Topic: aaaargh! Gardener's World

[campanula]

This week has really made me grind my teeth. Is it just me or does anyone else find MD patronising and prescriptive with no grounding in any recognisable reality? Not content with using the biggest, most expensive, most over-the-top planting and equipment - watching the metres of bubblewrap, the massive greenhouse heater in the massive greenhouse, we have to watch the performance with digging this and planting that - in these absolutely lush, crumbly, weed free beds which appear from nowhere. I have never come across a bed like theirs in my life - at least not until I have moiled and toiled through the forest of weeds and roots. Finally, the smirking way in which the wee plastic greenhouse (obviously, it is all I have) gets stashed inside the glass palace. Sure, I used to think Alan was a bit smug but at least there was some acknowledgement that gardeners come in all sizes and colours - and he had the grace to admit to importing topsoil on one of his programmes instead of pretending to have worked miracles.
I suspect I am suffering from a bad case of envy so apols for ranting.
cheers, suzy

[Hugh_Jones]

Well, if you WILL watch it! I prefer to do the washing up instead.

[MagpieDi]

Bring back Bob Flowerdew!!........the slightly batty ones are always the best entertainment!!   ::)   ;D

( is he Welsh....... I wonder??   ;)   ;D )

[Mrs Ava]

I despair with GW !  I have never liked MD and like Sarah Raven even less!!  Find them all patronising.  And bloody Chris Beardshaw (a goodlooking boy I will admit) but he talks to the camera as though he is talking to a child!  Now Eastenders was much more entertaining!   ;D

[Hugh_Jones]

Now if they had a garden in the middle of Albert Square.............No, they`d be burying all the bodies in it!

[busy_lizzie]

Hi, We watched GW tonight and it did all seem to be too perfect.  That soil was incredible  ::)It would be nice to see a touch of reality occasionally with some of the areas  covered in mare tales and couch grass and bind weed.  So I couldn't agree more with the comments. busy_lizzie

[legless]

how does that woman not ladder her tights? if i was gardening in skirt and tights i'm pretty sure i would!

[campanula]

I wondered what they were actually  ???going to heat in the greenhouse- the skylight?  ???

[ina]

Here I was thinking I was tending a lottie in the wrong country, in England things get done properly. Are you people telling me that you don't all have greenhouses and soil like we saw on GW yesterday?

About that little plastic tent. I thought it was strange to have a see through port-a-pottie in the greenhouse.

What about those fantastic victorian greenhouses? I am so glad MD told us how expensive they are to keep up because I was thinking about getting one of those for my lottie.

That thick wooden plank MD was standing on must have cost a fortune. He didn't even leave footprints on it, I would have taken my shoes off to stand on something so pretty. He must clean and polish it after every use I guess or maybe just borrowed it from the lubber yard.

I don't mean to nit-pick but the only thing real in the show I saw were the broad bean seeds. Mine look just like that.

Oz, even tho' I don't understand half of what you are writing, I think I agree with you. When I read your postings out loud I can understand a little more but not all by a long shot. Do you really talk like that?

[Ceri]

now now double dutch ... don't knock the little plastic greenhouses, pre-lottie I had two of them in my back garden last spring - all of £6.00 each from Asda, and they were brilliant for seedlings etc.  I know they are a bit naff, and kitch - and not exactly for 'real' gardeners, but hey, cheap!  Only drawback was cats and young child decided they could live in them - on top of the seedlings!  I too found GW just too perfect for words this time around - and do they think watching someone put up bubble wrap interesting....?  Mmmm

[ina]

Oh Cerig, I thought they would make fantastic portable greenhouses but the way MD talked about them it seemed like he was talking about a port-a-pottie.

[Hugh_Jones]

Oh dear!  Yet another gardening idol turns out to have feet of clay.  And on the Beeb site they devote a whole Board to his (and A.T.`s ) worshipping fans.  Don`t those shining curly locks turn your heads? Doesn`t that charming smile melt your stony hearts?  What does it matter if it`s all sham - this is Never Never Land where the gardening Peter Pan reigns supreme, and you have to believe in fairies or they`ll all die.


(Only 7 more to go!)

[merv]

Ummm, well I mumblemumble bubble mumble wrap mumblemumble my greenhouse mumble cos it's wooden. But I don't have £400 worth of at least 2'6" hight 9" wide (double) brick wall....to keep it snug.

Can someone please tell me what a "raised bed" is? MD said he was planting his beans in a raised bed.  Seems to me it was just some soil with 3" timber all the way round.

What we call a raised bed, is one that can be cultivated by a person in a wheel chair, usually between 2'6" and 3'.

How wide was his beds?

Mine are....standing upright I put the hoe out at a 45^o to me, make a mark, go round the other side and do the same to that mark.  Hey Presto, a bed that is easily cultivated without any trampling, by a person of my size. (and my length of hoe)  :)

[Beer_Belly]

At one point it looked like they were planting in gravel to me !! and the bubble-wrap business 'nuff said  :-X

[Hugh_Jones]

And even the MD fan club on the Beeb Boards is moaning about his greenhouse fan heater

[MagpieDi]

Well folks.........there's only one solution to this discontentment..... boycott the beeb..........and join Tim,Hugh ,Eric et al here every Friday instead!!!!  ;D

[Hugh_Jones]

You get better jokes here, as well!

[gavin]

Ach - chuck the box out!  Best of all!

All best, Gavin!