Welcome to the 91Èȱ¬ Gardening Blog
| 10:00 UK time, Friday, 1 October 2010
Hello lovely gardening enthusiasts and experts. Welcome to the new Gardening Blog.
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We think it's the perfect time of year to be starting a gardening blog. There's often less on the telly and the radio during the colder months and this blog will be going to great lengths to satisfy your appetite for horticultural inspiration, problem-solving and sheer delight in plants and gardens.
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I'm your host and will be responding to your comments and helping you find solutions to your horticultural headaches with the help of our regular team of writers and our many guests.
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Our regular writers will be Alys Fowler, writer and presenter of 91Èȱ¬ Gardeners' World, organic gardener Bob Flowerdew, who's a regular panellist on 91Èȱ¬ Radio 4's Gardeners' Question Time and Jim McColl presenter of 91Èȱ¬ Scotland's .
Our staff writer, Sally Nex, will be keeping an eye out for interesting news and views from the horticultural world with a weekly round up plus other titbits.
The Gardening Message Board has been going strong for many years and there is a fantastic wealth of knowledge amongst the community members. If you have a gardening question, do post it on the Garden Clinic topic where the community will offer advice and, from now on, we'll be scouting that topic for recurring themes and intriguing problems and putting them to our guests and regular writers.
If you have any ideas for this blog please do leave your comments at the bottom of this post.
Jennifer Redmond is the host of the 91Èȱ¬ Gardening Blog.
Comment number 1.
At 1st Oct 2010, hereisabee wrote:By hook or by crook I shall be first in your book, or should it be by wellie or clog I will be first in your blog? I bet someone has beaten me anyway!
Wisteria confusion is rife, the difference between the species and when to prune. Many years ago an article in the RHS magazine fielded September pruning back to two buds for wisteria, which is fine if you have the time in this month. When traditionally books recommended back to three buds in Jan/Feb and back to 18ins in July/August to keep them tidy. Over the years this has filtered down through the media so that gardening newspaper columns will recommend September pruning. However if another column recommends winter pruning these poor plants will be over pruned and loose all their flowering wood? Winter pruning is great for the garden economy as it is a time when we have less to do and is fine for the Chinese Wisteria. It is the Japanese Wisteria which is less appreciating and prefers strong summer pruning and then just a tidy round in the winter which is also a good time to check the plant ties and supports with all the leaves fallen?
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Comment number 2.
At 2nd Oct 2010, Lowena wrote:Hi Jennifer
I hope that these blogs will not just concentrate on growing fruit and vegetables.We need advice and updates relevant to us flower growers too.My speciality is herbaceous perennials and exotics ( I live in West Cornwall)and hope that gardeners such as myself won't be sidelined.
Glad to see the new innovations anyway :)
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Comment number 3.
At 3rd Oct 2010, Stopwatch Gardener wrote:Hi Jennifer,
It's great to see this and am sure it will be a good resource for folks. Will your expert authors also reply to comments?
I have to say I felt a bit upset a couple episodes ago on Gardener's Question Time when one of the panelists gave a rather broad dismissal of gardening blogs as giving bad advice. I think that was probably a misguided statement, as most garden blogs I read hardly offer advice, but rather give insights about the author's own experiences with what works and what doesn't in their gardens. And the comments stream that follows blog posts gives readers a chance to correct if anything said was wrong, making the comments hugely useful. What do you think? Did you hear the broadcast comments I'm referring to?
As the 91Èȱ¬ consolidates its efforts in the gardening blog space, I'd find it comforting to hear a more positive statement about the general state of other gardening blogs, as I think the broadcast comments were a bit out of touch.
Sheila Averbuch - Stopwatch Gardener
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Comment number 4.
At 4th Oct 2010, Jen wrote:Hi Lowena
The blog definitely won't be concentrating only on fruit and veg. The aim is to have something for every one so if you have any specific ideas that you'd like to be tackled on the blog, add them here to the comments.
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Comment number 5.
At 4th Oct 2010, Jen wrote:Hi Stopwatch Gardener
The writers will reply to comments, either directly themselves or I will post on their behalf (having been dictated or emailed to me).
I did hear the episode of GQT - it was Pippa Greenwood's personal opinion. Hopefully the creation of this blog will in itself be a positive statment. But also, we are already linking to some 'amatuer' gardening blogs and will continue to do so. We will also be inviting garden bloggers to contribute and won't limit posts to professional garden writers.
If there are any blogs you would like to bring to our attention please do post links here (they may be held in a moderation queue to make sure they don't break any house rules)
Jen
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Comment number 6.
At 8th Oct 2010, phillip moore wrote:This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.
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Comment number 7.
At 10th Dec 2010, U14717142 wrote:All this user's posts have been removed.Why?
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Comment number 8.
At 19th Dec 2010, Anne wrote:I wonder if you'd consider reading the award winning garden site so that it might make your 'currently reading' list?
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Comment number 9.
At 29th Jan 2011, U14767691 wrote:This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.
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Comment number 10.
At 15th Mar 2011, thechilligrowking wrote:Hi,
Great blog. I run a site dedicated to growing chilli peppers here in the UK and wondered if your readers might be interested in my writing a guest post about how to grow chillies?
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