The Beechgrove Garden

If the soil is warm enough, it's time to plant your tatties. Jim starts by reviewing the 'con' (as he calls it) of the tatties for Christmas that we tried at the end of last year. Then onto the real business of good old traditional methods of planting tatties. Although going for traditional this time, Jim is trying out a brand new - supposed to be - miracle new fertiliser. Meanwhile on a smaller scale, Lesley and Carole start off their now legendary tatties-in-containers challenge and this time they have a new stacking system of growing for small spaces and the tatties can be planted/stacked up to six plants high. Jim visits Bryan and Angela Harris in Blairgowrie, who with their six-month-old baby want to be as self-sufficient as they can. They moved to this house last March and inherited several large fruit trees - two apple and one plum. They had a bumper crop of apples from one tree but haven't got a clue how to prune it to maintain the crop. One of the apple trees has an alarming tilt over the greenhouse so they want to sort that out. They also want Jim to show them how to create a mini-orchard and fill up their veg plot... so not much to be done in the day for Jim, what will he do after lunch?

If the soil is warm enough, it's time to plant your tatties. Jim starts by reviewing the 'con' (as he calls it) of the tatties for Christmas that we tried at the end of last year. Then onto the real business of good old traditional methods of planting tatties. Although going for traditional this time, Jim is trying out a brand new - supposed to be - miracle new fertiliser. Meanwhile on a smaller scale, Lesley and Carole start off their now legendary tatties-in-containers challenge and this time they have a new stacking system of growing for small spaces and the tatties can be planted/stacked up to six plants high. Jim visits Bryan and Angela Harris in Blairgowrie, who with their six-month-old baby want to be as self-sufficient as they can. They moved to this house last March and inherited several large fruit trees - two apple and one plum. They had a bumper crop of apples from one tree but haven't got a clue how to prune it to maintain the crop. One of the apple trees has an alarming tilt over the greenhouse so they want to sort that out. They also want Jim to show them how to create a mini-orchard and fill up their veg plot... so not much to be done in the day for Jim, what will he do after lunch?

In the Beechgrove Garden, Carole and Lesley take inspiration from George's RBGE alpine house visit last week and revamp the Alpine Garden at Beechgrove. This wee garden took a real beating over winter and Carole and Lesley are keen to put up new protective screening that will also allow planting of trailing/climbing plants. Carole and Lesley will also be adding to the garden their top ten, everyman's alpine plants for Scotland. Ever wondered how those amazing and seemingly unnatural and massive vegetable at flower shows come to be? George will also be starting off showing how to grow huge vegetables for showing. He's trying his hand at beetroot, carrots and parsnips. Jim will be looking at the different irrigation systems available for the amateur gardener and he will also be planting broad beans and sweet peas.

In the Beechgrove Garden, Carole and Lesley are in a soon to be fuchsia frenzy as they plant up all sorts of baskets and containers with new collections of baby fuchsias. They also take a look at their BIG bulb pot experiment and how it has performed after being given a recipe for success with layering dozens of bulbs in the one pot last year. Carole also visits George on his allotment in Joppa. George suffers from leek rust and white onion rot, poor man, on his allotment, and Carole and George together try all methods of getting round the problem. We will catch up with progress later in the series. Lesley also visits Anne Duncan in her small Edinburgh garden. Anne has a love affair with tulips and she blames her husband. The lucky man's birthday is in May and generous Anne always gives him tulips for his birthday and now her garden is brimful to overflowing with a torrent of tulips. And back at the garden, something Anne would approve of, Lesley takes another look at how her tulip trial is faring in the cutting garden, where she is trying to see how long a window of flowering tulips she can have in one season. In the cutting garden, the first early tulips started flowering in the beginning of April, but how long will the tulip season be in Beechgrove?

In the Beechgrove Garden there is much going on under glass. Jim is trying out a fancy new pot system to grow his tomatoes and cucumbers in, while Carole starts off a trial of those ugly but fun plants- the gourds- meanwhile Lesley is in the Potting Shed potting on baby peppers and those spicy wee numbers the mini chillies. Jim also starts off some of what he calls 'funny veg' - celtuce, chicory, claytonia and Chinese Kale will all be tried and tested/tasted this year in Beechgrove. Do you have a pear or apple, square or hourglass shape? Not women's bodies but gardens. Lesley has chosen four classic shapes of gardens that we are presented with and shares her off the peg design solutions to the typical garden shape. Lesley will 'clothe' a garden each week and inspire us to use what we have rather than try and change and if you have got it flaunt it. This week, square and boring. Jim is also with Tessa and Bill Knot at their stunning garden at Glenwhan. A garden for all seasons with an incredible diversity of plants. It has taken 20 years of hard work by Tessa and Bill to produce this garden of outstanding character that has been hewn from a hillside covered in bracken and gorse. Two lakes have also been made by damming up bogs to provide a rich habitat for rare species.

Carnations those favourite forecourt flowers have had a bad press in the last few years, but in the Beechgrove Garden, Carole is trying to grow a collection of those over-used plants to try and rekindle our interest in this pretty, prolific and often perfumed plant, growing a range of perpetual and spray carnations. Jim is having another attempt at growing a challenging crop for Beechgrove - sweetcorn. Carolyn is helping out at the garden of Rachel and Alan Black in their high-rise flat in Leith. Rachel grows everything in containers in their exposed and windy wee garden. Rachel wants to know how to protect vegetables and plants from wind and pests and she would like some advice on what kind of flowering plants to grow so she can have fresh cut flowers in the house and year round colour in the garden. It's Gardening Scotland just next week and one of the biggest exhibits at the show is the bonsai. George visits an expert grower and shower to see if he can learn the tricks of the trade and of showing these incredibly popular manipulated plants.

Gardening programme celebrating Scottish gardens, with horticultural tips and tricks, presented by Jim McColl, Carole Baxter, Lesley Watson, George Anderson and Carolyn Spray. The team is on a break from the garden to be at Gardening Scotland. Sometimes called the Chelsea of the north, it is the biggest gardening show north of the border. Gardening Scotland 2011 will burst into bloom at the Royal Highland Showground, Ingliston, just outside Edinburgh on 3-5 June. With over 150 stands in the Floral Hall, the cream of British growers will be there, including those showing off their gold medals straight from last week's Chelsea, but Beechgrove will be concentrating on the Scottish plants and we'll join them all for a sneak preview as well as sampling the atmosphere of the show itself. Firm show favourites return, alongside a host of new exhibitors, with everything from pansies to pelargoniums, and cacti to clematis in a stunning floral frenzy. Outside, stunning show gardens with inspiration for everyone no matter what your budget. And with the tiniest of budgets, first timer entries to the show often start off creating small but perfectly formed 'pallet gardens'. Last year there was a record number of these inspirational wee gems. Although the gardens are tiny the enthusiasm is massive.

Gardening programme celebrating Scottish gardens, with horticultural tips and tricks, presented by Jim McColl, Carole Baxter, Lesley Watson, George Anderson and Carolyn Spray. In the Beechgrove Garden, Jim is in among flowers that he has a huge passion for - the dahlias - and this time Jim is concentrating on getting his hands on as many single varieties as he can and on making a huge show of them in the cutting garden. Lesley is planting bedding with an Olympic theme and she's hoping that it's not about the winning and that it will all be about the taking part to create a bedding display of many nations' colours. Jim is also with the Hughes family in Linlithgow, who have an area at the back of the garden, which is a steep slope backing onto waste ground. They have difficulty keeping the weeds at bay and maintaining the plants that they have planted on the slope. Jim provides a number of solutions that anyone coping with a slope in their gardens can take away and use. George visits the NTS garden at Threave. Threave houses the Trust's School of Practical Gardening (a one-year gardening course with a practical emphasis) and there is also a demonstration garden run in conjunction with the school of horticulture. George specifically visits to discuss the planting on their North, South, East and West facing walls to find out what grows well in what orientation.

Gardening programme celebrating Scottish gardens, with horticultural tips and tricks, presented by Jim McColl, Carole Baxter, Lesley Watson, George Anderson and Carolyn Spray. Finally all the wee tender plants are out of the greenhouses and strutting their stuff out in the garden. This leaves space in the greenhouse, but not for long. Carole and Lesley waste no time in filling up the greenhouse with some annuals from seed, that will give fanciful later colour - with names like calceloria 'bubblegum mix' or primula 'tickle my fancy'. Carole is also planting out her geranium family garden trial, creating a whole garden of geraniums with all manner of varieties from trailing, climbers and scented to the good old favourites, proving what a versatile family it is. Carolyn is with Lisa Higgins and Geoff Montford in Langside, Glasgow. They have a difficult shaded area in the back garden on a slope, where they want to grow something practical and pretty. Lisa has made a real effort to get started and Carolyn gives the couple a mini French cottage potager, with lots of herb pots, flowers and vegetables as well as hanging baskets and wall pots.

Gardening programme celebrating Scottish gardens, with horticultural tips and tricks, presented by Jim McColl, Carole Baxter, Lesley Watson, George Anderson and Carolyn Spray. In the Beechgrove Garden, Jim is in the cage, the fruit cage that is, where the crop is protected from fruit-picking birds. There is also a fragrance of France as the fruit has been kept free of pests with garlic spray. Jim will be reviewing what's going on in the orchard and pruning and planning for autumn fruit. Carole is trying something new, planting a range of 'micro leaves'. These are the new must-have salad leaves with stunning colours and intense flavour - chefs in fashionable restaurants rave over these tiny tasties. Micro leaves are salads and vegetables harvested at a very young and tender stage in the growing process, and we are told, so easy to grow and most are ready to crop in 7-to-14 days. George Anderson is with the Hunts in Kelso, who bought a one acre building plot four years ago. They have been working on the garden and have developed lots of areas - a vegetable garden, shrub beds, herbaceous beds, fruit garden, orchard wildflower area, conifer bed - and the plants have grown very well indeed, better than they had anticipated. This has resulted in a problem, as now they need to be shown how to prune and maintain their plants. George gives Peter and Virginia a masterclass on pruning and plant management and maintenance. Carole visits Rosemary Jarvis in Dollar who has a really colourful and mixed garden with several mixed shrub and herbaceous borders, a wildlife pond, two rockeries, alpine troughs, fruit and veg gardens, and a mini-orchard. Rosemary is a plantaholic and likes to collect unusual specimens. She has pitcher plants in her bog garden which are flowering at the moment. The garden is sheltered by the Ochils so she can have lots of tender plants. Rosemary also has a wonderful collection of hostas.

In the Beechgrove Garden, let's hope it's good weather as everyone has their waders on and are bound for the pond. The team are getting rid of blanketweed, splitting and dividing pond plants as well as taking a look at the success of the planting among the Gabions that we put in to hold the bank in place. Jim is also on the lawn testing out a new lawn moss drug. Carole is helping out Tina and Bill Briglands from Grantown-on-Spey. They have a small pond in their garden that has become overgrown. They would still like to have water in the garden and so Carole replaces the pond with a bubble fountain surrounded by planting with pebbles as mulch to keep weed at bay. Jim visits the delightful and relatively new garden of Janet Ireland and Paul Newman in Montrose. Their previous garden was on Orkney and this sheltered Montrose haven allows the couple a much bigger palette of planting with fruit and veg and drifts of perennials.

Gardening programme celebrating Scottish gardens, with horticultural tips and tricks, presented by Jim McColl, Carole Baxter, Lesley Watson, George Anderson and Carolyn Spray. In the Beechgrove Garden, Jim, George and Carole are all in the calendar border, which does what it says on the tin and has plants with interest each month of the year. The team are discussing and implementing major surgery for the oak tree there, which is now hampering other plants, and so they decide to lift the crown of the tree.

The team assess the winter damage and unaccustomed spring warmth's effect on the garden.