Weeding the Web

Presents for Gardeners: decorative bird scarers

In summer, vegetable gardens around the country are festooned with CDs. There's no doubt that they catch the light (this summer, a lunch guest stoically put up with being blinded every 30 seconds, as a distant CD twisted in the breeze and sent blazes of light into the dining-room - if only he'd mentioned it earlier...). But they ain't pretty.

So here's another idea for a present. Gardeners who find hanging tat in the garden offensive might be glad to receive a more attractive bird scarer, and something that last year was awarded Gift of the Year in the Outdoor Living Category. Gift of the Year is a competition run by the Giftware Association, which looks for, according to their website, innovative designs of good quality, well presented.

Certainly the Birds Away kit caught my eye, and I wanted to know more. Unfortunately Gifts for the Girls, who include it in their catalogue, never answered my email asking what the little forks and trowels are made of, but one assumes it is something shiny.

If you prefer something with a whiff of magic, however, I think these stainless steel fairies from Black Forge Art fit the bill. At £15 each, or four for £50, they're not as cheap as CDs, of course, but cut from mirror-polished stainless steel, they're definitely more decorative.

Cold comfort - protecting plants from snow

At the beginning of the year, the variegated myrtle that I’d finally settled on to grace our large terracotta pot, received as a wedding present, gave up the ghost (I'm just hoping that’s no portent for the marriage). I think it decided that being buried over its head in snow for the second time in twelve months was a weather condition too far.

It had struggled after the first occasion in 2009, so I shouldn’t have been surprised. Plants in pots are particularly vulnerable to cold weather, as Alys Fowler pointed out in her Guardian column a couple of weeks ago. She spent her internship at the Botanical Gardens in New York and, given the lack of green space, perforce learned a lot about rooftop gardening. “A plant that can withstand -15F in the ground,” she says, “can probably withstand only -5F in a pot.”

Down here in the south-east we’re under serious snow for the third time in two years. The variegated myrtle is more tender than its monotone sister, but even that survived one icy spell, so based on that experience, I’d say it’s not too late to save vulnerable plants if you move them somewhere warmer and sheltered now.

But here’s something I came across earlier this year. The GreenSafe, basically an inflatable greenhouse. It's from Germany, where it was designed by an industrial engineer, and seems such a simple idea that you wonder it hasn’t been done before.

Gardening website shortlisted for Good Web Guide Awards

The Good Web Guide is about to announce the winner of its Website of the Year Award. The shortlist contains a fair number of sites to do with property and parenting (possibly reflecting the interests of judge Sarah Beeny, well-known for being pregnant in seemingly most episodes of the long-running TV show Property Ladder). However, there is one gardening site: Growveg.

So congratulations to Jeremy Dore, its founder, for getting this far. If you haven’t visited Growveg before, do go and have a look. One of the GWG awards is the People’s Choice, and Jeremy is hoping for a good turn-out on the voting front. If you’ve visited and liked it, you can add your vote to the growing pile.  Voting closes tomorrow.

End-of-season discounts on Henchman products

Here’s a quick nudge for anyone with a yen for something to aid hedge-cutting or fruit-picking.

Not being very keen on scaling ladders, I’ve always had my eye on those with platforms that give you a much sturdier base. Henchman specialise in these, their designs having been kicked off in 1994 by owner Tom Kitching’s GCSE woodwork project, a hedge-cutting platform.

Unfortunately neither my wallet nor garage space have quite stretched to them. So I just have to remind myself not to stretch too far on a ladder!

However, anyone with a bit more cash than I might like a look at their website. At the end of the summer, after all the fairs and garden shows, Henchman offer demonstration models at marked-down prices and they currently list quite a bit of kit, including aluminium Hi-Step ladders, Compost Tumblers, barrows, log splitter, shredders, waterbarrow and raincatcher tank. You’ll have to phone to find out the sale price.

All units are in full working order, with their full guarantee intact. There are only a few of each item available, so don't hang around if you're interested.

If you do miss a bargain, they’ve also currently got some special web prices on their Hi-Step Ladders (prices start at £325) Tumbler Composters, Water Barrow and Barrow Trailers.

A new type of hanging basket

Weather-wise it’s been close to sublime in the South-East for the last few weeks, but that always means that the garden suffers. And nothing needs watering like hanging baskets.

Back in February I met the inventor of a new type of hanging basket, born – as so much is – from a complaint made by inventor’s wife. When Mrs Larwood told her husband Alan just how difficult it was to plant up the sides of a hanging basket, he got to work and invented Dr Foster’s Perfect Plant Container. Interest is such that it’s been taken up by QVC here and in America.

Cunningly, it’s designed so that you assemble the planter as you plant it up. More pertinent to the weather is that a reservoir in the base retains moisture and, as it’s plastic, it the soil doesn’t dry out as quickly. Sadly it’s not recycled plastic, but this, Alan Larwood told me, wasn’t up to the job as far as the clip fastenings between the sections are concerned.

Flowers are obviously a front-runner for planting up, but strawberries work well and with three tomato plants in the top, you can use the side openings for cut-and-come again lettuces until the tomatoes grow larger. One of Alan’s satisfied customers has even used the brackets supplied to attach eight to a free-standing fencepost.

His website isn’t the most sophisticated, but the video does its job and shows exactly how it works.

Shed of the Year Award 2010

Is it the potential they offer – the undesignated space, unfettered by society’s (and home-making magazines’) expectations? Do we find we can express ourselves in a shed the way we're not allowed to in the house?

Reg Miller expresses himself as a pirate, and has just won Shed of the Year 2010, with Lady Sarah out of Worthing (named after his partner) in the competition run by readersheds and sponsored by Cuprinol. Judges included house renovation expert Sarah Beeny.

Lady Sarah might not be to everyone’s taste, but you can’t deny the attention to detail – 16’ wide, 8’ deep and 10’6’’ at the apex, it’s made to look like the poop deck of a pirate ship moored at a Caribbean dock, has a parrot and koi carp pond, and is stuffed full of piratical pieces, including real crossed bones (courtesy of a butcher, you’ll be relieved to know) skulls (provenance unspecified), and a dead man’s chest. It’s orientated to catch the evening sun – useful for rum consumption when said sun has disappeared over the yard arm.

Putting the Cat Out

I keep vowing to buy a water pistol. After all, if you’re going to try to keep cats out of the garden, you might as well have fun at the same time. However, by the time I’d found it, refilled it and emerged from the back door, I’m pretty sure the cat would have smelt a rat and slunk off.

If you’re having trouble with neighbours’ cats, this long list of cat deterrents from vet Pete Wedderburn’s blog at the Daily Telegraph might help. The idea of keeping them out at the boundary with upside-down gutter covers on the tops of fences is one that I haven’t come across before.

Back on the water pistol theme, you could let technology do the squirting for you with a motion-activated water spray like Contech's Scarecrow. Their website has links to plenty of videos about it.

Instant conversion - measuring the difference

If you have occasional problems converting from imperial to metric or vice versa, whether spacing your veggies or diluting your tomato feed, then Online Conversion is a useful website.

It instantly converts just about any units you can think of: weight, length or volume, area, speed, angles, power, even clothing sizes and time zones.

And it does the honours with Fahrenheit and Centigrade—useful for germination temperatures, or just to wow ourselves with the heat in the greenhouse during this boiling weather.

100 degrees F sounds so much hotter than 37 degrees C!

Recycling Garden Tools is Good for the Heart

Do you love your old mower? I mean, really love it? So much so that you can’t part with it, despite the new, better one in the shed?

In what is surely a tongue-in-cheek press release, Recycle Now quotes psychologist Linda Blair in explaining why at least 40% of us find difficulty in relinquishing plug-in goods we no longer use.

“We value our electrical items because they make life easier and because so many of them connect us to the wider social world, either practically or because of the memories associated with them.

“Even when we no longer use them, we may be reluctant to let them go for a mixture of rational and sentimental reasons. A key factor is the sense of connection, control and safety these items give us. The attachment is similar to an infant needing a teddy or comfort blanket.

“This explains why we can end up having tantrums when the item breaks down and why some of them end up accompanying us everywhere - having their place at meals and by the bed for example."

Oh, bless.

A watering solution for forgetful gardeners

Remembering to water pot plants is not my strongest suit. Last year, my windowsill chilli plant (Prairie Fire – very cute, eight inches tall) failed miserably, through no fault of its own, bravely offering up prematurely dried chillies between shrivelled leaves on its little twig branches.

So, much as I like to think I can overcome such weakness through sheer willpower, I was interested to try a Plant Genie Watering Globe. You see quite a lot of this sort of thing around. These are very sturdy handblown glass balls with a long hollow stem – fill with water and insert into the soil of your pot.

I got mine directly from the owner Charlie Silverlock when I visited his stand at the excellent Cranleigh Show, Surrey, last year. His company, free2garden, specialises in designer and hand-crafted garden ornaments.