Gardeners world

[Brenjon]

I have just been watching GW. I think that all involved with one exeption are all frustrated DIY people. If I wanted to lay tiles, construct paths and make boxes I would be watching a building programme. It appears to me that Carol klein is the only real gardener on the programme.
Brenjon

[oldherbaceous]

What makes it worse about the DIY is, they are all unsure about what they are doing. They must cringe if they watch Gardeners World themselves.

[Shallot Man]

Stopped watching it some time ago.

[oldherbaceous]

It would be like me trying to present a cookery programme, well maybe not quite that bad on second thoughts.

[FelixLeiter]

GW is too long. They have real trouble filling a whole hour, and it's half an hour longer than I can endure. They should stick with what they know (which, with the exception of the fabulous Carol, isn't that much) and stick to gardening. They give with one hand (free vegetable seeds and promoting allotment uptake) but take away with another (fannying about with DIY and Chelsea-style zinc-tank planter arranging-objects-outdoors-to-somehow-constitute-a-garden mullarkey, which is of interest to neither man nor beast). It's all over the place. The best bits are the brief little snippets of other people's gardens, like they used to make longer features of back in the old days. There was an excellent one featuring a clematis enthusiast the other night.

[Bren]

Brenjon can you remember what Carol said about growing primrose seeds I was watching the programme and must have nodded off to sleep and just woke at the end of what she was doing, I have tried a few times to grow plants from the primula family and never succeeded.
Bren

[oldherbaceous]

Dear Bren, just wait until the seed-pods are nice and plump, but still GREEN, carefully take the skin off the seed-pod and sow straight away and they will germinate within a couple of weeks..
If the seed-pods are allowed to dry out as you would with most other seed, you then have to break the dormancy period.

[Bren]

Thanks OH.I will go out tomorrow and see if there are any green seed pods thats if the rain stops long enough,heavy rain all day today it was very welcome as the soil was like dust.
Bren

[FelixLeiter]

If the seed-pods are allowed to dry out as you would with most other seed, you then have to break the dormancy period.

That's very interesting. I didn't see the item myself. Blimey, something on GW worth watching!

An alternative method of breaking dormancy, if you have dried seed (which you have no choice over if you've bought seed), is to rinse the seeds under running water, having placed them first in a fine sieve. This rinses away the chemicals which cause dormancy in most species, which are soluble.

[Brenjon]

do you think that the same principal will apply to pansy seed(sowing when they are green) as the seed pods are forming on them now and are still green.
Brenjon

[KGAdmin]

Yes - it's time for real gardening on TV!
Well - maybe on-line, and from our own Capt'n Carrot and Lady Lettuce!

As mentioned in our news section, we've been out in the allotment - trying some video shorts to cover aspects of day to day gardening.

• Episode 1: Introduction, and preparing your seed bed.
• Episode 2: Sowing sweetcorn
• Episode 3: Sowing Peas
• Episode 4: Sowing Carrots

Enter KG-TV

We've had no feedback - and the main thread is is the News and Views forum, so do let us know what you think of our first attempt!

KGAdmin

[glallotments]

Did anyone notice that the toytown credits have been replaced. Is this a sign that things will improve?

[macmac]

Doubt it

[PLUMPUDDING]

I've noticed Gardeners World has gone the same way as a couple of my favourite magazines, leaving a good formula to try and catch a particular audience (usually young and into trendy gimicks and fads) and then losing their regulars and going down the pan. Gardeners World now has bits of this and that aimed at people with no basic knowledge and short attention spans. They don't seem to think that we can watch a whole procedure from start to finish, but have to jump about from one thing to another.

I do wonder if a lot of us have gone off it because we are already experienced gardeners and it just isn't aimed at us any more.

I'm always ready to learn something new and have picked up quite a few things from the propagation series.

Perhaps they should have two half hour programmes, one for beginners and one for more experienced gardeners. They would then be able to put out a more cohesive programme and not the disjointed rubbish they are presenting at the moment.

Perhaps three programmes would be even better, they could have a separate one for people who like knocking bits of wood and metal together.

[glallotments]

I've stuck with it more out of habit than anything and noticed the daft timer idea has been dropped now as well. Hardly anything on vegetable growing this yeat though!

I do think you are right Plum Pudding in that one programme can't cater for all the audiences that it needs to. Just think of all the cookery programmes at the moment and yet in effect on main stream TV just one gardening programme. Aren't we supposed to be a gardening nation?