There's a late season treat for the gardening media and press this week as Harrod Horticultural host their second Press Day of the year following on from the success of the July event, writes company horticulturist and photographer Martin Fiddes.

October 13th is the date with the newly designed and planted Harrod Horticultural Folly Garden the plush venue for the autumnal Press Day, with prominent garden mag editors and writers enjoying a largely home-grown lunch, a tour around the Kitchen Garden and a talk from RHS Hampton Court Edible Garden co-designer Anita Foy.

And that's all in addition to the business part of the day as Harrod Horticultural New Product Designer Alex Rocke and MD Stephanie Harrod unveil some of the new products the company have spent the summer developing, giving the journalists a real sneak preview of what's to come from the mail order gardening outfit in 2012.

With an impressive guest list - Julia Heaton from Amateur Gardening, the RHS The Garden duo of Chris Young and Daren Davis, Garden Answers' Greg Siggs, Jackie Whittaker of Garden News, Paul Wagland and Liz Dobbs (both More From Your Garden) and Garden Media Guild members Jeannie McAndrew and John Negus, along with John's PA Maureen Hunter - and an equally attractive line-up of new products including the tomato growhouse, new versions of the popular Manger Raised Planters, examples of the new Slot and Lock aluminium tubing connectors and braces, prototype arbours and much more, the day promises to be the usual resounding success.

Home composting is one of the real growth areas in grow your own gardening, and as a result there's an absolute myriad of composting products on the market - more than enough to baffle any would-be composter!

So which composter should I choose? I can help with that decision up to a point, as I've road-tested quite a few models at our own Kitchen Garden and have knowledge of other versions through my Master Composter activities. But there's one I haven't managed to lay my compost hands on just yet, and that's the wonderfully named Green Johanna.

Dubbed as a 'hot composter' and apparently capable of decomposing usual composting no-no's such as meat, fish and dairy products, the Swedish-made Green Johanna has aroused interest from fellow Master Composters. Just how does it cope with cooked food and bones; are there problems with rodents and how long does it take to produce usable compost are just a few of the questions being aired around the country.

So what I'm really appealing for is for a composter out there with experience of the Green Johanna to tell the rest of us what it's really like? To inform us of any rodent interest; to enlighten us if it does actually digest bones, meat and fish, and to avail us of the quality of compost it produces.

Simply contact me and I'll let the world - ok, anyone who tunes into this blog - know if the Green Johanna deserves a place in the composting Olympics!

There’s no escaping the fact that in the garden, a large part of the autumn is spent clearing up fallen leaves, but there's an upside to all your hard work - leaf mould.

The autumn is a wonderful season to be a gardener. There's a kitchen table-full of fruit and vegetables to harvest, the colours are astounding and the pests and diseases are dying out. It's time to plant winter greens, onions and garlic and your head's full of grandiose schemes and plans for next year.


But there's also the leaves! This subject splits gardeners into two distinct groups - the clear-it-up-as-it-drops-platoon and the-leave-it-to-nature dudes! Collecting fallen leaves keeps the garden looking spotless and also removes potential slug egg-laying sites. The downside? Just as you’ve finished raking one area, the chances are the wind will blow and you’ll need to start again. But don’t see this repetitive work as a chore, because the hard work that goes into collecting these leaves will eventually pay off.

Alternatively, the let 'em rot philosophy follows nature's law to the letter and the fallen leaves will eventually break down where they lay and replenish the soil in a wonderful cycle. But are there other places in the garden more deserving of this natural fertiliser?

Both parties are agreed on one thing. Leaf mould - however and wherever it is made - is beneficial to the garden. Why?

* Easy to make and use
* It's a great alternative to peat
* When used as a mulch it cuts down on watering and water loss
* Can be used on the lawn as a conditioner
* Suitable for adding to potting compost
* And it's free!

Making this valuable mould could not be easier! Just collect up the fallen leaves (all types are suitable), add to a suitable container - a compost bin fits the bill - and water if dry, then leave them for a year or two. There's no quick fix composting aids you can use to speed up the process as it's the action of fungi, as opposed to the composting mainstays of bacteria and micro-organisms, which break down the leaves to form mould. And the fungi like to take things slowly!

Anything else you should know? Chopping or shredding the leaves will help speed up the process slightly (running a mower with grassbox attached over leaves on the lawn is favourite) and it's best to leave some leaves - they provide valuable hiberation sites and bedding for garden animals.

Aphids are one of the most common garden pests, appearing on leaves and stems of flowers and vegetables in vast quantities - but it's not just the foliage they like to feed on...

The root aphid, as the name suggests, feeds on the roots of various greenhouse, house and outdoor plants - resulting in grow checks and wilting. Thankfully, some species of aphids have alternative host plants and only attack plant roots during one part of their cycle, but there are others - the artichoke tuber aphid, for example - which live on the roots permanently.

Lettuces are specifically at risk and enjoy the distinction of having an aphid species named after them - the lettuce root aphid, which is also a good example of the alternate host syndrome, as the pests overwinter on poplars before migrating to lettuces and sowthistles (the importance of weeding cannot be understated!) in the summer.

Control of the white or light-coloured root aphid follows the same lines as the above-ground pests, when identifying and removing the aphids as early as possible pays dividends. Regular checks of plants will reveal the first intruders, which can be removed by hand, by spraying with a soap/fatty acid based organic pest control spray or by blasting into blivion with a jet of water. Vigilant checking of the roots of brought in pot or plug plants before planting or re-potting can also expose stowaways, which can then be removed in the same fashion.

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Versatile is certainly a word which applies to the tub trug, a real gardener's ally.

I'm constantly accompanied around our Kitchen Garden by a large cornflower blue tub trug, just one of sixteen colours (including black) and three sizes that these flexible friends are available in - and they're made from 100% recycled plastic too!

I find a tub trug is my ideal right hand man for most garden tasks. It can be filled with weeds; it's great for harvesting; you can use it as a temporary home for slugs, snails and other pests you might discover whilst down on your hands and knees and it's also ideal for transporting compost around. We've even introduced colour-coded tub trugs to the Kitchen Garden - green for any compostable material collected during the rounds, and bright red for anything you don't want to end up in the heap!

It's not only in the garden that the tub trug is a great help. I know of friends who use one to carry logs, I've seen one helping to take out the washing and the equestrian set swear by them!

Harrod Horticultural stock a large selection of all the colours and sizes available, so if you haven't already got a tub trug in your garden, pick one up today - you'll wonder how you managed without!

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Slugs and snails consistently feature in the top three of the Royal Horticultural Society's annual Garden Pest List, cementing their position as one of the gardener’s arch-enemies.

The main topic of conversation across allotments and gardens this summer is the atrocious weather; atrocious for us maybe, but slugs and sails are revelling in the damp, warm conditions and their numbers seem to be as high as ever. And if our Kitchen Garden is a typical example, then plants in gardens across the country are suffering at the slimy 'hands' of these voracious molluscs!

Of course, there are multitude of products available to trap, catch and deter both slugs and snails - some organic, some not quite so friendly to the environment and other organisms - but the best control measures all occur naturally.

That's why we were delighted to find this little fellow (right) during a recent photoshoot at the garden. Bufo, as we've named him, is a common toad and a very welcome addition to the Kitchen Garden team. We discovered him in a pile of leaf litter and have since re-housed him in a carefully cracked clay pot, with a far more attractive Toad in the Hole - a real toad abode with style - in the pipeline.

Bufo wouldn't be your first choice dinner date though, as his peculiar tastes include insects, larvae, spiders, slugs and worms. We're hoping that he'll enjoy making inroads on the slug population and possibly bring along some friends for tucker any time he likes!

Of course, we'll continue to apply nematodes, test out other organic slug and snail barriers and traps and diligently pick off the pesky pests at every opportunity, but it's good to know there's a hungry Bufo dining al fresco every night too!

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There’s no denying that I’m at my happiest when I’m digging, planting sowing or harvesting – even weeding - in my kitchen garden but preparing the fruit and vegetables I’ve grown in my kitchen comes a very close second.

Other grow-your-owners will know that the taste of home grown produce - in raw, cooked or preserved form – is eminently superior to supermarket vegetables and is this fact that gets me excited when I’m making chutneys and sauces.

I know that when I serve up a dish garnished with a tangy, tasty, home grown and homemade sauce or place a selection of cheeses, bread and Stephanie’s Kitchen Garden-based chutney in front of friends and relatives, their taste buds are in for a treat – and I’m happy to confess that I’ve had a big hand in introducing the stunning Kilner Jars, jam, preserves and chutney making kit and – my personal favourite – the Rigamonti Passa Pomodori Passata Machine to our range – and an even bigger hand in ‘testing’ them out!

In the same way the apple presses deal with gluts of fruit and windfalls, the passata tomato press will turn excess fruit into a delicious, smooth, rich tomato sauce, removing the skin and seed in the process.

Making my renowned sauces is all well and good, but they’ll be ‘legendary’ for entirely the wrong reasons if I don’t store them properly. That’s why I’m such a big fan of the best jars money can buy – the Kilner Jars! These handsome jars are certainly tried and tested – they’ve been around for over 150 years – and the screw-top lids of the preserve jars feature a rubber seal to keep my chutney, pickles and preserves as fresh as the day I bottled them. The clip top jars are the real deal and you can keep yourself in chutney throughout the winter months with the 3 litre version and storing rice, pasta (back on that sauce again!) and lentils couldn’t be easier.

Yes, the weather is starting to close in and my gardening time is slowly being curtailed but when I’ve got my kitchen activities to fall back on, it somewhat softens the blow!

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Three of the major pest groups likely to cause havoc in any vegetable garden or allotment are animals, birds and weeds - and here at Harrod Horticultural we recently recieved an e-mail from a lady named Alyson in south-east Scotland whose plot is afflicted by this terrible trio!

Alyson is planning to expand her hard-won vegetable plot and is looking for some advice on how to combat this three-pronged attack. Should she go for a fruit cage to cover the whole area, net individual beds or fence off the entire area? Luckily, our experienced horticulturist and photographer Martin Fiddes is on hand to answer these and many other gardening questions - here's his advice...

I think you’ve already identified that the road to tidying your garden forks in two directions, and the first way sees a fruit cage covering the entire area giving you the freedom to work inside with the crops safe from rabbits and birds. This is likely to be the most costly solution and doesn’t solve the weed problem but does offer you a completely protected environment in which to grow, with possibly only any brassicas plants requiring extra netted protection from cabbage white butterflies. If you’d like us to quote for a cage to cover the area, have a measure up, drop us the dimensions and we’ll give you an idea of price.

And that’s about it! In summary, I’ve suggested two alternative solutions which you can take away and see which best fit your location and budget. No doubt you’ll have a few further questions which spring to mind and please don’t hesitate to contact me with them; I’ll do my best to provide you with answers and ideas!

Many thanks once again for your enquiry and the best of luck with what sounds like a fascinating project in an idyllic spot!

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