In the Beechgrove Garden episode 8 2016, Jim is starting off new varieties of tomatoes and he’s going to try them in a range of new tomato growing gadgets. Brian Cunningham, head gardener of Scone Palace, is back continuing his revamping of the Beechgrove alpine garden.
This week, Brian finishes off the hard landscaping and starts the planting. Jim and George’s busman’s holiday continues in the Netherlands and this time they visit the world’s largest cut flower auction at Aalsmeer, near Amsterdam.
It was a glorious sunny day at Beechgrove this week with temperatures reaching the 20’s. You needed your sunglasses on to see the spring bedding display, it’s been getting better each week and brighter, the more that is in flower. Carole liked the planting combination of white Tulip ‘Calgary’ and red polyanthus. Tulips don’t normally have any scent however, George had found one which, in his opinion was a cracker, called Tulip ‘Olympic Flame and it had an orange marmalade fragrance.
The Beechgrove Garden episode 8 2016:
1. Tomato growing
This week sees the start of the tomato growing season at Beechgrove. This year we are trying some new and old tomato varieties and some old tried and tested growing methods as well as some new ones.
One new variety of tomato Jim is growing this year was ‘Tourance’ which will be compared with older varieties that have been grown before at Beechgrove. This new variety is supposed to have excellent disease resistance and very uniform fruits so is good for showing.
2. Sowing a new lawn
May is a good time of year for sowing grass seed as the ground is warming up and the seeds should germinate quickly. George and Carole had already done some ground preparation. Our Old Orchard area has been used for a number of different things over the years and it was time to give it a rest. The area showed the different stages from ground preparation to lawn seed sowing.