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.

I love GW and I’ve learned lots from it. I enjoy Monty and his aspirational garden. I do think there would be room for another programme all together where they follow the journey of a basic garden -say your typical new build square of grass, and show how to transform it from the pov of a novice. Trouble is it would take ages so it probably wouldn’t be practical to make.

I like it still! I like Frances and I’d like to see her garden more but I’m not sure about Adam. Too serene.
I’d love a ‘What is this that I planted last year and forget to label’ bit every week because that is my problem every single Spring!

Charles Dowding is badly misguided on this I personally feel!. I’ve inherited an allotment where they slapped a load of weed membrane on beds the covered with compost or wood chips, I think to suppress bindweed and horsetail. Total nightmare.

I’ve dug up as much membrane as I can and there was an absolutely huge mat of bindweed roots underneath. It’s coming up at a rate of knots currently and is much worse than a previous allotment where it wasn’t suppressed. I think covering it lets the root system get much more established and then it’s on steroids when uncovered.

I didn’t watch any GW last year as was getting bored of it for the first time ever. Might start again now I’ve had a break and see how it is.

Seeds can vary in their needs though ( depth, coverage, temperature, even pot size) and can fail to germinate if not started off according to those needs Seeds are becoming so expensive for not very many now too.

This has nothing to do with telling people they need ALL the things in order to germinate seeds.

The most important thing is not sowing them too deep and not drowning them.

It’s not about needing loads of stuff but skills to avoid wasting money. Not sowing too deep and not drowning isn’t enough info to cover the needs of all seeds.

Also would like to point out there are windowsills and windowsills, they can vary massively as regards sun and temperature

His brand IS no dig so he can't possibly admit it doesnt always work and rarely works on areas with bad perennial weeds.Especially if you cannot get there every day to check for every bit of regrowth.

I am well aware of this.

You dont save money by spending a fortune on unnecessary stuff.

And yes I am aware of windowsills. Not sure why you think I am not.

Totally agree! He is doing a big disservice to some people and whilst I think no dig can be really good, on many allotment groups new people seem to think it is the only option. I’ve seen people spend a lot of money buying wood for raised beds etc, bulk compost and then find they still struggle to cope with the weeds which puts them off.

It would be good if GW looked at this and helped people understand when it is appropriate and when it isn’t.

There is an innate problem with shows like this, gardening is the same fucking thing every year. And sowing seeds and planting potatoes is going to be new to someone…

Because you said the most important thing was not sowing too deep or drowning. I’d say temperature and access to light is pretty key too.

I’m quite interested in seeing the results of the tomato heirloom v hybrid test.

Because in my years of working with beginners, the most common thing was sowing tomato seeds 3 inches deep and literally leaving them in water to rot. They see GW putting them in a tray and being watered but don't see them removed 30 mins later and not watered again until they dry out.

Many other things are key.

I've never seen any professional propagation specialists use vermiculite or gravel, they mostly sow single seeds into the appropriate sized modules into seed compost and then transplant into potting compost when ready. They are housed in heated greenhouses and watered from overheads.

Another thing that blew my mind was the way that the modules get transplanted. Not taken out by the leaf, dropped into a nicely made hole and the soil neatly packed round it. They get a large tray of pots, chuck potting soil on the lot and use a long straight edge to fill them. then they lay each module on top of the compost on each pot and shove the root into the pot through the soil with their fingers, often 4 at a time and thats that. Watering does the rest.

Me too. I also love the fact that gardening has seasons and times to do things, and love watching a seed I’ve grown turn into a 4 foot plant, set fruit and die within a short season.

I so agree.
Whilst I like Charles Dowding and really want to believe in no dig I honestly think it's a flawed concept.

He insists it overcomes all known weeds but I've yet to meet anyone who agrees with him.

GW could have a really useful new weekly feature Weed of the Week.

How to identify early on, level of nuisance, any wildlife benefits, can you eat 'em, how to tackle, how to prevent.

For anyone seeking a gentle TV programme in a relatively small, terraced house garden there's a brilliant old show by Alys Fowler. It's called The Edible Garden. Six episodes on iPlayer. Beautifully filmed, honest, successes and failures, allotments, a pretty edible garden, practical tips, bits of cooking the stuff she grows in her minute kitchen and her pottering about on a bike with a sweet little dog. It's everything I love about gardening and a real relaxation.

Also veg of the week. So for potatoes, the different types, when they go in, different ways of growing in new, established, new allotment and in pots. Why we earth up and when. What to mulch with instead of earthing up. How to feed and when. What pests and diseases to look out for and when. And links to past potato growing episodes.

That’s beechwood….GW is more aspirational.

I remember watching this! I liked it.

Weed of the Week would be great!They’d have to include the most effective ways of physically removing it too and how to differentiate it from similar looking plants.

Thanks for the Edible Garden suggestion, it looks right up my street.

Omg yes it is true!

I can’t remember exactly but when losing my mind I did the research and bindweed roots live something like 100 years in a semi dormant state (no green). So covering it just lets it slowly multiply and colonise as a subterranean organism like something out of stranger things.

They only benefit to the covering is it brings them to the surface. But I am also sceptical and whether these are the same roots. Or whether they are new roots which grew on the surface as additional.

After 3 years I have managed to get rid of 99% Honestly at one point I didn’t think it would be possible

I had a small patch of bindweed and did manage to get rid of it by constantly digging out what I could see of it. I was very surprised it gave in so easily but suspect it wasn't very well established in the first place.

GW could have a really useful new weekly feature Weed of the Week.

How to identify early on, level of nuisance, any wildlife benefits, can you eat 'em, how to tackle, how to prevent.

I love this idea @PottingBench 👏

I like GW a lot because of its variety. I mainly use it to see new varieties which I buy later on, for example really liked seeing different magnolias side by side and have now bought the one I liked the most. Or I get new ideas for colour combinations, for example I saw some really nice grass colours combined with specific flowers, which I hadn’t thought about before.

The most boring bits are mansions, continuous propagation and mental health discussed in every episode (I have some myself so would prefer not to think about MH in a show once a week that otherwise helps me zone out of thinking about it)

It’s not meant to be a step by step guidebook otherwise most wouldn’t watch it. When I was a beginner and didn’t even have a garden I still watched it as aspirational escapism and it was obvious I needed to separately look into the details of “well how much winter moisture can this grass actually handle”.

In GW, we’ve seen pot gardens in paved yards, balcony mini oasis, community gardens, small tropical gardens in normal houses both in London and Leeds, sea side gardens, north facing ones, clay sites, windy sites, allotments which I absolutely love, houseplants which I have many, all sized ponds etc. I’ve got ideas from most of those in a small scale as I have a varied garden with completely different kinds of spots in there.

Even with the national collections focusing on one species, I still clock one or two varieties that stand out to me and often search for them online.

I find Beechgrove boring and uninspirational, although I can see why it helps a lot of people. I usually fast forward the boring bits, which is most parts unfortunately.

I see your bind weed and raise with my horse tail (Equisetum), a 100 million old plant that laughs in the face of no dig. You can add as many layers of cardboard as you like, it loves it and just continues spreading laterally with its 7 feet deep roots.