Herbs!

Monty Don: Herbs are the easiest and best thing to grow in your garden, partly because a small amount can improve a whole range of other ingredients
Herbs are the easiest and best thing to grow in your garden, partly because a small amount can improve a whole range of other ingredients

Mediterranean herbs
This group includes culinary herbs such as rosemary, thyme, sage, coriander, tarragon, bay and oregano.
Decorative and medicinal herbs such as lavender, santolina, artemisia and hyssop share the same growing conditions.
You must be cruel to be kind to these plants.
Always add drainage to your soil and never, ever add compost or manure.
If you grow them in pots, mix ordinary peat-free potting compost with the same volume of sharp sand or grit.
Do not feed these plants as the harder they are grown the better they will be able to resist problems of weather, pests or disease.
However, do not forget to water them in summer, though they can dry out in winter, and as long as they are not too wet are very hardy.
But the combination of wet and cold is often fatal.

Annual herbs
Like any other annual plant, annual herbs do all their growing, flowering — and critically — seed production within one growing season.
Many promptly die, although some can live on for a few more years.
But the gardener can harness this speed of production through managing seeds.
Sow them in spring and you will have a crop.
But sow some every few months and you will have a daily supply.
My favourite annual herbs are basil and coriander.
Basil (Ocimum basilicum) is tender so needs protection from frost, but the others are very robust.
Basil is a very strong-growing plant that needs plenty of space to develop properly and which can be picked all summer long to provide fresh leaves.
I grow mine alongside tomatoes in the greenhouse from May onwards and outside in the garden once the nights get reliably warm in July, allowing at least 15cm (6in) space between each seedling.
Another favourite herb is parsley, which is a biennial, meaning it sets seed in its second year.
Like coriander, it’s a robust plant that will grow in some shade.
I grow both all year round, inside and out, making a sowing every few months.

Perennial herbs
Some herbs are herbaceous perennials that survive the winter by the top growth all dying back in autumn and growing fresh foliage and flowers in spring and summer.
My own favourites from this group are mint, chives, lovage, marjoram, fennel, sorrel and horseradish.
There are many different mints but the three to grow for the kitchen are spearmint (Mentha spicata), peppermint (Mentha x piperita) and apple mint (Mentha suaveolens).
Mint grows in most soils and conditions, though it prefers a rather damp, sunny site.
However, it will spread invasively if given the chance, so I recommend growing it in a container.
Chives are an allium, like garlic, and are very easy to grow from seed and become long-lived perennials that can be chopped into sections with a spade to create new plants, and each will regrow with fresh vigour.
The flowers are beautiful and edible but cut them back to the ground as soon as the blooms start to fade and they will quickly grow new shoots.
This can be repeated every four weeks or so throughout the growing season.
Lovage (Levisticum officinale) has very deep, fleshy roots and does best in fairly moist soil.
The leaves have a subtle and delicious celery flavour that’s excellent in soups and stews.
It grows very large with a giant flower head that should be cut back along with the older leaves at least once in summer to encourage fresh growth.
Sorrel (Rumex acetosa) is another shade and damp-loving herb with a distinct lemony astringency, that’s especially good with egg dishes.
Common sorrel is spinach-like and best cooked, but buckler leaf sorrel (Rumex scutatus) has smaller, less bitter leaves and is better used in salads.
Fennel (Foeniculum vulgare) will seed itself freely and bronze fennel is a welcome self-seeder all over my garden.
The seedlings have a deep tap root so must be transplanted when very young if they are to survive the move.
The leaves and seeds of green fennel are delicious with any fish or pork.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/gardening/article-3505311/Happiness-vegetable-patch-Follow-sun-pick-plot-six-essentials-need-grow-added-ingredient-transform-meals.html#ixzz4PhFr03hs

Six steps that will help you grow your own vegetable patch.

Six steps that will help you grow your own vegetable patch | Daily Mail Online
Anyone, anywhere can do it — no garden is too small.
A window box or pot is ideal for herbs that transform dishes and a patch of ground a metre square will provide salad leaves all year.
I have seen spritely 90-year-olds digging on allotments and three-year-olds helping to plant rows of beans.

- Follow the sun to pick your plot.
Vegetables all grow best in good soil that is free-draining with direct sun for at least half the day - preferably longer.

- Getting warm!
A greenhouse is best, but cold frames are very good and a porch or spare windowsill is perfectly workable.
When they have germinated and are reasonable sized seedlings, put them outside to harden off before planting them out at 22cm (9in) spacing when the soil is warm and they are big enough to withstand any kind of slug or snail attack.

- Mulch to do.
The best soil is rich in humus or organic matter that comes from the roots of plants and the addition of decaying plant material such as compost or manure.

If you can’t dig, a mulch on the surface will do the job and work into the soil, albeit more slowly.
Root crops such as carrots and parsnips grow best in soil that is very free draining and hasn’t had fresh organic material added in the past year. That’s because it can cause roots to fork and split and encourage lush foliage at the expense of the roots.
So it’s a common practice to heavily enrich one third of the plot for potatoes, legumes and salad crops, and to top up another third with a mulch of good compost, which is good for brassicas such as cabbage, cauliflower and broccoli plus alliums such as onions, leeks and garlic.
The third section is left unenriched and used for root crops, such as carrots. This last one becomes the first next year — so is heavily enriched; last year’s first gets a top-up; and the one that was second (brassicas and alliums) is left alone to grow carrots and roots. And so it goes on. In practice, there is usually much more mixing and matching than that and crops are squeezed in among each other. It doesn’t have to be slavishly obeyed, but it is a good guiding principal.

- Easy-reach beds.
Don’t make the beds too wide: 1m (3ft) to 1.5m (5ft) is the maximum workable width, and it is best to keep them to less than 4.5m (15ft) long so they remain quick and easy to walk around.
Mark the beds out with string and dig the ground deeply, adding as much manure or compost as you can obtain. This will raise the surface of the soil. Use bark chippings, paving or grass for the paths.

- Slugs and snails.
The healthiest plants are those that respond best to the situation that they grow in — whatever and wherever it might be. Encourage predators to get rid of pests for you. Thrushes, frogs, toads, beetles, centipedes, shrews and hedgehogs all love eating slugs and snails.
It means avoiding toxic chemicals — ie slug pellets — and a degree of tolerance for collateral damage.

- Sow little & often.
Succession is the key and gives a steady supply of fresh vegetables for as long as possible.
It means sowing two or three batches of your favourite vegetables across the season, so when one batch nears the end, another is ready to be harvested with perhaps a third being sown or grown on.
Start with some fast-growing salad leaves raised indoors in plugs that can be planted out as soon as the ground warms, and follow it with regular additions, raised in plugs and directly sown, until September.
Crops such as peas and beans, chard, carrots and beetroot grow more slowly but can be spread over months to provide two or three overlapping waves of harvest.
Finally there are long, slow crops such as most brassicas, chicory, garlic or celery that will tie up space for most of the growing year.
I always inter-plant these with a fast-growing catch-crop such as radishes or rocket that is ready to eat before it competes with the slow-grower.

Gardens: Monty Don.

- Gardens: Monty Don gives a tour of his Herefordshire garden | From the Observer | The Guardian - 6 August 2000

It is difficult to know where to start describing the garden that Monty and his wife, Sarah, have created together since moving into their rambling 15th- to 16th- century farmhouse and adjoining stables in 1992.
For a start, the pathways that link the formal topiary garden at the front of the house with the interlocking herb, vegetable, flower and spring gardens at the back, run through the house.

Looking out from above, you see that it is designed almost as a series of rooms, each one with its own flavour.
There's the long corridor lined with noble alliums on either side.
There's the herb patch, the vegetable garden, the greenhouses, the Jewel Garden at the centre and the orchard trailing into the distance with its perfectly spaced trees - there are 36 varieties of apple.

As well as flowers, there are herbs - great clumps of basil, thyme, marjoram, lovage, parsley, tarragon, sage - and a well-stocked kitchen garden of fruit and vegetables, including broad beans, onions, sweetcorn, strawberries, potatoes, peas and big, juicy marrows.
There are frames crammed with cabbages, broccoli and Brussels sprouts, all ready for planting out.
In the greenhouse, there are leeks, radicchio and peppers.

- Monty Don on Chelsea Flower Show and the "nonsense" of Brexit - Page 2 - May 2016.
The presenter believes Britain leaving the EU is "complete nonsense"
He met his wife Sarah at Magdalene College, Cambridge, and there can be no doubting their rock solid union.
In the 1980s they ran a costume jewellery business with a Knightsbridge shop whose customers included Michael Jackson and Princess Diana, and at weekends tended their Hackney garden.
When the business faltered they took a bridging loan on a derelict Herefordshire farm, where Don gardened so furiously that Sarah told him he was “married” to it.
By the time their three children were born, the business had crashed, the farm was sold, and everything they owned with it.
For two years life was an endless winter of unemployment, before the season began to turn for Don with a gardening segment on breakfast television.
His two sons, Adam and Tom, and daughter Freya are in their mid-to-late twenties now.
Usually Don refuses to speak of them in interviews, but on this occasion serenity takes charge, his face flooded with light.
“We’ve always had a fairly informal relationship. I work with Adam, and speak to him every day as he runs the farm.
He’s lambing at the moment.
The others – I’ll ring up, we chat, share books, music, tell each other what we’ve done and seen.
I can remember my own mother snorting: ‘I don’t want to be your best friend! I’m your mother!’ I was brought up very strictly.
I love my children, I adore them. Would die for them, kill for them. We’re very honest with each other. At times that’s brutal; at others it’s liberating and enlightening.
We are good friends.”

The brief Monty: Life story
1955: Born Montagu Denis Wyatt Don in Berlin, son of an army officer, and the youngest of five children.

1979: At Magdalene College, Cambridge, meets his future wife, Sarah, with whom he elopes. They have three children.

1981: He and Sarah found a costume jewellery business in Kensington and come to count Elton John and Princess Diana among their clients.

1989: He makes his television debut on This Morning in a five-minute gardening slot with Richard and Judy.

1992: The jewellery business folds and he spends three years on the dole.

1994-2006" Writes a gardening column for the Observer.

2003: Succeeding Alan Titchmarsh, Don becomes the first amateur gardener to front Gardeners' World.

2005: Runs Growing out of Trouble, a televised project to help heroin addicts kick their habit by working the land.

2008: Publishes Around the World in 80 Gardens, his 12th gardening title. Becomes president of the Soil Association.

He says: "I have never bought into the school of thought that says gardening is an emollient for the cracked skin of modern life."

They say: 'He was the perfect Gardeners' World presenter, bringing calm, tenderness, immense knowledge and quiet gravitas to television." Nigel Slater
Hermione Hoby

Monty Don.

| Search Results | Mail Online: "You'll never need a florist again! Monty Don shows you how to create a flower shop in your very own back garden"

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Monty's favourite fruit.

Monty's favourite fruit - Plant features: Fruit & veg - gardenersworld.com:

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Tomatoes.

Seeds - Simpson’s, Plants of Distinction, Tamar, Plant World Seeds gardens.
- Unfortunately with some of the best tomatoes you cannot buy organic seed so only from the second year of my own growing can they be considered truly organic.
- end of February or the start of March is about right for sowing.
The seed trays are put in a propagator and the plants are pricked out into 9cm terracotta pots when the third leaf appears.
Feeding starts intermittently then, (see web site for Liquid feeds) until the end of May when they are planted out into 30 cm (12 inches) terracotta pots in the main polytunnel.
From here on in they get my standard feed every day.
- The reason I only fill the pots half full with compost is I want to ‘stress’ the plant. Plants that are stressed often produce their best fruit in a last ditch effort of life. This stressing is not easy and requires a little practice as it can be a fine balance between success and failure and it is very easy to end up with small yellow tomato plants. The feed has to be constant and of a good quality so that the plant actually flourishes rather than dies. Stressing is a bit of a knack but CAN produce great fruit.
- I remove the bottom leaves only to get them out of the way so as not to splash water on them when watering. Tomato blight needs wet leaves to enter the plant and so by not wetting any of the leaves you have a very good chance of not getting blight later on. You needn’t do this if you are really careful with watering.
- After final repotting and once the compost has settled down I cover it with some fine OLD wood chips.
That’s about it for the preparation. Now it is just keeping up the watering and feeding.

Apart from my home made potting compost I only use the three feeds mentioned on the web site under Liquid Feeds.
Once I start watering I add ONE of these liquid feeds every day.
- To start with I use the nettle juice daily. This carries on until the end of June.
- July will be mostly comfrey but towards the end I will progress to Wood Ash.
In all the plants are fed like this every day for 3 months.

Watering
- On a hot day in June or July a 2 gallon watering can is sufficient for 8 plants watered around mid day.
- If the weather is exceptional I will go round again in the late afternoon (as the water will be hot again by then) with plain hot water at perhaps a 2 gallon watering can will do 12 to 16 plants.
- On overcast days if it’s raining I may just give them a splash at midday.
If my terracotta pots start turning green (even the tiniest amount) then I’m over watering, if the top of the compost is dry then I’m under watering.
do not put any of the plants on the compost heap, I throw the plants away..
Author - Richard Sandford- Lower Lovetts Farm.

" Kumato seeds are not available commercially, and the company that produces Kumato, Syngenta, has said they will never make the seeds available to the public.
As you can imagine, this announcement generated a large amount of interest in the Kumato and its possible lineage. While most likely a hybrid, some have speculated that it is an OP variety. In case you have not heard of Kumato, it is a "black" tomato introduced last year available only in Europe and Australia that is supposed to have a good shelf life. From its incredible sales last year in Sainsbury's grocery stores (the only stores to sell the Kumato), it was a very popular introduction. "

Monty Don's gardening diaries: Me and my wife built our life around our home and garden | Mail Online

When gardening expert Monty Don and his wife, Sarah, bought a ruined house in Herefordshire in 1991, they were at a low ebb after the failure of their jewellery business. With great determination and energy, they threw themselves into restoring the house and creating a magnificent garden. In the first of our exclusive extracts from Monty's inspiring new book, The Ivington Diaries, which is based on the journals he has kept for the past 18 years, he looks back at those early days and how the garden helped him get back on his feet again. Monty Don's gardening diaries: Me and my wife built our life around our home and garden | Mail Online:

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My country memories: Monty Don

My country memories: Monty Don

Smashing pumpkins: Monty Don.

Smashing pumpkins: Monty Don passes on his hard-learned lessons for growing the plumpest pumpkin | Mail Online: "Let's clear up the difference between a pumpkin and a squash. Most of what we group under the cucurbit family, which includes, cucumbers, marrows, courgettes, squashes, gourds and pumpkins, are squashes."

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Жизнь по Monty Don - у.

Посадила рассаду капусты - kale, шпинат, осеннюю качанную капустку.
* Monty Don.

Monty Don about Peonies.

Peonies can be classified by both plant growth habit and flower type. Plant growth types are Herbaceous (Bush), Tree, and Intersectional (Itoh).
Intersectional (Itoh) peonies are hybrid crosses between tree and herbaceous types. They have the large flowers of a tree peony, but die back to the ground each year like herbaceous peonies.
In Japan Paeonia suffruticosa is called the "King of Flowers" and Paeonia lactiflora is called the "Prime Minister of Flowers."
Paeonia lactiflora- herbaceous perennial flowering plant- Chinese Peony - "most beautiful" - common garden peony - Propagation Methods: By dividing the rootball-The buds should be no more than two inches below the surface.

Paeonia lactiflora ‘Sarah Bernhardt’

Paeonia suffruticosa - the tree peony - tree peonies are deciduous, woody plants that don't die back to the ground each winter.
Every garden centre sells peonies, but specialist nurseries have a much wider range at very competitive prices. Kelways at Langport, Somerset (tel: 01458 250521; www.kelways. co.uk) has a huge range, and Claire Austin Hardy Plants at Shawbury, Shropshire (tel: 01939 251173; www.claireaustin-hardyplants. co.uk) is very good, too.

http://www.kelways.co.uk/categories/peonies/1/
http://www.peonysenvy.com/peonycare.html#transplant

Пионы.

Есть два типа пионов - древовидный и травянистый.
Оба типа легко выращивать и они оба очень долго живут.
Но есть принципиальная разница в том, как они будут посажены. Древовидные пионы должны быть посажены глубоко для полноценного развития корневой системы у черенока, а травянистые пионы любят быть посажеными близко к поверхности. Следуйте советам Монти Дона и вы не ошибетесь.)))