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a plate of carrots and a knife on a table

You may once have dug up a crop of carrots with great excitement only to find that they were all a strange shape. Don't panic, your carrots were not cursed by Poseidon to come out looking like tridents, the problem is really simple to prevent if you know a few things about the conditions carrots like.&nbsp;The most important thing to consider if you don't want wonky carrots is the quality of the soil. If your soil is too compacted or stony the shape of your carrots will be affected. Carrots often alter when they alteration find, changing their growth pattern at the slightest contact with a lump of hardened earth or a stone. Loosen your soil to the depth that your carrots are likely to grow to to&nbsp; stop this from happening. It is also good to not walk on the area where your carrots are growing to avoid compacting the soil.&nbsp;Another thing you don't want to do is plant your carrots too close to each other and fail to weed around them. Any competing roots will cause your carrots to attempt to grow around the obstruction and make them an odd shape.The last two things to remember are to use older manure to fertilise your carrots as it is less nitrogen rich, and not to transplant your carrots. Unlike many vegetables, carrots are not big fans of nitrogen and it can affect their shape adversely. Sowing your seeds directly where you want your carrots to grow rather than transplanting seedlings helps to keep the carrots straight.&nbsp;Planting in raised beds, rather than directly in the ground also enables you to have more control over the conditions your carrots grow in.&nbsp;These tips will help you with growing most root vegetables not just carrots. And don't throw your less perfect carrots away, they will still make a fine carrot and coriander soup, imperfections aside.&nbsp;

A Fork in the Root

Banana green leaf tropical plant isolated on white background.

Sunday gone, the 8th of March, was International Women's Day. Women have had a large impact on the art and science of horticulture throughout history. Marianne North, a botanist and botanical artist, traversed the globe and scaled mountains capturing the plants she saw with her paintbrush. Beatrix Potter, aside from her career as children's author, was a keen conservationist and made hundreds of painstakingly detailed botanical illustrations of fungi. And let's not forget Fanny Wilkinson, the first female landscape gardener in Britain, and the first woman principal of Swanley Horticultural College, a place that produced several successful female horticulturalists.&nbsp;And that's only three significant figures, there are many more. And many perhaps who history has forgotten, who planted borders with precision, and turned away from the stresses of day to cultivate their gardens. In a Room of One's Own, Virginia Woolf invented a fictional sister for Shakespeare, who she imagined as being as brilliant as he was as thought experiment to explore how such a woman may have been denied the opportunity to nurture her talent. So too one might conjure up a skilled sister for Capability Brown or André Le Nôtre to imagine the green fingered women in history who laid their trowels aside until their gifts became "all overgrown with cunning moss, all interspersed with weed," to quote Dickinson slightly obliquely.&nbsp;Whether you're a hobbyist or a professional, reading about our horticultural foremothers can be an enlightening experience.&nbsp;You can get started with two of our previous posts on here if you like:&nbsp;<a data-mce-href="https://gardensandlawnmowersbyclive.com/blog/jekyll-s-hideaways" href="https://gardensandlawnmowersbyclive.com/blog/jekyll-s-hideaways">Jekyll's Hideaways</a><a data-mce-href="https://gardensandlawnmowersbyclive.com/blog/the-first-ladies-of-kew" href="https://gardensandlawnmowersbyclive.com/blog/the-first-ladies-of-kew">The First Ladies of Kew&nbsp;</a>And happy belated International Women's Day!

Ladies Day

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This may surprise you, but the best time to buy a mower is when your grass isn't up to much during the winter. There are so many things to consider when buying a mower but the first thing you should consider is certainly the time of year that you buy one.&nbsp;Buying in the spring and the summer isn't always the best strategy because everyone else is trying to buy a mower. If you buy one in the winter the cost will be significantly lower.&nbsp;If you want some advice on what to look for when buying a mower <a data-mce-href="https://gardensandlawnmowersbyclive.com/contact" href="https://gardensandlawnmowersbyclive.com/contact" data-mce-selected="inline-boundary">give us a call</a> and we'll give you some free tips.&nbsp;

When to Buy a New Mower

Close up of several molehills in a garden

Certain creatures can stop your grass from looking lush and in this post, we’re going to look at three of them. &nbsp;First to get a mention in our bestiary of grass damagers are leatherjackets. Leatherjackets are the offspring of the daddy longlegs or crane fly. In appearance they are a light grey colour and in terms of size they tend to be between 2-4cm long. Grass roots are a delicious meal for leatherjackets, and it is by the off colour patches they leave on your lawn you can tell you have them.Generally, like many potentially invasive creatures in a garden, in small numbers, leatherjackets are unlikely to do much harm. They even support the diets of birds who consume them. Turfing over damage works, and damage often reduces over time if it isn’t extensive. Though if they really are giving you trouble, you can look into controlling them.Now we’re going to look at chafer grubs. Like leatherjackets chafer grubs are larvae, but in this case, they are the larvae of chafer beetles. Chafer grubs tend to be milky white and grow to over 2cm in length. They also, like leatherjackets, have a penchant for grass roots if they are of a certain species of chafer beetle. There are some species that do not eat grass roots and prefer other sources of food. The ones that do eat grass roots leave browning patches behind when they dine.However, it’s the way that creatures that enjoy eating chafer grubs tear at the lawn to get to them that causes the biggest problem. To avoid this, you if you have many grubs infesting your lawn you can use nematodes to control them. &nbsp;The last creature we’re going to cover is the mole. You’ll know if you’re dealing with a mole problem because if you are you will see heaps of soil on the surface of your lawn, yes, the infamous molehill. In view of taking a sustainable approach, the best thing you can do is do a little light labour to treat the symptoms of having a labour of moles in your garden. Just remove any molehills and fill any holes they leave behind to keep everything looking neat. Unlike leatherjackets and chafer grubs moles don’t nibble at grass roots and that’s a positive.If you want to read about other grass related issues look at this<a data-mce-href="https://gardensandlawnmowersbyclive.com/blog/patchy-grass" href="https://gardensandlawnmowersbyclive.com/blog/patchy-grass"> post</a>. And if you need some advice or maintenance <a data-mce-href="https://gardensandlawnmowersbyclive.com/garden-maintenance-services-2" href="https://gardensandlawnmowersbyclive.com/garden-maintenance-services-2">click here</a>.

The Grass Menagerie

Jute bag with soil mixed with fertilizers on white background. Isolated

Peat is composed of organic matter that has broken down in part but not fully. This kind of matter is found in bogs, marshes and wetlands. Sphagnum mosses are a key part of the creation of peat because they help to maintain conditions that ensure that the material that makes peat doesn’t decay too fast. And interestingly, sphagnum mosses do not do this by themselves, just as no man is an island no plant is too. Various organisms help sphagnum to flourish and thus do its job in peatlands.On a simple level, peat harvesting affects the ecosystem of peatlands. There are a multitude of different relationships between organisms that can be disrupted by the removal of peat from their habitat. On a wider scale, disturbing or damaging peatlands is a little bit like opening Pandora’s Box because it can create carbon emissions that affect the environment. When left alone, peatlands actually store large amounts of carbon helping to keep our planet in balance.To counter these effects, measures have come in that will reduce the horticultural use of peat and alternatives like coconut coir are increasing in popularity making it likely that things will improve im the future.Look at our short guide to <a data-mce-href="https://gardensandlawnmowersbyclive.com/blog/at-the-coir-of-things" href="https://gardensandlawnmowersbyclive.com/blog/at-the-coir-of-things">coconut coir</a> if you want to read more about a popular peat alternative.

For Peat's Sake

Close up od Lavandula angustifolia Hidcote Blue.

Garden designer and horticulturalist Gertrude Jekyll was born in 1843. Jekyll's thirst for knowledge perhaps first became apparent when she was a young girl. Her father encouraged her to explore science, and she was given unfettered access to his workshop so she could do so to her heart's content.&nbsp;When she was a young woman she went to study art, learning painting, fine metal work, and needlework. Unfortunately, Jekyll’s eyesight declined to the extent that pursuing an artistic career in the way she originally intended to became impossible. Not one to give in and despair, she turned to gardening and decided to make landscapes into her canvases. Unable to keep sketchbooks because of her eyesight, she documented her garden design work, with photographs she took and developed herself. Her skill as a photographer was so great that she provided photographs for popular gardening guides.&nbsp;Most of Jekyll's gardens were created alongside her long term collaborator, architect Sir Edward Lutyens. He designed the house that she lived in until her death, and together they shaped Victorian ideas about garden design. Over the course of her lifetime Jekyll had a hand in the creation of over 400 gardens and wrote prolifically about horticulture.&nbsp;The herbaceous border is at the heart of Jekyll’s style. She mixed colours and textures like paints on a pallet, &nbsp;creating borders that from afar drew the eye to them but were also fascinating to look at up close.&nbsp;By playing with colour and texture and making good use of traditional plants, like roses, lavender, and hostas anyone can add some of the magic of Jekyll’s gardens to their own outdoor space. And if you’re into container gardening you can get the same effect by planting a trough planter up using the same design principles. It's well worth giving it a try.&nbsp;

Jekyll's Hideaways

Gardens and Mowers by Clive