- 8 months ago
The Beechgrove Garden 2025 episode 7
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00Hello and welcome to Beach Grove Gard. On the programme, fruit trees if you're
00:19short of space and we get in and about the brassicas. Coming up, George has the
00:26pick of fruit trees in containers. I'm planting now in the brassica cage. Carol visits a
00:33modern medieval garden. And how to get more plants for your money.
00:42Well Callum, temperatures are rising, soil's warmer, time to get the sweet peas out because
00:47they've hardened off. They have and they're looking quite good George. They're not bad at all are they?
00:50So Kirsty's built this archway out of Willow and I tell you what it's looking quite nice. It is.
00:55But the whole scene with this is, is highly scented varieties. So we've got one here,
00:59the variety is Balmoral. It's a nice burgundy one and that's going to be highly scented.
01:03Right. So when you walk through this, you'll be overpowered by the scent. I'll tell you.
01:07Yeah. Anyway, you get on with the planting. I'm going to wait and do something else.
01:16I've come over to the small space garden. Now this is one which I created about a month ago,
01:23just by putting down a series of slabs on this bed. And it's to represent the little space that you
01:29have at the back door, the kitchen door, somewhere like that, where you could grow a little number
01:33of vegetables. And that's the idea here to get some productive crops, something to, you know,
01:39excite the plate of food that you have in the house. We've had some results. Things are growing.
01:45But look at this space. Look, nothing. Absolutely nothing. I sowed that quite thickly with a little
01:52broad bean, a dwarf broad bean called Oscar. Well, Oscar obviously doesn't like company. There's only
01:57one. And I wonder what's happened. I think that it's my furry little rodent friends have been in here
02:04and nipped, you know, they just nip out all the, all the seeds just as they're starting to germinate.
02:09They can smell them. So that's what's happened. Anyway, I've got one or two seeds left and I'll
02:13sow them in that space in a minute or two. Now, what we did was we sowed seed along the edges.
02:20And the idea was that that slab and the pieces of wood are going to absorb heat. And they will cause
02:26this to germinate faster, the seeds sown down the side. So that's what's happened. These are
02:31radish. And if I leave them thick like this, well, we'll just get small radishes. So what I'm going
02:37to do is I'm going to thin these out and just take them to about two fingers apart so that we get a
02:43decent sort of radish from them. Don't throw these out. Put, you know, just nip the tops off like that.
02:51And these are useful. You can put these in a salad. Ideal. Nice and, nice and, oh, nice and sharp and minty.
02:58Now, the peas have germinated. Mice didn't like them. Turnips have germinated and the lettuce have
03:04germinated. And with the lettuce, I think I might leave those. I won't thin these out yet because I'll
03:11wait until they're about this height and then I can cut out the ones that I want to put into a salad
03:16and leave the other ones to become fully mature. Have a look here. See this lot here? Well, you might not
03:24be able to see it because there are so many weeds in here. And there's a problem. When we have a weedy
03:30soil, the weeds all germinate and you can't work out what ones are the ones you sowed. I sowed Swiss chard here.
03:39That's the Swiss chard. See that there? That's the Swiss chard. Now, a good tip for this is that when you're
03:46sowing a row of seeds like this in a soil which might be weedy, take a little pinch of seed and put
03:52it at the end of the row so that when that germinates you know what you're looking for in the row of
03:58seedlings that are going to come up. Anyway, all I'm going to do here is just to start taking out the
04:03weeds so that I expose the Swiss chard and you can see exactly what it is that it looks like. There you go.
04:11Look at that. So there you are. That's what we're doing. And as these mature I might thin them out
04:18a bit more and wait you know until we've got some decent plants and that's a brilliant plant to grow
04:25right through over winter and at this time of year when it's gone through the winter that will still
04:31be harvesting. Now, I've got another wee job to do. I'm going away to be fruity.
04:41I want to share something with you. I've got this dream of sitting on my balcony or patio,
04:51wonderful autumn sunshine, sitting, lasing in a deck chair, putting my hand out, grabbing a luscious
04:57peach and sinking my teeth into this gorgeous flesh. It's a dream, isn't it? But you know,
05:04you can grow peaches or apples or apricots as I've got here in a very small space. These are all on
05:12dwarfing rootstock. They've been put into pots so we can move them around and so we can have a small
05:18tree which will still bear good fruit and we can move it to wherever we want. These were bought as
05:25bare root specimens back in the early winter. They've been put into their pots and planted.
05:31And what happens with trees at this particular stage, when you buy them bare root, there's a lot
05:36of water contained within the stem and that water is used up by the plant when the temperatures get
05:44warm to produce its leaves and things of that sort. And then the roots start to grow. So in order to
05:50encourage the roots, what we're going to do is we're going to add some bone meal to the surface of the
05:57soil like that and just really scuff it in. So that's all we need to do is just to scuff it into
06:04the surface and that way it feeds the roots and that's what we want. We want good root supply.
06:10Because if they've not got good roots, what happens is that the foliage in the tree dies back until it
06:16reaches a level that the roots can support. And that's what's happened with that one. Look at that one.
06:21See, this has died back all the way down to there. So what we've got to do with this one,
06:28the secateurs come out, and what we do with this one is we're going to cut it to where it's just
06:33sprouting. So that's going to be cut back to there. So there we go. Once you've done it,
06:38you kind of put it back on. So that's to there. There's little bits dead on the points of these,
06:43so I'm just going to take them off as well, back to a living shoot. And you might think,
06:48well, oh God, he's done a George again. He's brutalised it. But that will grow away. No bother
06:54at all. As long as we keep the pots well watered and well fed throughout the summer. Don't let them
07:00dry out. Remember what happens with a pot when it dries out? The soil comes away from the side,
07:05you water it. It goes down the side, out the hole at the bottom. You think you've done a good job.
07:09You haven't. Water it again. With the apple, what I'm going to do is I'm going to grow this as
07:17a cordon. Okay? So that's an upright plant, which is quite narrow. And all that I'm going to do with
07:22this one is I'm going to shorten these shoots, nip that back to there, that one back to there,
07:29and this one up to about there. Okay? So that's that one done. Now, if you look at what's happened
07:35here, when I cut these back, I'm hoping that it will produce little flowering spurs like that one
07:41down there. See how that one's produced the flower buds on the end of it? And I might get a scraggy little
07:47apple from that this year, but we'll have to wait for the luscious fruit. So that's that one. And then
07:52over here, we've got an apricot. Now, the apricot has done well. I mean, there's a lot of good growth on
07:59that. So all I need to do is to take off that dead bit there. Take off this bit, because that's a
08:06crossing branch and we don't want that. Because what you're doing at this stage is you're trying
08:10to establish a good structure in the plant. You're not worried about a crop in the first one or two
08:16years. You want to get a good plant going. So these will be taken down a bit so that the plant can support
08:23the growth that it's got. There we are. Just like that. There we have it. So it might appear a little
08:32bit brutal, all this pruning, but we want to establish a good structure within the plant so that within,
08:38what, two, two and a half years time, three years time, I can fulfill my dream and eat some luscious fruit.
08:46Meanwhile, Carol is off to visit another wonderful Scottish garden. And this time,
08:52it's in Arbroath.
08:59There has been a garden at Hospital Field for over 800 years. As the name suggests,
09:04the site was written near a hospital founded by Benedictine monks to care for pilgrims on the
09:10way to the new abbey in Arbroath in the 13th century. Well, I'm on a different sort of pilgrimage
09:17today. Hospital Field has a fascinating double walled garden and that creates a microclimate for
09:23all types of plants to grow. They benefit from the warmth of the walls and also from the milder coastal
09:30climate. Lucy Byatt is director of Hospital Field. So we invited Nigel Dunnett to redesign the garden here
09:43at Hospital Field, the walled garden, because he's such an extraordinarily powerful plantsman.
09:50And we asked him, we gave him a brief to tell through his planting, through the design, 800 years of garden history.
09:57So we're here in the orchard garden. How many varieties of apples have you got planted here?
10:01So we have 19 varieties of apple tree. Old varieties, Scottish, what we call Scottish varieties,
10:10some that make that connection to the French Benedictine monks who brought a lot of fruit trees
10:15over with them. So eventually, although the trees went in very young, this will be an orchard with mature,
10:23lovely, special apple trees. Fantastic. And I tell you what catches my eye at the moment is some of the
10:29beautiful red cowslips. They're a lovely surprise, aren't they? And the one way that we encourage
10:36those kind of alpines is to strim right back at the end of the season, November time, really,
10:42really hard back so that they can spread, they've got as much light as we can possibly offer them,
10:48so that they could really take advantage of that period in the winter when they need to germinate.
10:53Well, this is a lovely place to start the tour, but I'm really excited. Let's go and see some more.
11:00For over 100 years, Hospital Field has been a hub for artists, supporting research and development of
11:06their work. So here we're in part of the garden that we call the Physic Garden, where medicinal plants
11:14are planted, useful plants, plants that medieval medicine would have been made from, that have a
11:20history when we're thinking about the site. Are you using any of the plants here? In some cases,
11:26we have very special horticultural projects that we work in collaboration with an artist, for example.
11:31We have Rebecca Chesley here at the moment, who's doing a project around the small blue butterfly,
11:36which means creating a whole planted area of kidney vetch, creating a seed bank so that we can all
11:43share in the growing of this one rather elusive plant. Now, I do believe that you've also got a
11:48wee hidden gem. Can we go and have a look at that? Yes, let's go and do that.
12:01Wow, Lucy. This is fantastic. A little fernary. Yes, so this is straight back into the 19th century again,
12:09built around the time of the great fern craze of the early 1870s,
12:15where Victorian women in particular would have collected ferns and would have made little
12:20collections. But Alan Fraser built this grand grotto-like building with these classical arches
12:29and so on. So imagine that he'd found a ruined grotto in his garden. I mean, that's the perfect
12:33word, isn't it? These fernaries are like grottos, because as we look down, it's almost like a bit of
12:38a cave, isn't it? Because, well, ferns, although they need a bit of light, it is important as well
12:44that a lot of these ferns need the shade. Lower floor here is absolutely perfect. You can tell when
12:49you go down that there's an absolute drop in temperature and a great considerable moisture
12:55retention down in the lower part of the fernary, and that's why these ferns, they're having such a
13:00lovely time throwing up all this new growth this time of year. Watering, I'm sure, is really important.
13:06So we water considerably. Now we're getting to the warmer months. It'll be two or three times a week,
13:14and the botanics have said to us, imagine you're watering two or three meters into the ground.
13:19That's a really good tip, because so often when I see people water, they go with the watering can
13:23and it's like this. No, you've got to stay there for a while. To the roots. Absolutely.
13:29I have to say I've had a fantastic day. I feel refreshed, rejuvenated, as if I've been treated by
13:34the monks. It is a wonderful place to come to. Thank you so much. Well, thank you very much for coming.
13:43Time now for this week's Handy Hints. And you may remember last year that we lifted a rhubarb from
13:48another part of the garden because it wasn't doing quite well. And we said last year it's really
13:52important if you move your rhubarb plants or plant a new rhubarb plant, that year you don't harvest it at
13:58all. You allow the crown and the plant to really build up. And in the following season, just look
14:03at all these beautiful rhubarb stocks we could harvest. I think it's now time for some rhubarb pie.
14:14You know, one of the things I like when I visit a garden is discovering new plants. And this is a new
14:19grass to me. It's Sesleria nitida or shining moor grass. I've never grown it, but I think it's a
14:27fabulous plant. Lovely bluey green foliage and look at these beautiful spikelets. You know, I think this
14:34is a plant that we should maybe take to Beechgrove. It would look lovely in the seaside garden.
14:40These are the dahlia tubers that Brian potted up recently. And as you can see, we've got a number of
14:47shoots growing from just where the stem joins the tubers. That's where all the buds were and they've
14:53now sprouted. This is the variety Honka. Interesting sort of name. And what we're going to do with these,
14:59we're going to take some softwood cuttings because they're at the right size now. You just want them
15:03round about 50, 60, 70 millimetres in length. And all you're going to do, take a knife and just slide
15:10it down the side so that you get the cutting from as low down as you possibly can. There you are.
15:17Now see, there we've got a cutting which has a pair of leaves that are a pair of old leaves at the
15:22bottom. I'm going to take these off. Trim that across so it's nice and even. And then that's going
15:30to be inserted round the edge of a pot. As per normal, we'll put them round the edge of the pot.
15:36These will be watered and you could put this on the windowsill, cover it over with a plastic bag.
15:42Again, same idea where you're trying to conserve the moisture round the plant. So that's one way
15:47of doing it. But here's another way. There are two fruit containers. These had grapes in them,
15:53which we got from the supermarket. Fill it with compost. That is a 50-50 peat-free compost and
15:59perlite. Insert the cuttings into that, water it, flip the lid over. Bob's your uncle. They'll root in about
16:0610 days and you'll have new plants.
16:14As you can see, I'm in a cage because what I'm about to plant is Brassicus and they're really
16:19going to benefit from being undercover. So the gardening team here have done a great job in
16:23erecting this structure. And it's really important that you do cover your Brassicus because if you
16:28leave them open, they're going to be open to pigeons and cabbage white butterfly. And believe
16:34you me, they could do quite a bit of damage. So we've got a whole range of Brassicus here. We've got
16:39some cabbages, kale, cauliflowers, brussel sprouts and broccoli here. And Brassicus really benefit from a
16:48high nitrogen soil. So I've got some chicken manure here that I've just scattered over the surface. Now all
16:54the plants here have been started from seed in the greenhouse. So it's really important a week before
16:59we've decided to plant these out, we start hardening them off. And what the hardening off process is,
17:05is bringing the plants out of the greenhouse for a few hours every day to get them used to being
17:10outside. Now the variety of broccoli that I'm going to plant out here is Green Magic. And what's good
17:15about this variety is, is an early maturing variety. So when we go for the first harvest, if we cut in the
17:22correct position, we will get a second crop of smaller heads. It's also white rust resistant and
17:29it's got the RHS award of garden merit. So it's a good reliable one to grow. So we're going to get
17:36them planted out now. So we'll just tease the bottom of the module just to loosen them up. And I'm not going
17:44to grab this by the stem because I'm not wanting to bruise it. We're wanting to work with the foliage
17:49because if I tear a bit of the foliage, it's okay. We'll then dig our hole. And you'll see some of the
17:56chicken manure has now fallen into the bottom of the hole. I want to tease the roots just to loosen
18:01them up a bit. And then we'll just put that in there. And although the soil's already firm,
18:08I want to press that in. And you'll see I didn't plant it any deeper than it was in the module. And then
18:14we'll just water these in. And it's important to keep your brassicus moist, but not waterlogged.
18:21But a crop that I'm really looking forward to trying this year, because it's a complete new one
18:25for me this year, is Kaelets. And what that is, is a flowering sprout. So it's a cross between a
18:31Brussels sprout and a kale. We'll get harvest for that round about October time. They're going to grow in the
18:38same fashion as a Brussels sprout would. But up the stalk, instead of getting sprouts, we're going
18:44to get mini kales. And they're supposed to be sweeter. So come October, I'm fair looking forward
18:50to giving that a try. While I go and get the rest of these brassicas in, you're off to Dundee. And as
18:56they say, Dundee's known for jute jam journalism and the V&A Dundee. But it's also got a fantastic botanic garden.
19:08Dundee Botanic Garden was established in 1971. It covers just over nine hectares and is home to
19:20thousands of species from around the world. We are so lucky in terms of the siting of this botanic
19:27garden. It lies in the west end of the city of Dundee. It's very much an urban garden. And below us
19:33there's an airport on the main road. But also it connects us to the Tay. And the Tay provides a
19:39microclimate. It's a heat sink. And it allows us to not be too cold in the winter. So we can grow all
19:46sorts of plants. The botanic garden has a plants and people trail. And that's really important to allow
19:53us to not only engage with the public and overcome a sort of a bias that we don't know where our food
20:00comes from. If you think about your daily diets and how rice is so important to feed people around
20:06the world, it might be something we have occasionally in a western diet. But if then you think about maize
20:13in terms of where maize is everywhere, from some of the extruded crisp that we eat as processed food,
20:19or it might be something that you enjoy as popcorn.
20:26We have maize, which is corn, sweet corn in this case. We are going to grow this one together with
20:33the three sister system, which is the maize is going to grow tall. And then the squashes are going to
20:41crawl around. And then we have beans that they are going just to climb around them.
20:47And this is a very old system that the maize were using for many, many years. And we are using that
20:55in Dundee. Another feature of the plants and people collection is the cultivation of rice,
21:00a staple for millions around the world. The area that we chosen to grow the rice,
21:08it's a very special area. It's beside of the pond. And all the stones, they are just piled,
21:16one on top of the other one. And that let the water come in and out. What that means is,
21:22the water that is inside of the pond, it gets straight into the area. So it's constantly wet and
21:31boggy. What I'm going to do is take the plants from here. Everything is super wet. And so this is
21:40something that happens often, that once you get your plant, it gets really wet and soggy.
21:47And then carefully, we just put that down. And because it's so wet, they will find the space.
21:56All that we're going to do is just plant them closer without compressing them, without pushing
22:02them down. They will find their own space. One of the reasons that we are going to plant rice as a
22:10part of the experiment is because rice is one of the three main crops in the world. All what we do
22:17is check in daily. The humidity here is really, really high. And when it's sunny, it gets very warm.
22:25So if we poke our finger and we see that it's dry, we just water. And that's all what we do.
22:32And now we just need to let them grow.
22:41Now we are close to a coffee tree, which is coffee arabica. Long time ago, when the people
22:48they were trading coffee, they used slaves. And we have a collection of trees or shrubs that they've
22:55been part of that, where all the history is related to people moving from one empire to the other one,
23:02using slaves to bring them or to produce them or to work or harvest them. What I'm going to show now
23:10is how we harvest tree in case that we want to make coffee. You need to choose the red bean.
23:21That's what you pick. And when it's fully red, that's what's going to be the coffee beans. And then
23:30squish them between your fingers. And that's, there is a lot of water coming from here. And we have two
23:37coffee beans and the seeds, they have a lot of flesh around. They just put them in a mud, lying under
23:47the sun for many, many days until it's dry. And then they can just pack them and send them to the coffee
23:54roasters. Dundee Botanic Garden is a centre for research and education. From exotic plants to the
24:02staples that feed the planet, it's also part of an international network. Around the world, there
24:09are over 3,600 botanic gardens actively involved in exchanging plant material to make sure that we
24:16conserve those plants that are at risk, but also we can share knowledge about them. The more knowledge
24:23we have, the more likely it is we look after them. And that's how we value these things.
24:37There's nothing that makes us happier at Beechgrove than being able to produce plants for free.
24:43And I took some cuttings of this prostate hebe, a little Veronica, a little white one which grows
24:51really flat to the ground. And what we're going to do is to propagate some new plants from it.
24:55These are the shoots that I picked off and they've got side shoots on them. And if I just
24:59pull that to detach it from the main stem and then just remove the bottom leaves, then we end up with
25:07a cutting. And that way, you know, that's all we need, just enough to be able to support the cutting
25:14upright. It's a heel cutting. There's the little heel there, you can see that. And if I just trim off
25:20the excess of that, just like that, and then we're going to insert them in a pot. Now I've got two
25:28different pots here. This is a plastic pot on this side and it's a clay pot on this side. And always
25:35we're told that you should insert the cuttings down the edge of the pot because that way they root
25:41faster and they root better. So we'll have a little bit of an observation here. We'll put some round the
25:47edge of this clay pot and we'll put some round the edge of the plastic pot. And that way we'll be able
25:55to tell which one roots quicker or indeed if they both root at the same time. What you're looking for
26:04is a cutting which is round about 50 to maybe 60 millimetres in length, something like that, and
26:12just inserting them round the pot. So I've done that in that one. I'll just put one in here so you can
26:17see what it is going to be like. So exactly the same sort of treatment down the side of the pot. Now,
26:23these cuttings have been detached from the parent plant. They are now separated from their water supply.
26:30So it's a race between life and death. And in order to be able to get them to stay turgid,
26:39that is full of water, we're going to have to cover them with a plastic bag. So we'll water these
26:44in the pot as they are just now, and then we'll put a plastic bag over the top of them. And that acts as
26:51a little greenhouse. Of course it does. And it heats up inside. But the other thing is, it stops the wind
26:57getting to them. Now you think of the nappies or your washing when you put it out on the washing line.
27:03On a dull, damp day, it never dries. Because the water pressure on the nappy or the washing is the
27:11same as the water pressure outside. So that's what's happening here. If I leave this exposed,
27:16it dries out. If I put a plastic bag over it, the water pressure in the plastic, inside the plastic bag,
27:23and that inside the cutting, are equalised. So the cutting doesn't lose water. And it sits there
27:29and waits until it can root. And then, what is it? Bob's your uncle. I can separate these out,
27:34pot them up, and we've got plants for free.
27:40George, isn't that upright prunus while the bloom's looking beautiful?
27:43Fantastic. That's the variety Amanagawa, which in Japanese means Milky Way.
27:47Ah, and they've got that right.
27:48I love that. See the purple of the water lily? And then you've got purple in this
27:53flag iris here. That's brilliant, isn't it?
27:55Well, I want to come back onto dry land and pick out the azaleas. They're really coming in
27:59to their own, but that one at the front's called Hinameo.
28:01I mean, that is electric. It really just hits you in the eye, doesn't it?
28:04Yeah.
28:05Yeah. Anyway, that's about it for this week, isn't it?
28:08Yep. Next week, Brian and Roos here. And Roos going to be in our vertical garden,
28:11looking at a cheap way of growing upwards.
28:13Right. Brian, meanwhile, has finished the landscaping of his
28:17rain garden, and he's going to be planting that up as well.
28:20What a typical year to decide to do a rain garden.
28:22Anyway, you can catch us any time on the BBC iPlayer.
28:26But from the pair of us, bye!
28:47all the other two things are going to be in the beginning of the year.
28:49It really takes a little bit of a little bit of a time in the beginning of the year.
28:54Take care of your new day!
28:56Have fun!
28:58It was so happy that we were able to go away!
29:00Hahaha!
29:01If you're gonna be healthy!
29:02That's pretty good, I know.
29:04If you're going to be healthy.
29:04It was a little bit of a day,
29:05I'm gonna be happy with you.
29:07You should be happy with the guys.
29:08I think here's a little bit of a thing.
29:10So happy to keep you!
29:11I never know.
29:11I've done my feeling so happy.
29:13You should be happy with you.
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