Catch up with Head Gardener Bob as he shares his top gardening tips from the year so far, from pruning and planting to protecting crops and building healthy soil. Whether you’re growing your own vegetables, dreaming of a productive walled garden, or just getting started with kitchen gardening, this episode is packed with practical, seasonal advice for gardeners of all levels.
🌿 Inside Our Georgian Walled Garden:
We’re growing something truly special on the Northumberland coast, a Michelin-star-level restaurant supported by a thriving Georgian walled garden. Follow along as we share behind-the-scenes insights into growing, cooking, and creating a sustainable food destination.
👨🌾 What you’ll learn in this episode:
Vegetable planting & seasonal crop rotation
Soil health & composting tips
Protecting your crops naturally
Planning for a productive kitchen garden
💬 Let us know in the comments: What are you growing this season?
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What I’d like to do for you guys is uh tell you our top tips as to what we do during the sort of January, February, March period uh which you can then utilize in your gardens, your back gardens and your a lotments. So, in terms of things that we do during this period, we we’ve got a soft fruit garden, uh we’ve got an orchard, uh we’ve got our vegetable growing areas, we’ve got a cover covered cotton. But I’ll just go through some of those is the types of things you you can be doing uh during this period. So, February is a great time uh to prune and to trim back. That could be soft fruit, it could be apple trees. So ala trees is is uh this is the period when when we we do prune them uh in the soft fruit area and you know I’m sure in your gardens as well you have some soft fruit uh we’ve pruned the gooberries as well uh we’re cutting things back um we’re giving things a good start for the year so number one pruning point two it’s a good time to take stock as well and and to to incorporate any major changes you want during a year. So, for instance, we’re in a a soft fruit area at the moment. Uh we made a big mistake when we planted uh this the strawberry uh patch and that we made the uh the beds too big. We’re going to take this opportunity uh to to put a path in down the middle. There might be things like that in in your uh a lotment or your back garden that you think, did this work last year? Could we improve it? And that’s the sort of thing we’re constantly thinking about. What worked well last year? What didn’t work last year and how can we make things better? One of the things we’re doing at this time of the year in this sort of uh late winter, early spring is we’re resetting everything. So, we’re changing all all the beds. Uh we’re replenishing the beds. So all the baits at this stage get uh a replenish of compost. So if you have a look here in polyon 2, you can see that um we’ve put fresh compost down. This polyon 2 will be all herbs. So we’ve started setting up. We’ve got parsley, thyme, we’ve got axalis, garlic, chives, um and sorrel. And in about a month’s time, this will all be full of uh of of herbs. So, fresh compost, uh fresh uh wood chip parts, and we we find it so much better using wood chip as as paths because it also will decompose and will also help feed um the baits on either side. And that’s something you’re going to be doing in your a lotments and your gardens at this time of the year. Uh we’ve put just a fresh layer of compost on the top. We’re not talking about much compost. We’re talking maybe, you know, half an inch of compost on. uh we weed everything, put the compost on and get it ready. And it’s about using this time of the year to do things like this. Um you can’t get ahead of yourself too quickly. Um because every plant, whether it’s herbs, whether it’s flowers, whether or not it’s vegetables, all require a number of things to make them grow. Yes, they need uh good uh growing conditions, uh good compost, uh weed free, but the other thing they need is light and heat. So, in the 1 of January, the amount of daylight we have is about 7 hours. By the time you get to the 1st of April, you’ve got 13 hours of daylight. And each plant needs lots of light, but also needs lots of heat. So between the 1st of of uh January and the 1st of April, we’ll also see uh an increase in average temperatures of about 8 degrees. So that heat and that light is the conditions you need to grow things. They’ll be grown from seed and then sort of grown on for about a year and then we can buy them as crowns. So that means we can get a crop a bit faster than if we’d grown it from seed. Um, so yeah, these have got like the little all the the long roots and the little growing point. But you you you created a bit of a hill here, haven’t you? Yeah. So because the roots are so long, you kind of need to create a little bit of a ridge to plant them on. They go about 18 in apart and you got to make sure the grown point is on the top of the ridge and then the roots can sort of go down either side. Um, and then once I’ve put all these out on the on the rose, I’ll cover it with I’ll cover it with a little bit of compost just so the crowns shown and then give it a really good water in just to settle all the soil around the roots. Um, and then top it off with a couple of inches of compost just to completely cover them. And then these will be left to grow for the next 3 years. So can’t harvest for three years, which we have to keep telling Alex. Um, so the plants really get established and then you get a really good crop off them. So, so if we leave them for for 3 years, right? So, we’re planting them at the moment and this is this is uh in a year’s time. Do we just we just let them grow, don’t we? Yeah, we just let them grow really tall. They’ll get to about about this high. Yeah. Um, and yeah, they sort of they’ve got really like fern like foliage and we let them that’s what happens is that’s what gets all the photosynthesis. So that puts all of the energy back down into the crown so that next year they’ll put more spears. So you have to let that happen like a few years in a row just so that they get a lot. So basically we we effectively let them just grow at will for the next three years. Yeah. We don’t do anything to it until um the autumn. We’ll cut them back in the autumn and then they’ll grow again in the spring. So that’s an important point. So they get up as you say they get up to this height and then come autumn time you’ll cut them down again. Yeah. Yeah. The next row will be staggered. Oh, so that so you’ll be putting these ones in there type. Yeah. In between each one. Yeah. So say we we let them grow. Um it’s the same variety that uh we grow all the way rest throughout the rest of the farm. And this is also uh what Lucy will be targeting for the once she’s got this all done. Uh as I say, we’ve got a 100 new crowns coming in. And these ones uh you can see uh this the surround is a bit higher than than than uh this bed here. And the reason for that is uh this is where we’re going to focus on growing white asparagus. So white asparagus is the same as green asparagus apart from it’s deprived of light. So we will plant them in here just very much as Lucy’s doing at the moment. And then we will uh cover them and then it’s say like Lucy says we we will let them go for 3 years but on the the following year we’ll then start and harvest them. So when uh the right to pop through we will have this covered. Uh we’ll probably put another piece of wood on the on the top here so it’s a bit higher and then we’ll have uh black fabric covering the whole lot so it’s completely deprived of light and it was the light that turns the asparagus green because it’s deprived of light they’re white asparagus and other than the color the taste will be exactly the same. What we try to do is uh we will harvest the asparagus on the morning and take it straight into the restaurant so that uh the amount of time between harvesting and giving to the chef is as minimal as possible. And that uh minimizing the period and time really really enforces the freshness and the taste of the asparagus. Late April, early May is really a busy time for us. Uh it’s a busy time for us because we’re planting out everything you’ve seen in the greenhouse. We got to get out here into the ground. And you think, well, we need to uh sew. We’ll be looking to do it over this period as well, sewn outside. But a lot of that though is dependent on the weather conditions. So you you’ve really got to judge uh as to when you’re going to do this sort of thing because you know we have seen we have seen late frost we have even seen snow in April that type of thing. So what you’ve got to do is you’ve got to make a as a best judgment as you can as to when to go for this planting out period. Um as I say we tend to go for late April early May for it. Uh but if it you know if it if it if it had been uh slow obviously we wouldn’t be doing this but it’s reasonably warm at the minute. Uh so the conditions are quite good. Um it’s we haven’t got uh really cold temperatures at night and so that’s important. Uh we do cover them to just give us uh with with fleece just to give that extra few degrees of uh protection where we can. Um so we I’ve said about how we grow lots of legumes in terms of peas and beans. We also grow a lot of aliums, uh, spring onions, onions, um, chives, that type of thing. Uh, and in this in this bed here, I’ve got leaks. Uh, but we’ve also got, uh, we planted red onion, uh, sets. Uh, there’s a few weeds in there at the moment, but we’re just waiting till the, um, the sets have really established themselves before we go in there with a ho and start uh, uh, weeding. Uh, and again, it’s all about judgment and what’s best for yourself.
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