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Gardening jobs for January

January 1, 2010
by F&F
No Responses.
If you’re writing a list of resolutions today, the F&F list of monthly chores for the garden would be a good place to start. They’ll last far longer than that guilt-inducing gym membership or abstaining from chocolate. And they’re much more fun,
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Planting out garlic

October 16, 2009
by F&F
No Responses.
So, you’ve bought your garlic bulbs. Now what? Now is the perfect time to start planting garlic, as this plant needs a good cold spell to bulb out properly.
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Poo, or how to make good compost

September 28, 2009
by F&F
No Responses.
What do you do when you have a week off? Today was my first day off in a while, and I spent it shovelling poo. After Toby built our compost heap from crates last year, we haven’t had to buy in any soil for the garden. But a hot-pile compost heap requ
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A winter’s kale

July 23, 2009
by F&F
No Responses.
One of our Kale ‘Nero di toscana’ plants is enormous. So enormous, in fact, that it is growing across the tiny path running through our vegetable patch, and I have had to harvest a number of the strap-like, green-black leaves. This is obviously a ter
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The great scape

June 30, 2009
by F&F
No Responses.
See this? This strange, curly-wurly little thing coming out of my garlic plants is a scape. And scapes, although they may sound a little like an unfortunate physical condition, are good news for your garlic. As you can see, the scape, or flowerbud, i
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Neo-natal tomato care

June 22, 2009
by F&F
No Responses.
My tomatoes are starting to have babies. Little green fruits are appearing on the stems as the plant continues to put out more trusses, and shimmy further and further up its cane. In a previous entry about tomatoes, I mentioned that as soon as the fi
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Pinching out tomato sideshoots

June 9, 2009
by F&F
1 Comment
Now that all danger of frost has passed, it is time to plant out your tomatoes and other tender veg. I planted mine out last week, and they are now happily flowering, which means it is time to start feeding with a fertiliser rich in potash. This year
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Flowers and showers

May 29, 2009
by F&F
No Responses.
We’ve had rather generous weather lately: warm, sunny days, and showers overnight. And while this is great news for most of your garden, there are a few plants which need extra attention at the moment.
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Need to weed

May 28, 2009
by F&F
No Responses.
I can’t stay in denial any longer. For too long I have pretended to be like everyone else. But I’m not. I love weeding. I love finding a long border full of hairy bittercress and bindweed, and working my way slowly along it. I know, I’m sorry.
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The end of the tulips

May 10, 2009
by F&F
No Responses.
Sad to say, most tulips are coming to an end. They’re flopping over like a group of schoolgirls on a night out, and beginning to lose their looks. Often the hangover is so great, the flowers refuse to emerge the following year, and the bulbs lie in a
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