Page 61 - SV 3 2024

Hants DA
At the time of writing, we are days away from one of Hants DA’s favourite events of the year, The BBC Gardeners’ World Spring Fair at Beaulieu.
We will be working again with Jon Wheatley, of Chelsea Flower Show fame, who has grown the vegetables for this year’s display garden. He and Terry Porter grew the vegetables for the show in 2021 and 2022. Their pristine rows of vegetables became a familiar sight on the flower show circuit, including Hampton Court Flower Show. This year, the vegetables have
been grown to be more representative of this time of year. I am sure they will still
be impressive. Fingers crossed for good weather; last year the heaven’s opened on build day, and those of us planting up the display garden ended up drenched! We can only hope for fine weather and lots of visitors to our NVS stand looking for advice and to buy from us. Our members have been busy growing plants for us to sell. This is the first of our plant sales, just a week later, we will hold our annual plant sale at Wellow.
Back in February, we had a fantastic talk by Gill Perkins, CEO of the Bumblebee Conservation Trust, on “The Plight of the Bumblebee.” We learned so much from her, including that commercially bred bumblebees are imported into the UK for the tomato industry, as tomatoes in this country are all grown under cover. It was a shock to learn that once the tomatoes have been pollinated, the bumblebees cannot be released as they may carry diseases and parasites, so they are destroyed. If
you are vegan, you definitely need to grow your own tomatoes! We should all care about the decline of bumblebees because humans require pollination to survive.
We can all do our bit to help halt the
decline. Avoid using chemicals, especially pesticides and herbicides and try to have something flowering providing nectar and pollen from March to September. Go for native plants and herbs, old fashioned varieties, and those with open flowers. Alliums and lavender are particularly good for bumblebees. Better plant labelling makes it far easier these days to buy plants that are pollinator friendly, and as well as helping bees and butterflies, these plants look great in our gardens.
In March, David Thornton made the trek South to give us a most enjoyable talk
on “Top Tips for Tasty Tomatoes.” After touching on the history of tomatoes, David told us how to prepare our plots, gave tips for successful germination and growing, ran through pests and diseases, before finishing with tips for the show bench. It will be fun putting what David had taught us into practice on our plots and “Good Luck” to David for the Nationals.
Another treat was a talk in April by Rosy Hardy, twenty-four times Chelsea gold medal winning plants woman on “Spring Flowering Perennials.” Not surprisingly
it drew quite a crowd. I noticed on her website that the same talk at the nursery would have cost £22.50 per person.
So Hants DA really “gave back” to our members that night, as their only cost for our meetings is to (hopefully) purchase a strip or two of raffle tickets. Rosy always gives a highly informative talk; her method is to run through the plants she brings with her, advising on the best situation to grow them and when they will flower. Then we get the opportunity to buy the lovely plants that she has brought along. I had a chat with Rosy before the talk started and she was so down to earth, no airs and graces which was lovely, considering she is such
an accomplished grower and a celebrity in the horticultural world.
On 7 July, we have a visit to Stem & Green Flower Farm, SO21 1EQ. If this arrives in time and you would like to join
us there, please email alisonclarke1920@ gmail.com to book, so that we can ensure we have enough cake for afternoon tea. Top level stuff!
The summer–autumn period is “show time.” Come along and see the Southern Branch Championships at the New Forest Show and enter your own produce a month later at the Hants DA annual show at Wellow. We look forward to welcoming you.
Ali Clarke
Hants DA – Secretary
MEETINGS
Venue: Sherfield English Village Hall, Salisbury Road, Sherfield English, Romsey SO51 6FL, unless otherwise stated.
30 July-1 August – Southern Branch Championships @ The New Forest and Hampshire County Show, SO42 7QH
8 Sept – Hants DA Annual Show 1pm @ Wellow Village Hall, West Wellow, SO51 6BR
8 Oct – “Vegetable Growing in Raised Beds” by Barry Newman
Simply Vegetables 61