I assumed would be all I needed until I read on GW's herb page to 'apply general fertilizer AS WELL as liquid seaweed'. And then I was like, huh, I thought that WAS a general fertilizer?

[Fr.Bigley]

What you think this is titchmarsh?

[Buelligan]

Any ordinary organic (ideally) tomato liquid feed[1] will do.  What you're trying to do is make sure they get enough nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium.  NPK, the three main things plants need for growth, nitrogen for growing and greenness, phosphorus for building flowers, fruit and root systems, potassium for flowers, fruit, roots and stress tolerance.  If you look on the bottle, you'll see NPK and numbers, those numbers show the ratio of NPK in the feed, so a fertilizer with pretty balanced ratio or one where the P number is slightly higher if you're growing plants in pots for flowers or fruit, is ideal.  Don't overfeed, it does no good at all and may cause harm.

ETA: Sorry, can't tell from that pic what the NPK thingy is for your seaweed extract, but basically, it doesn't matter where the NPK comes from seaweed, comfrey, whatevs, just that your plants get it from somewhere.  There should be enough present naturally in a healthy soil but obvs, growing intensively in pots they'll need feeding.

1.	liquid food sold as tomato food

[DolphinFace]

NPK for the seaweed is 5-2-5 and for an organic tomato feed it's  4-2-6 so I guess they do a similar job, just the tomato feed is much much cheaper. Sorry to be slow on this but in a mixed border/pot of perennials/grasses/shrubs, I can use a tomato feed?

[Buelligan]

In a mixed border or any plants planted into soil rather than pots, you shouldn't need to feed.  If you really want to and you follow the instructions, it won't do any harm but it really shouldn't be necessary if you're digging in compost as well (you said you were conditioning the soil before planting and so on, I think), I really think it would be overkill.  The only time you'd really need to feed plants not in pots is if you were growing prize vegetables for showing, if you had a specific indication of a lack of N, P or K, showing as a symptom in your plants (pretty unlikely) like yellowing leaves, that you'd ruled out other causes for or if something really bad had happened to your soil - I can't really imagine what that might be.  You can give plants that have had a difficult time or need a boost a feed if you like, but IMO, this is almost always unnecessary (unless they're in pots!).  Hope that makes sense.

FWIW, an ordinary tomato feed is almost always exactly ideal.  :)

[Huxleys Babkins]

Joe Swift's dad was funnier.

Well, that's my Joe Swift perma-hat fucked.

[poodlefaker]

I love Monty, like his style, he wears a lot of Old Town gear https://www.old-town.co.uk/. He's troubled by the black dog, picture him in its grip, prowling shirtless in a moonlit Longmeadow

Carol sounds like she'd be good in the pub, smoking rollies and getting a round in. Every library or university I've ever worked in had someone like her in the tea-room drinking Nescafe and doing the Guardian crossword.

Adam is bad news, waiting for the top gig when Monty retires.

Don Letts' appearance last summer was a cultural highlight for me. Culture-clash indeed.

[poo]

Love Monty. No fucking about - grab plant bang in pot water fucking done.

[Fr.Bigley]

He's troubled by the black dog, picture him in its grip, prowling shirtless in a moonlit Longmeadow

Got a semi.

[IsavedLatin]

I very much enjoyed this week's visit to the daffodil people's convention, including the vox pop with the lady who talked us through how and why she'd trussed up her show specimen with yarn, ending with, "They call it bondage in America!!1" to her own hoots of laughter. Gardeners' World is a lovely, gentle place.

[poodlefaker]

Monty's brown cords were a highlight this week; glossy, rich and deeply furrowed, like sunlight on a ploughed field.

[IsavedLatin]

I'd also like to basically steal the entirety of Nick Bailey's lovely garden for my own. All that in just five months!

[holyzombiejesus]

I very much enjoyed this week's visit to the daffodil people's convention, including the vox pop with the lady who talked us through how and why she'd trussed up her show specimen with yarn, ending with, "They call it bondage in America!!1" to her own hoots of laughter. Gardeners' World is a lovely, gentle place.

It's really good when they take in the shows. They repeated a man showing off his onions last year.

[holyzombiejesus]

Any idea what Monty does with all the food he grows? It's far too much for one family.

[Fr.Bigley]

I heard he drives it to the local food bank, then starts to feed it through his woodchipper in front of the line of starving miners and steel workers.

He's a bit of a twat like that.

[seepage]

BBC2 tonight @ 8pm.

[IsavedLatin]

This thread has now got me watching the segments from other contributors with a far more critical eye, as though they are overtly jostling for anointed heir status, and I find myself thinking that no one is a patch on Monty.

Monty's a properly dashing gent and seems quite humble with it, even though he's rich as fuck. You could imagine an 1800's Monty, striding about his estate, beloved by the townsfolk because he's given them all work, pays well, and he went to parliament to stop their hovels being demolished to build a railway line.

This description tickled me enormously when I read it, Huxleys, and I've thought about it during every episode since. It captures him to a tee. I'm not quite there (yet) myself but I can absolutely see how he would inspire swivel-eyed devotion; he's just such a nice man to spend time with, so reassuring. I almost think I could watch him dividing ferns all day. (What the fuck has this year done to me?!)

Absolutely loved that Peckham street with the front gardens that had almost become a shared garden. How does that come about? Does one neighbour inspire a few others, and in the course of 30 years you get that result? Or do you think anyone's arm has to be forced?

[IsavedLatin]

I demand a series for Gerald, the grower of enormous veg. "I'm known locally as the potato king."

[holyzombiejesus]

I demand a series for Gerald, the grower of enormous veg. "I'm known locally as the potato king."

I follow him on twitter (he's also followed by Tommy Corbyn, Ash Sarkar, Jennie Formby and Rob Delaney (and another 300k people) he seems like a lovely man. Cheers!

https://twitter.com/geraldstratfor3