In the Beechgrove Garden episode 17 2015 the air is filled with scented sweetpeas. Jim grows his strictly standing to attention in cordon fashion while Carole’s blue collection are left to scramble.
Carole returns to Newport-on-Tay, where she has been helping first-time gardeners Mark and Aileen Snowden tame their mature garden. This is the last visit this season and Carole catches up with the family’s progress, harvests some of the new fruit and suggests some final tidying up. Carole is also back in Orkney for the second of her visits. This week Carole visits the Community Garden at Finstown where appropriately for the weather she’s looking at damp but inspirational planting.
Jim and Carole were in the Cutting Garden on a blustery day that felt more like autumn than August. Jim was looking at his chrysanthemums, which are protected and supported by a net positioned horizontally across the bed. This does the job well supporting the stems as they grow protecting them from gusts of wind. Jim was disbudding the side shoots from the bloom varieties to ensure large flowers.
In Beechgrove Garden episode 17 2015:
Scatter Mixes
Carole was in the Long Border looking at the scatter mixes. The seed mix sown at the end of June has had good germination but has no flowers yet. Those sown at the beginning of June are starting to flower with Alyssum flowering first. The area sown in May is full of flower with Linaria and Californian poppy dominating. The first sowing in late April is also in full bloom with Silene dominating just now, and it looks gorgeous.
Heritage Vegetables
Jim was in the Heritage vegetable plot. Back in the dark days of winter Jim suggested we use this area for growing old-fashioned heirloom or heritage varieties of vegetables. There had been a dilapidated poly tunnel on this site previously. It was used intensively, firstly for blueberry bushes and then in more recent years, for show vegetables. Jim compared the Heritage vegetables to those growing in the main vegetable plot and you can clearly see a difference.
