BBC Dig In 2010

The BBC announced that it is extending its popular and highly successful Dig In campaign for a second year, with expert advice and information encouraging novice gardeners, young and old, to discover the simple pleasure of growing and cooking their own vegetables, starting this spring.

Whether people have a garden, an allotment or a simple yoghurt pot on a windowsill, the BBC is calling on first-timers to learn how to cultivate their own vegetables, providing easy-to-understand information and expert encouragement every step of the way with a special BBC Learning campaign.

Throughout the growing season, the dedicated Dig In website, and a national Dig In tour, will help growers to nurture and harvest their plants successfully.

The impact of last year’s campaign was impressive, with 75% of those asked saying the seed starter pack motivated them to take part in Dig In, and 87% saying that they have now created a permanent vegetable patch (BBC commissioned research).

The Dig In website will have a shed-full of information for each of the five selected vegetables with advice about sowing, growing and harvesting, providing regular updates to ensure support throughout the summer.

This year’s Dig In vegetables are basil, salad leaves, carrots, courgettes and French beans.

Planting can start as early as March, with tasty recipe inspiration coming later in the year from top chef Nigel Slater.

The Edible Garden
Alys Fowler’s new Edible Garden series on BBC Two will feature ideas for growing your own vegetables and Gardeners’ World will feature weekly updates from its Dig In garden, offering advice and tips to growers.

Alys says: “Growing your own dinner, whether it’s a side salad, a whole meal or just some fresh herbs, is satisfying, inspiring and tastes divine. You can start sowing from March and continue right through to September, particularly with salads.

“You don’t need a lot of space or even soil as so much can be grown in containers. And with some free seeds there is no excuse not to have a go and taste something truly special – a home-grown meal.”

CBeebies
CBeebies and the Green Balloon Club will also be encouraging younger viewers to get out and get planting, too.

Seed-starter packs will be available for families who want to start growing their own vegetables for the first time from the CBeebies website – look out for details coming soon of when these will be available.

Each pack will contain five packets of Dig In seeds, a handy pocket-sized guide to growing your own veg and a Dig In sticker sheet. Adults should go to the Grown-ups section of the CBeebies website to complete the application form.

Jelly, from Green Balloon Club, says: “This is going to be fun. Let’s get digging and grow our own dinners. You don’t need a garden – a yoghurt pot will do to get started with growing and getting green, like me!”

The Dig In tour is scheduled to start this April and runs through the growing season until June and will offer tips and advice to first-time growers and allow more experienced gardeners to share their knowledge. The events will include demonstrations, potting activities, seed giveaways and entertainment, as well as a “veg doctor”, who will be on hand to answer any growing queries.

BBC Learning
BBC Learning is also committed to providing teaching resources to schools, running events in libraries and, this year, has forged a special link with The Scout Association and its 500,000 members in a bid to encourage even more young people to take part.

Dawn Carter, an experienced Scout Leader in the South East of England, says: “Getting involved with the BBC Dig In campaign is a practical way for Scouts to earn their smallholder badge.

“The free seeds and practical information on how to care for the plants, provided by Dig In, is a real help to Scout Leaders in planning an activity session with the girls and boys. The Dig in campaign has made it easy for us to have an exciting and educational gardening adventure.”

For more information on how to order your free seeds and to find out about the Dig In tour dates visit the BBC Dig In website

Figo Connectors Review

Necessity is the mother of invention and the FIGO flexible garden frame connector is one of the latest garden gadgets designed to make our lives easier.

We have spent the week playing with a box of these new flexible connectors and we are certainly impressed, their flexibility means they can be used to make all sorts of structures, from crop frames to obelisks and shaped plant supports.

Bamboo canes have been around for centuries and many gardeners have spent hours tangled in string and wire, trying to put them together to make protective crop frames and plant supports.

Modern crop frames
The gardener can purchase specially designed purpose built garden frames made from tubular metal with special connectors but they can be expensive and can generally only be formed into one shape.

The Build a Ball revolutionised the home made garden frame, but again you are limited to 90 degree angles and only a certain size of bamboo cane.

FIGO is incredibly versatile
The Figo works on a similar principle to the ‘Build a Ball’, allowing gardeners to use bamboo canes to build their own structures.  The advantage is that the connectors are mounted on a sturdy flexible rubber ring, which gives any manner of angle combinations and they can accommodate a cane with a width from 8mm to an impressive 16mm, which means that you can even use tubular metal to construct your frame or support.

Most bamboo canes are larger in diameter at one end than the other and this is a huge, frustrating problem with the Build a Balls but the FIGO gets round this effortlessly.

The FIGO is the British brainchild of gardener Sharon Wong, who went to product development company Hyphen with a basic concept for a flexible connector. Hyphen developed and improved the design  to create a whole new patentable design that is not only supremely easy to use and very durable, but also inexpensive to produce.

FIGO is not fiddly

The FIGO flexible connectors are large and easy to handle,  even those with limited dexterity can easily push a cane into the connector, although if strength and joint pain are a problem, we would recommend sticking to the smaller 8 -10mm cane widths, as these are easier to push in.

Even in cumbersome gardening gloves, we found the FIGO easy to use.

Gardening for health opinion of the FIGO
Very versatile and easy to use, the Figo comes in a sturdy cardboard box which is fully recyclable but we suggest that it is kept to keep your FIGO connectors safe when not in use.

A box of 10 connectors gives you six 3 way and four 4 way connectors which will enable you to make a number of structures from one box and comes with full instructions (not that anybody needs them).  The FIGO website contains all sorts of useful information, is well laid out and easy to navigate.

FIGO also limits the risk of being poked in the eye by unprotected bamboo cane ends and gives the perfect protection to the corners of your netting where normal canes may tear through.

Initial cost of the FIGO may seem slightly high at £19.95 + £3.90 postage but postage is free when you order more than one pack and we feel that their flexibility and ease of use is well worth the investment.

Gardening for Health gives this product 10/10.

FIGO Launch
FIGO was launched at the GLEE show at the NEC in September 2009 and substantial orders have already been placed by distributors around the world.

No doubt they will soon be appearing on a garden centre shelf near you but if you don’t then simply purchase via Amazon.co.uk or the product ads on this page or log on to the FIGO website and purchase your own.

FIGO on YouTube
See the FIGO connectors in action in the short you tube videos showing what sort of structures can be built from these very flexible connectors.

101 uses for FIGO
These connectors are so versatile, they are great fro the kids too, they can build tents, sculptures and even geodesic domes. They are also useful for creating windbreaks, enclosures for pets, in fact– anything at all!
There is a section on the FIGO website where you can upload your grand designs….the only limit is your imagination.

Make Spring Gardening Easier

As gloomy winter days give way to the watery sunlight of spring, the temperature may still be cool but daylight hours are lengthening and the garden is certainly starting to show new signs of life.

Early spring can be a hard physical time for the gardener and apart from the usual seed sowing frenzy, there can be a lot of pruning, digging and raking to be done, so it’s all too easy to overdo things.

Over the winter months, the garden has been relatively dormant and so, to some degree have you.  Your muscles and joints have had a rest from the gripping, pushing and pulling and they need to be eased gently back into the work.

Don’t try to do everything all at once. It is really easy to get sidetracked once out in the garden and take on more jobs than you planned and no matter how tempting it is to see a task through to completion, it is best to do little and often whilst varying the tasks, to work different muscle groups and joints.

Make yourself a “to do” list and stick to it.

Warm up before you start physical jobs – preparing the body for what you are about to ask it to do.
A few simple exercises will help to strengthen or mobilise wrists and arms, shoulders, back and legs.
The Keep Moving booklet from the Arthritis Research Campaign is ideal for Arthritis sufferers.
Some simple hand and wrist exercises.
Exercises for the knee.
A range of exercise for the back, neck and shoulders.

Your garden tools are important

• Make sure tools are cleaned and sharpened.
• Consider ratchet mechanism pruners which take much less effort to operate.
• Stainless steel spades and forks are less inclined to clog up with dirt, making them easier to use.
• Garden tools with a smaller blade such as a border spade or fork are usually easier to work with and their smaller area means that you are not tempted to lift large amounts of earth.
• Long handled tools help you avoid too much bending and larger rubber grip handles are great for those who find gripping painful.

A little and often
Work on a small area of the garden at a time, especially if you are taking over a new garden or allotment.
Cover uncultivated areas with ground cover whilst you work on other parts of the garden, otherwise you will spend your time constantly chasing weeds and achieving little else.

Think about any changes you want to make to the layout of your garden and how you can make your life easier in the process.

• Move self seeding plants like Alchemilla Mollis away from gravel and brick paths where seedlings are hard to remove.
• Consider raised beds for growing your veg.
• Add edging strip to lawns to avoid grass growing into your flower borders.
• Think about getting pot bases with wheels to move planters easily around the patio – they have an added advantage of also making it difficult for slugs and snails to crawl into pots.

Keep warm – cold muscles are tense muscles and working them in a tense state is more likely to result in strains and overuse injuries.

Remember that your garden is for enjoying, take time to sit back and do just that!

More information

What to do in your garden this month – Gardeners World
Gardening tools for the disabled - Able Gardener
Grow Your Own Magazine - Useful information for the home veg and allotment grower.
Arthritis Research Campaign – Gardening with Arthritis.

Daffodil desktop wallpaper

Bring a touch of spring to your desktop. With our daffodil wallpaper.

We have been out with the digital camera once more and have some great desktop images for your computer.

Below you will find some of the most common screen sizes.

• Daffodil - Desktop Wallpaper - 1600x1200 (1)
  - registered users only
• Daffodil - Desktop Wallpaper - 1152x864 (0)
  - registered users only
• Daffodil - Desktop Wallpaper - 1024x768 (1)
  - registered users only
• Daffodil - Desktop Wallpaper - 800x600 (10)
• Daffodil - Desktop Wallpaper - 640x480 (6)

Here are some general instructions for installation.

If you are unsure with what to do, we suggest that you consult your computers online help section or the internet for further instructions.

Installing wallpaper

Windows 1. Find out how big your screen is. Shrink your browser window and click with the right mouse button on an empty piece of desktop. A pop-up menu should appear. Select ‘Properties’. A box will appear with tabs across the top. Select the ‘Settings’ tab and on the right-hand side of the box, it should say ‘Desktop Area’ and tell you how big your screen resolution is.

2. Come back to this webpage. Click on the PC link above that is the same size as your screen. For screens bigger than 1024×768 use the 1024×768 option. The picture should now load in your browser.

3. Click on the picture with your right mouse button and a menu will appear. Select the ‘Set As Wallpaper’ option.

Mac OS

1. Find out how big your screen is. Click on the Apple menu, then select ‘Control Panels > Monitors & Sound’. A window will appear telling you how big the resolution of your screen is.

2. Come back to this webpage. Click on the link above that’s the same size as your screen, hold the mouse button down so that a menu appears. Netscape users select ‘Save this link As…’ and Internet Explorer Users select ‘Download Link to Disk’. Save the file to your desktop.

3. Move the downloaded wallpaper file (?????.jpg) into your wallpapers directory. First time users make a directory at the top level of your hard disk called ‘Wallpapers’ and move it there.

4. Click on the Apple menu, then select ‘Control Panels > Desktop Pictures’. A window will appear. On the left-hand side hit the ‘Picture’ button. On the right-hand side hit the ‘Select Picture’ button. If you have a ‘Remove Picture’ button instead of a ‘Select Picture’ button hit this and your current desktop wallpaper will be removed, the ‘Select Picture’ button will now appear. A file selector box will appear, choose your wallpapers directory and then the wallpaper file (??????.jpg). Hit open followed by ‘Set Desktop’.

Vegetable plug plants

Growing your veg from plug plants can have many benefits and over the last couple of years, the range offered has increased greatly.

One of the hardest parts of growing your own is the tricky seed growing stage when plants are subject to damping off or destroyed by slugs and snails.  Using pre grown plug plants cuts out this stage completely.

Plants are usually supplied at a size ready for planting directly into their growing position. Handy when space is at a premium and you do not have room for lots of seed trays, compost, propagators and indeed a greenhouse.

Avoid pricking out which can be laborious and difficult, especially for those who lack dexterity or the ability to stand or sit for long periods.

Plug plants are usually raised in the optimum of conditions, allowing good root development, so that your vegetables romp away once planted.

Many people like to go away early in the year and leaving precious seedlings in the care of a friend or relative can prove disastrous.

We have a selection for you on the left and you can view the complete range by clicking on any of the links.

More vegetable growing information

Grow your own magazine website – full of useful information for the home and allotment grower.
Allotment vegetable growing -  dedicated to the home and allotment gardener.
BBC Gardener’s World - Practical growing advice from the experts.

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