ARTICLES - News Letter July 2008

Dear Fellow Garden Lover,

You may well have had trouble logging onto excusetheweeds during the past month, this is because we have had to change our server as the old one did not seem to be able to cope with the amount of traffic, hopefully the new one will be up to scratch.

During June, I had a visit to the local tomato growers who have open days for the general public. We turned up and were ushered into a huge room and told to don paper boiler suits, gloves and paper slippers to protect the plants from us germy visitors. We then trouped over to a vast green house and had a very interesting talk about how the tomatoes are fertilised by Dutch bees that are delivered in boxes, how they are protected from greenfly by small wasps and how they grow to great height and are winched up to keep the new growth growing and near the light. A fascinating visit but a bit disappointing as we all hoped that we could see some of the other vegetables that are grown on the site, apart from the tomatoes. Also it was very hot and much of the information that we were given could have been conveyed without having to stand in a hot humid greenhouse, but then maybe I’m being picky, as we were made very welcome and given drinks and biscuits afterwards and all for a fee of about £2 per head. The discarded paper boiler suits were, by the way, especially useful for decorating.

A number of our local garden centres are giving out free copies of a magazine called ‘Country Gardener’ it is a good little magazine with lots of tips and interesting articles. It also has details of gardens open to the public in the south of England; I’ve picked up several issues of it and would suggest that you look out for copies for yourselves as it’s worth a look.

My ‘cri de coeur’ this month is slugs and snails (same as last month really)! The abundant rain has caused the population to explode and mainly on my food crops. It is quite odd but they have also taken a liking to my lemon and grapefruit trees. The poor old grapefruit got decimated in the spring, I kept finding very small snails lurking amongst the fast disappearing leaves and had to resort to slug pellets and a systematic search every morning to remove any survivors from my poor decimated plant. The good news is that the plant has recovered and is now covered with lovely new foliage, I would have been very upset to lose that particular plant as I grew it from a pip in about 1974.

All my ‘cheapy’ plants from Lidl and Morrisons are doing well, and even dare I say it my olive tree from Woolworths that looked very sad when I bought it has a cluster of new leaves on it and is looking very perky.

Happy Gardening
11th July, 2008.