What Does Gardening Mean To You?

If you're anything like me, being out in my garden and looking after it, comes first on my list of priorities, especially in the spring, summer and autumn for that matter.

Next year from the 16th to 22nd of April, The Royal Horticultural Society invite us to be part of National Gardening Week.

The RHS want to encourage people in Britain to take part in this inaugural year, with ideas like a 'border-boosting service', where people can send in photographs of their lack-lustre borders, with details of its conditions and they will send you six gardening ideas to liven up your plot.

There will also be daily Facebook question-time sessions and help with compost and all manner of garden related help and advice.

The RHS want nurseries and gardening clubs to get involved and to share their knowledge by organising special events, as well as lots of events going on at the RHS gardens around the country.

I love gardening with its life enhancing properties.

Being outside in the fresh air, looking at the beauty of which I have helped to create, with the assistance of mother nature of course, gives me so much pleasure, in fact I am planning my wedding around the flowers. Do I go for spring so I can have peonies and lilac, or do I go for late summer so I can have dahlias.

I really hope that the National Gardening Week, will encourage people to get out and enjoy their outside space, whatever its size.

It's a good job I'm not relying on the produce I have grown this year to feed me exclusively, otherwise I will be going pretty hungry.

I have just had to dig up a load of tomatoes which were blight ridden. No idea how I have managed to grow cherry tomatoes, when I didn't knowingly plant any seeds of that variety. Must have been some rogue ones in the packet.

I read a good tip on twitter this week from Thompson & Morgan and that was to cut off the foliage from maincrop potatoes, to stop them getting attacked by blight and ruining the tubers.

I was straight outside with my secateurs after work, the day I read that top tip.

My squashes are looking OK, although I hoped for rather more fruits than I have got at the moment.

I was a bit late with my climbing purple beans but they are doing OK too but the crop which I cannot wait to dig up are my sweet potatoes.

I have been told that the roots can be quite away from the foliage, which I find most intriguing. Sweet potatoes roasted in olive oil, hmm delicious.

Today I was supposed to be photographing Carol Kleins garden for the National Garden Scheme. Unfortunately, she has had to cancel her open garden this year, as you may have read in the press.

I am not too disappointed though and that's not because I wasn't looking forward to meeting her or to see her garden, I was really looking forward to doing both, as she is a gardener I greatly admire but I think being a gardener makes you pragmatic about life.

You realise that thing's don't always go to plan, plants don't always grow how you want them to, crops don't always perform, despite your best efforts, you just have to go with the flow and if all else fails, there is always next year.

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