Chelsea Flower Show 2015

It's press day at Chelsea Flower Show and the RHS trainees flocked into London to lend a hand while getting some insider's knowledge of the UK's most famous display of plants and garden design.

I was assigned to assist one of the judging committees for the exhibits in the Great Pavilion: on a tight schedule for two and a half hours, we had to help the judges navigate their way through 17 exhibits, which they were to judge from the perspective of their specific expertise.

The displays are judged based on the brief submitted by the designers, and according to horticultural and design criteria such as:

• plants, 
• overall impact;
• endeavour.

The best displays receive a medal: bronze, silver, silver-gilt and gold, but during the show garden and exhibits are also assigned special awards.

The judging process is very confidential as the stakes are high for the participants to such a high-profile show, and the results will not be announced until tomorrow. That is why trainees are asked to make room for the judges around the exhibition so that they can observe thoroughly and are allowed the privacy to and discuss their votes without prying eyes. In the process, we got first hand experience of what it means to judge an exhibit. Once the medals were assigned, a group of us also helped the judges on a further round of judging for the awards. The judges were then going to spend the rest of the day finalising the distribution of medals and awards, while we got time to spend visiting the Show.

While Chelsea is mainly a flower show, there were some fruit, vegetables and herbs exhibits and I was on the committee in charge of evaluating them, which was fascinating!

Potatoes at Chelsea!

My favourite edible exhibit was an educational potato display with some 140 varieties grouped by species: the colours and shapes really stood out, highlighted by the black background. Morrice and Ann Innes designed the display, which was sponsored by seed and plant company Thompson & Morgan.





For some people, the enormous variety of potatoes must be a novelty indeed... it was for me when I was first invited to join a Facebook group of potato breeders and growers called "Kenosha Potato Project" where I've seen the strangest, more colourful and interesting shaped tubers from across the world and learned that "papas" is the original name of these favourite of tubers. They come in such coloured and varied shapes as exemplified below!

Posted by Edilberto Soto Tenorio on Sunday, 22 March 2015

The Grenada's ‘Pure Grenada’s Rainforest’exhibit was also rather gorgeous, displaying lush green, bright colours, spices and fruits that are native to the island: one had to recognise that some places on earth are blessed with particularly show-worthy flora, such a Solanum mammosum or titty fruit, which is said to resemble a human nipple on one side and a cow's udder on the other, and pink banana Musa velutina.

Solanum mammosum

Musa velutina

Delicious fruits, such as the colourful fruit of Theobroma cacao that gives us chocolate, or the versatile Zingiber zerumbet, with its edible tubers, juice, leaves that can be used as flavouring, and flower heads that are turned into shampoo!

Pouteria sapota and Theobroma cacao

Zingiber zerumbet

I also found a delightful herb garden

Herbs exhibit

where I was particularly attracted by 3 herbs: Galium odoratum with edible dainty leaves and white flowers, which I first saw in a garden I worked in last year and two non edibles: Polemonium caeruleum with dark leaves and blue flowers and Prostanthera rotundifolia a shrub with pink flowers.

Pennard Plants stand

Detail of vegetables at Pennard's

To conclude I will mention the rather glorious exhibit by Pennard Plants, inspired by a R. Kipling's poem "The Glory of the Garden" in its 150th anniversary, with stunning vegetables.







P.S.: Glad to say the potatoes I helped being judged got a gold medal, the first of its kind! Grenada and Pennard Plants were also gold medallists.

In the veg garden

Sowing sowing everywhere, then thinning out, planting out, covering, watering... it's a busy time in the veg garden where the spring rush is on to get the beds filled and looking lush! That is what I have been doing over the last two months in the veg garden particularly, and below is more information by technique and crop.

Sowing

To get the perfect sowing, the beds need raking to a fine tilth.

 

Then, with the help of a row maker, you can draw straight lines at even, well calculated distances, and of course perfect grids (for planting out). 

Rows to sow

Grids to plant out

A meter stick is a further help with sowing or planting out where you want precise spacing. 

In the photo below are some shallots we sowed with a stick.

Radishes

Summer radishes are sown 1-1.5 cm deep, at 1 cm spacing (thinned to 5 cm), with and 20 between rows (15 in a greenhouse); one shouldn't water seedbed until germination. In summer, if the soil is dry, water the drill before sowing the seeds to create a microclimate for them to germinate but not the surrounding soils.

There are two type of summer radishes: rosette leaves (ideal for early sowing, require
lower light levels) for example 'Rudi', 'Scarlet Globe' and tuft leaves (ie 'French Breakfast') which are  best sown towards the end of March. If you sow them too late they go straight to flower; the same happens if you don't thin them out.

Winter radishes you sow beginning of summer to Aug, they are ready Sep to
Nov, some like mooli, also know as daikon, overwinter but require wider spacing, at least 30 cm and 30 cm between rows.

2 March

13 March, thinning out

13 April

30 April

Spinach

Spinach is sown at 2.5-3 cm, then thinned straight away to 5 cm. Depending how big you want your plants, you can also decide to harvest one in every two plants as baby leaf. Mind you leave 30 cm between rows.

Spinach is very sensitive to day length so pay attention: there are early sowing (flowering on longer days) and late sowing varieties (that can be sown both spring and autumn, as they are flowering on shorter days).

2 March

20 April, thinning out

13 April

Beetroot

Beetroot is for sowing April to June, but a few varieties that do not bolt if they get cold (ie 'Boltardy') can be sown earlier.

Spacing: 5 cm (seeds are in a cluster) and 30 cm in between rows. They require
thinning by snipping off any extra seed in the cluster that germinates.
 

2 March

20 April, thinning out, poor germination

13 April

Carrots

Carrot 'Marion' is very good for growing all year round even if its flavour is not perfect, but aside from that variety carrots are either early maincrop or late.

Carrots seeds are very thin, and difficult to handle. Taking only a small pinch at the time helps with getting the right sowing spacing, which is 1 cm by 30 cm. 

Because of the risk of carrot fly (Psila rosae) attack, early maincrop carrots are covered at sowing, only uncovered once for thinning out, then covered again until picking, which is done in one go. However, since the carrot fly is not around in autumn, overwintering carrot can be picked as needed.

19 March

Fleecing the carrots against carrot fly

30 April thinning out, uncovering

Broad beans

Sown in the first week of March, took about a month to germinate

25 May

N.B. A good rule for sowing different crops next to each other: the space between them should be calculated as space of crop 1 + space of crop 2 divided by 2!

Thinning out

I have never practised thinning out before, so this was a new skill for me. You have to choose the strongest seedlings that grow round about the desired distance you, then pull out the in-between ones. However, if you are too late and do thin when the seedlings have a well developed root system already, or in the case of seeds in cluster (like with beetroot), you have to snip the competitors off rather than pulling them out, so as not to disturb the roots of the ones you want to keep.

Once you have done your thinning, it is best practice to firm the remaining seedlings in the row, by earthing them up slightly from the sides, then watering them well.

Planting out

Several crops are grown in the propagation facilities and then planted out, ie all the brassicas and the lettuces. Planting them out has its own requirements.

One of the most interesting things I learnt while here is that some crops like to be planted at the same level they were in the pot, even if they flop when planted (for example brassicas and lettuces). Others instead need firming in, for example celery, which is also planted close together to provide a minimum blanching effect, even though modern varieties are self-blanching and do not need to be earthed up or otherwise be covered.

Brassicas

Brassicas like firm soil around them, and the taller the brassica, the firmer the soil needs to be. Brassicas need cabbage collars to keep the cabbage root fly (Delia radicum) at bay (if kept soil free, they form a dry environment that desiccates any eggs laid on them, while in the process helping to slow down slugs).

Covering is also required from the cabbage white caterpillar (Pieris spp). However, brassicas requires a lot of light and netting shades them, so we used netting with large holes, pulled taut so that butterflies cannot squeeze in!

14 April, cauliflowers

13 Apr, cabbages

28 April, covered

Lettuces

I did plant quite a lot of lettuce, so I now feel rather confident. It is generally grown in jiffy's here, planted out when the seedlings are about 10 cm tall. You need to water them well to start with, peel off the ridge of the pot, then plan them at soil level, having loosened the soil well (for example with a bulb planter) before firming gently. As usual, then you finish with watering.

13 April

20 April

28 Apr