Our resident garden expert sows seasonal gardening advice, news and other useful information from his potting shed to help your garden grow!
Who would have thought 'cool' would have come to vegetable gardening? Well, it has in a big way!
Sales of vegetable seed are up by more than 50% with home vegetable plots or a local allotment 'de rigeur'. Especially popular are wooden and plastic 'raised bed' kits and compost bags whose contents are tailor made for specific types of seed. Simply open the bag, sprinkle the seed and water as instructed. Now you can even grow vegetables on the patio! Read more
Recently arrived in the UK, the first batch of 1,500 Princeton elms. Closely related to the English elm they are resistant to Dutch Elm disease. The only other significant difference is that the leaf on the American version – as one would expect – is a little larger. Ulmus Americana Princeton can grow at 2 metres a year and reach 30 metres. The Prince of Wales has bought 60 from the first batch for his Highgrove Estate.
More than 23 million elms were lost to Dutch Elm disease in the 1970s and early 1980s causing major landscape degradation in many parts of the country.
We have all noticed how streaks of clouds are left behind by jet engines. The water vapour that shoots out of a hot engine exhaust hits the cold air outside and condenses into a ribbon of cloud. Contrails can give clues to what the weather will bring. A lack of any contrails is a sign that the high altitude atmosphere is very dry and the weather could stay fine. Short contrails that disappear quickly indicate that the air is fairly moist. And a persistant contrail shows that the air is very moist and possibly a sign of an approaching weather front and rain.