By Victoria Plum
I’ve been tidying my garden and any self-sown plants or clumps I can split I have potted up for the Reepham & District Gardening Club plant sale in Reepham Market Place from 8.30 am on Saturday 10 May.
Please bring plants to be sold before 8.30 am on the day or on Friday 9 May in the Bircham Centre from 6–7 pm. Labels are good as we like to know what bargains we are buying.
This week’s well-attended gardening club AGM went by quickly. Everything was agreed, and our chairman and vice chairman swapped places.
The wonderful Carol Peakome has been chairman for at least double her initial time commitment and has overseen our many interesting meetings and the vital behind-the-scenes stuff.
She will now have an easier time as backup to our new chairman, Jeff Johnson, who has been vice chair for a while and also our very capable programme organiser.
How lucky we are to have such a dedicated and accomplished committee to ensure the smooth running of the club. And what excellent speakers we have to inform and entertain us on the third Tuesday of the month.
Carol Peakome (right) and Jeff Johnson (centre) traded places at the helm of the Reepham & District Gardening Club, pictured here with Martyn Davey (left) holding a “swoe” – a tool he deems very useful. Photo: Tina Sutton
Our speaker for April was Martyn Davey, an experienced and knowledgeable professional gardener, who spoke on vegetable growing with lots of common sense.
Did you know that tap water is better for seed growing as there are then no slimy moulds from your water butt to rot your seedlings?
Did you know that the desirable and often quoted 7.5 pH value for soil is best because that allows the most advantageous take-up of available nutrients by your plants?
Did you know that if you rotavate your soil you will destroy the drainage and aeration tunnels the worms have carefully made for your plants and you will chop up the worms? And you will also chop up the bindweed, Japanese knotweed and couch grass into little bits, all of which will regrow.
Did you know that one aphid can produce in one year enough aphids to fill a metre-square box? Those are food for many invertebrates and countless birds and their young, so be patient and wait for some other creature to tidy them up, not you. Nature has it all worked out.
Please join us on Tuesday 20 May at 7.30 pm in Reepham Town Hall, Church Street, to hear Andrew Sankey talk about “A Year in the Life of a Cottage Garden”. He is an entertaining speaker. Could you bring a friend who might enjoy an entertaining evening?
We look forward to seeing you there, and don’t forget the first gardening club trip of the year to How Hill on Thursday 29 May.