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| Go greener |
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| With a growing number of gardeners eschewing chemicals in favour of natural alternatives, we can suggest some effective products from our organic gardening selection |
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| Relax and refresh |
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| Good food freshly prepared daily, aromatic coffee, chilled wine and a grassy play area for the children. What more could you need? |
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| Food heaven |
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| Our Farm Shop is heaven for food lovers! Delicious handmade food, top quality groceries, fresh fruit and vegetables and stylish cookware and gifts. |
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| The Discovery Walk |
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| As thousands of daffodils herald the spring, stroll or stride around our Walk while the youngsters enjoy the Nature Trail |
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Essential tool kits!
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| Thursday, 6th March 2008 |
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IN THE GARDEN WITH PETA MARSHALL
My offering this week, I suppose, is really aimed at the beginner gardener who may be venturing into the great outdoors for the first time.
Rather like one of those polar bear cubs emerging from an ice-hole and into the glaring snowscape for the first time, so a novice gardener will be feeling their way around unfamiliar terrain.
However, it’s all very well gingerly discovering the intricacies of pathway, lawn, flowerbed or veg plot, but sooner or later the novice is going to need to actually do something. Something like digging, pruning and weeding.
So, what tools does one need to do these things?
Hand tools are by far and away the most important items for the new gardener, and they can be quite expensive – especially if it is felt they need to be bought all at the same time. Fortunately there are really only six items that are absolutely essential: spade, fork, rake, hoe, secateurs and trowel.
Being realistic, even to buy the best quality versions of these tools is not going to be cheap, so it will pay you to think about the use of them. For a start, because the rake and hoe will get less heavy work and probably be used less often, second-best quality for these will probably suffice. But for someone with a garden in need of preparation, a good fork and spade are absolutely essential. The top-of-the-range types are made from stainless steel, and these will actually make good investments – they will be regularly used and should last almost a lifetime.
When you’re buying a long-handled tool, always pick it off the garden centre rack and feel it. Balance it from one hand to the other to judge its weight. And take up the digging, forking, raking or hoeing stance with them in the shop (you won’t look like an idiot; you’d be surprised at the things customers at Priory Farm do with tools before they buy them, such as one man who once asked if there was a patch of soil nearby where he could try the spade out!).
Tools with over-long handles, especially digging tools, make for slow work and will be most uncomfortable to use. Conversely, those with too short a handle are apt to give you backache!
It is just as important to get the smaller hand tools right as well. Hold and grip a pair of secateurs before you buy them. Make sure they feel right and aren’t too heavy. Note also whether you want the anvil or parrot-bill type of secateurs. The former have one blade that cuts on to a straight ‘anvil’, and the latter has two blades cutting like a scissor action.
The trowel, for me, ranks as a favourite. Without it I wouldn’t be able to get my bedding plants, alpines and smaller perennials planted, and I wouldn’t be able to plant many of my bulbs either. There are specially designed bulb planters but I’m not particularly a fan of them – for me a trowel works just fine.
But one word of warning on trowels: cheap ones are a waste of money, quite simply because they bend, especially in heavy, clay soil.
Other items that are useful, perhaps as the novice gardener tries their hand at growing vegetables, include a garden line – at its simplest a length of polypropylene twine between two short canes – as well as a dibber, twine, a watering can, plus of course a range of pots and trays for raising seedlings and for potting plants.
Finally, I suppose that a lawnmower also comes under the heading of a ‘tool’. Here you are best talking to a machinery supplier. Yes you can pop down to the nearest DIY superstore and pick up the latest lightweight hover thing-a-me with what seems like barely enough cable to stretch from the sofa to the telly. Or you can visit a garden machinery specialist and buy a metre-wide petrol ride-on mower for several thousand pounds. It all depends on the size of your lawn, and the depth of your pocket! Happy Gardening!
Get the kids involved!
There are some great ranges of tools available for kiddies (and it’s never too early to get youngsters interested in gardening!).
For example, the Joseph Bentley Gardener’s Apprentice range is designed to perform and function just as well as the full-sized stainless steel tools. They’re not toys, so should only be used when an adult is supervising a child.
What better way to encourage the younger gardener than to work alongside a responsible adult gardener, who can pass on the tricks of the trade? It happened to me…unfortunately rather more years ago than I’d care to admit!
This week in your garden
Check terracotta and earthenware garden containers for signs of winter damage. Frost will shatter non-hardy pots.
Keep house plants away from cold, draughty windows. If curtains are drawn at night, and the plants are left on the windowsill, they may receive a nasty check to growth.
The following crops are coming to maturity now, and could be ready for picking: swedes, kale, leeks, spinach, Brussels sprouts, broccoli, Savoy cabbage and winter cauliflowers.
Put down a mulch of new gravel chippings on the rockery; this will stop the delicate alpine plants from dragging their leaves in the mud, and it’ll look neat!
Peta Marshall is the plant centre manager at Priory Farm in Nutfield. Website: www.prioryfarm.co.uk
NEXT WEEK: Ponds, pools and water features
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