Gardeners World - What a shame

[Chumpfriend]

Am I being unreasonable to think that Gardener’s World has jumped the shark?

It’s honestly a travesty of what went before and in no way makes anyone with a modest garden feel capable of creating a garden or delivers any meaningful advice.

There are BBC tropes and messaging rammed down your throat and literally nothing that relates to any ordinary gardener at this time of year.

The Beechwood Garden is a shadow reference to the old GW but I’m so disappointed at such a lost opportunity to make people feel like they can have a go at growing stuff.

Geoff Hamilton may be turning in his grave.

Sadly I can't find either The Edible Garden or Alys Fowler in iPlayer

😭

I agree op

I couldn't either so I looked on YouTube instead.
Alys Fowler

Thanks for the Charles Dowding chat. I put some cardboard down over the winter but will be removing it because I know that there is horsetail lurking there. It is fairly minimal these days so I would hate to encourage it back again!!

I once heard an old landscaper with about 40 years' experience say wryly that mares' tails are a miracle of nature - they evolved to be resistant to weed killer millennia before weed killer was invented. So true, and so annoying.

I have bindweed, horse tail and couch grass on allotment 🥺 Someone put blue tarp over one bed where the worst of the couch is and I lost the will to dig it up as had done stacks of weed membrane by that point so it is a strawberry bed currently. The couch comes through the tarp and I can’t get to the roots so it will have to be stripped out later this year.

The horse tail is mingled in with the bind weed, just been a couple of weeks slower to appear.

Isn't Jamie Butterworth Monty Don's protege/seen as a successor?

Thankfully never had to deal with it but on discussion with the old boys in the allotment they told me the old weedkiller did work.

It’s not sold anymore due to EU regulations and an argument about getting the right paperwork. No one wanted to pay for it because it was a common chemical and as it was still available on the shelf for those in the know. Just being sold as compost accelerator. It all just got lost in time and the knowledge not passed on - I am professional and first I had heard of it!

So it’s called ammonium sulphamate. It’s actually very safe as it breaks down to natural compounds hence approved for compost.

You can find diy recipes online to turn it into a liquid spray.

If you give it a go let us know how you get on!

It's not about types of weedkiller really - it's that you have to crush it so the weedkiller can penetrate. Spraying it just as it is doesn't work.

It seems counterintuitive to think that giving plants which have the 'spread underground to take in as much nutrition and protection as possible with the aim of popping up at the first opportunity in a stronger, more resilient form' behaviour everything they need in order to do that is going to cause them to die.

It's like giving mint free reign over the garden because 'it'll tire itself out' when there's more space to cover, rather than accepting that it has the regenerative powers of Hydra's Teeth and making sure that it never, ever even has a whiff of open ground.

I remember Geoff to but Alan Titchmarsh was probably my favourite presenter. I remember some evenings in the summer when the programme was over and there was still light, he'd have inspired me to get off the sofa and potter about in the garden for a while.

Monty bores me now.

Monty bores me now.
I annoy DH every week by insisting that we watch GW ... and then, usually, falling asleep before the end of the programme!

No dig is drivel.
I have no walk veg beds
but if you do not make sure that there are not pernicious weeds coming up among your seedlings
you are a fool.
I no longer double dig, but I definitely prep all of my beds each winter.

A good session on weeds - perennial and annual
A good session on pest control - physical, non chemical etc
A good session on keeping cats and foxes and birds off seedlings
A good session on growing salad in pots on a patio

THere is lots they could do that would inspire newcomers and jog the memory of old hands
but that involves having a production team who know what they are doing.

If they could film Frances doing jobs in her presumably employer's garden, why can't they do a "troubleshooting' section in a viewers garden each week? Real garden, real problems - design, or plant choice or weeds etc
Did Beechgrove used to do this?

I’ve skimmed the thread not read in detail but I also want to know why we saw Francis’ new garden twice when she first moved in, all excited to get going, then never again.
I like gardening books.
I like Rekha
I miss Joe Swift
i also like GW in a soothing end of the weekend way (I like to watch on a Sunday evening, full of Sunday dinner and red wine, an feel a bit smug if I have done the weekend jobs already)
I even like the national collection weirdos!
I don’t much like Carol Klein or Monty although I don’t dislike either of them as much as my parents who have to rant when they come on screen. (Apparently they are not soothed by GW like I am)
I don’t think I learn much from it but who can fail to be amused by Monty telling us how to thin his enormous grape vine with nail scissors

Second sowing of carrots is in, leeks and kale are coming along well, spuds are looking good.
Rest of the veg is in the polytunnel waiting for warmer nights.

Sub tropical bed gets uncovered next week
I grew bananas before Christopher Lloyd
and I do not wrap them - they just fend for themselves

Cycads and succulents move outside week after next (to make space in the polytunnel for the tomatoes)

Bindweed and dandelion roots are rotting in a bucket of water so they can then be composted.

I also want to know why we saw Francis’ new garden twice when she first moved in, all excited to get going, then never again.
I was surprised by the volume of plants that Adam had available to put in his new new garden (thinking about it, his old new garden had a lot of plants over the years). I don't remember Frances getting a share of the GW richesse.

I imagine he paid for them himself.

Didn’t Christopher Lloyd say that the best time to prune a plant is when you remember to do it and you have a pair of secateurs in your hand ?

Or something like that.

I handed back my allotment last year but I do remember a colleague from another site telling me that she masked up and actually injected her mare’s tail with weedkiller to get rid of it.

Carol Klein has a voice like fingernails on a blackboard.

One of my horticulture tutors told us that much of the rigid gardener's calendar of was the product of big Victorian estate gardens where the gardeners had to be kept occupied all year round. A lot of things can be done whenever you have the time (within reason).

I love that Christopher Lloyd quotation.

I think it's true about rigid calendars. Still true in big gardens and in nurseries - I used to work in a nursery and an awful lot of what 'had' to be done in a certain week was mostly about fitting round other things/keeping the level of work as consistent as it could be over the year, but you'd notice gardening books still insisting that was the 'proper' week to do it because it's how most horticulturalists have been trained.

So agree about Carol Klein's voice! I think someone must have told her that old tip about smiling when you talk so your voice sounds smiley, and it just makes her sound insufferable to me.

Did he?! Well I will take that gem to the clients 😂

That sounds like it holds a lot of weight.

I have sadly missed so much of Carol's contributions over the years because I've fast forwarded her because of her overexcitedness, but there was a series of four programmes on last year where she was in her own garden and so much calmer. It was lovely.