[muntjac]

look out for  "grow your own vegetables"  on bbc tv in the new year .one of my favourite lady gardeners from gardeners world wil be hosting it

http://www.rhs.org.uk/news/growyourownveg.asp

[Zak the Rabbit]

shes just mentioned it on Gardners World, beeb 2, sounds good

[Ice]

Who, pray tell?

[muntjac]

carole klien  

[Ali]

HAs anyone been watching MOnty Don's Growing Out of Trouble? What did you think....?

[muntjac]

dam tough job . but i am glad i watched it .i would do something with younguns like that but not with drug problems,, i consider drug addicts as self inflicted and id rather work with kids to kep them outof trouble

[Puff]

I think Monty Don picked the most difficult of the disaffected groups in our society today to work with.  Hats off to him for having a go.  Years ago I worked with similarly disadvantaged youngsters and I know how tough it can be.  Ideals are fine whilst they are on the course, but what happens to them after is the biggie that the series didn't deal with.  Maybe there will be a follow-up?

..and YAY for Carol Klien, she's a good down to earth sort of presenter.

[John]

My hat's off to Monty as well - a side to the man I'm glad to have seen.

Strangely Carole Klien's voice really grates on me - but what the heck, if it's about veggies

[milkman]

I think the real hero of Monty's growing out of trouble is steadfast Rocky - he's a top bloke.

[bayleaf]

I thought the Monty Don programmes were really interesting. It shows that people need a connection with the land and with the seasons. I think I read somewhere that they got disaffected youngsters to grow veg in inner cities in America as a way of helping them to be more positive about being part of a community. So how did we all get into growing veg then? I just like being outdoors and working on the land and I can't afford a smallholding so growing veg in the garden/on the allotment is the nearest I can get to that.

[shaun]

i had a message from god and i just had to do it ,it would have been rude not too


not sure realy i just enjoy growing as much as i enjoy cooking and eating it so its a combination of a lot of things realy,theres the organic bit the exersise bit (not that i need it) the variety of stuff you can grow and i suppose the cost aswell maybe.my dad done it for as long as i can remember so he must have had a influence,so many reasons so many many many
ohh another i like playing with rotavators  

[Puff]

One of my uncles was gardener for a big, big house and he had turned his own garden into a veg plot.  When I was a nipper, on visits to see him, I'd be fascinated by his way of tending plants.  When I was in my 20s, I had the luck to have a garden and made myself a tiny plot - grew salad stuff, beans, peas and some onions.  Then came a huge gap, where I just didn't have anywhere to grow stuff.  Sixteen years ago we moved into this house and for a few years I filled our postage stamp sized garden with containers full of beans, peppers, toms and one year even some spuds.  Work kept taking me away, so the garden became a place of low maintenance, glamour foliage.  Now we finally have that plot, it's like starting over again.

Uncle, now 9 years departed, left me 6 volumes of Willam Watson's  "The Gardener's Assistant" (circa:1925) - fascinating reading.  I never knew there were so many uses for arsenic  

[John]

Those old magazines are fascinating - I bought some 1955 smallholder magazines off ebay and a load of 1970's  mags as well.

Some things are so much cheaper nowadays - like greenhouses but the cost of property has risen way above the rate of inflation.

[Annie]

Thanks forthe info Muntjac,I did watch Gardeners World but barlley heard a word of it as the inlaws are here!So I will not hear any of the little telly I watch at Christmas,murder may be commited when Dr Who is on!
  I garden because I still get excited when the first seeds of the season show themselves poking through the soil,which is also why I`m rubbish at thinning seeds,hard pruning and throwing out plants that are on their last legs!

[GrannieAnnie]

Oh Annie, you are as bad as me.  I hate thinning out too, that's why I ended up with over 200 tomato plants and nearly 60 chilli plants, but I gave some away and ended up with only 117 tomato plants and 49 chillies!!!! lol