It’s quite scary how the last couple of weeks have flown past! Next week we are expecting our first deliveries of Christmas trees in time for our ever popular Christmas open evenings. We all really look forward to the open evenings as it’s a chance to get into the yuletide spirit with all of our customers both old and new. Everyone is welcomed with a complementary mince pie and cup of mulled wine or juice, the atmosphere is completed with local carol singers, bell-ringers or both if we’re really lucky and the coffee shops put together a special meal offer. Staff in each centre really go to town to make everything look festive and sparkly. We always have terrific fun and we reckon our customers must too as so many of you join us every year!

BBQ Time!

This week-end much to my surprise my husband decided to cook our Sunday roast on the BBQ! Despite the cold and rain he wanted to try out his new Weber poultry roaster and off he trooped down the garden, well wrapped up, head torch on, into the dark to get the BBQ lit and ready to roast. Ever the sceptic I was interested to see if we would have to order pizza for dinner but he persevered and 2 hours later we had one of the best roast dinners I’ve ever had. The poultry roaster has a dish into which you can put beer, wine or any other liquid and seasonings. You then pop the chicken on top and it kind of bastes it on the inside whilst it cooks, infusing the chicken and adding to the delicious smoky BBQ flavour. It really was delicious and now my poor husband may have to spend a few more winter days outside cooking!

Whilst writing my last blog about wild birds, one of the girls suggested I do a bit about hedgehogs... Hedgehogs are famously beneficial to gardeners for eating slugs and snails – Yum! But as with birds their ideal habitats are rapidly disappearing, in part our tidy gardens and security requirements are to blame as they can end up with no comfy piles of leaves to hibernate in or access in our out of gardens in which to forage. So how can we help? Leave an area of the garden untouched with somewhere comfy and protected where they can hibernate (usually between November and March) ensure that fences or walls have sections that a hedgehog could easily squeeze under and if you really want to encourage them leave out some special hedgehog food, now almost as commonly available as bird-food - I was surprised to find that its apparently very popular in our centres – fresh water but not milk or bread which can leave them with upset hedgehog tummies.

Now the weathers getting cooler its time to start thinking of bird care. With natural habitats getting scarcer and sources of food hard to come by, wild birds rely more and more on generous gardeners to provide food, fresh water and somewhere to shelter. We are always amazed at how often we have to top-up our stores of bird food - our customers must be a really caring bunch. Gardeners can also benefit from encouraging birds into the garden.

As well as being a pleasure to watch they eat many pests including caterpillars, slugs and snails. They help to pollinate fruiting plants and can also eat large quantities of weed seeds. So don’t forget to help them out especially when it gets freezing cold....

At John Browns we’ve been busy putting in an extended range of speciality and local foods. We noticed how much you all like the ranges we were keeping and how popular the food area at our Cadnam centre is so we thought we could offer just as exciting and interesting a range at John Browns and also include a really good range of gluten free and dairy free food. Carrie has been very busy over the last few months picking out a really bespoke range of gastronomic delights, we have all been forced to try samples in the office – It’s been terrible! My favourites are Zaramamas popping corn cobs – The ears look so ornamental with different varieties in blue and red as well as the traditional corn and are such good fun to prepare and pop. They’re pretty yummy too.

This month is your last chance to prepare your lawn for the winter. I treated my little lawn at the end of September with Evergreen Autumn Lawn care. This has a special balance of feed to strengthen the roots up for the winter and it’s on another one of our seasonal special offers. Next year I’ll use the 2 in 1 which also kills any moss competing with the grass but as it’s such a new lawn I don’t have any moss yet. I’ve been helping my Dad with his lawn which we scarified to get all the old dead stuff out. We have a motorised scarifier but if you need some exercise you can pull it all out with a lawn rake! It was amazing how many bags of dead grass, weeds and moss we got out of it. After a couple of weeks to settle it too will get an autumn feed – Dad always gets comments on how nice his lawn looks so well worth an afternoon in Autumn and a few hours in spring with a feed and weed treatment.

Last week we started taking deliveries of the new seasons soft fruit plants and are running a great offer on Blueberries – 2 for £15. The berries of this plant (Latin name Vaccinium corymbosum) are a well known super-food containing stacks of vitamin C and anthocyanins, both compounds which are thought to have anti-aging effects and cancer and heart disease fighting properties amongst other benefits. They are also very tasty! Blueberries originate from North America and are related to Cranberries and the European Bilberry. Easy to grow either in the ground or in pots where I find they fruit better – Just ensure they are in an acidic or ‘ericaceous’ soil that is damp at all times. As well as the attractive blue berries, the leaves turn a vivid red in the autumn giving them ornamental value in the garden.

This week it’s all that glitters in the centres as we get our Christmas decorations and gift stock ready for sale. Just as last year, we have a team of Christmas elves visiting each centre over the next few weeks to make some beautiful, inspirational and very shiny displays to get us all into the festive spirit. With this colder and wet weather we’re having we’re enjoying the cheer it brings.

Its scary how quickly the nights are drawing in now so I’m making the most of the daylight hours at the weekends to complete some jobs in the Garden. I’ve got all of my new borders mulched with a good thick layer of well rotted manure so that the worms can work it in for me over the winter and the veg I planted in July is doing really well. I’ve had my first few leaves of chard and lettuce and it won’t be long before the beetroot is ready either. The new lawn has taken really well, this week-end I’ll give it its Autumn dressing to strengthen the roots for the winter - at least I won’t have to worry about watering it this week!

This week we’ve been looking at yet more new products at one of the largest trade shows of the year in Birmingham. Carrie and I were very excited to meet the very lovely James Wong who is launching a range of unusual edible plants with Suttons seeds called ‘Homegrown Revolution’. We had a long chat with him about the range and tried some of the fruits they had grown, we really liked the cuca-melons – a cross between a cucumber and a melon but really weren’t sure about the ‘Electric Daisies’ which although edible really make your tongue tingle, a bit like popping candy. But now we can say that James Wong made our tongues tingle! What a claim to fame. Our centres at Landford and West Parley will be stocking this range from February.

With the mild weather and still damp ground we have been struggling with weeds and looking at how fast our weed killers are whipping out so are you. There are many products on the market and it can be a bit confusing with which one to choose. If you have a look at our links page on the Golden Acres website and click on  ‘Love the Garden’ you’ll find lots of information and advice to help you get the right product. If you find talking to a person about your garden problems easier, be sure to pop in to any of our centres to talk to a fully trained member of staff who can give you plenty of plenty advice.

We’ve trialled a new variety of viola on the nursery, it’s called ‘Honeybee’ but I think it looks more like a Lion! Either way it’s a really gorgeous little flower.

This week I’ve been up to Manchester to a large plant show to see if there’s anything new and exciting. Amongst all the usual suspects I found a lovely new Mahonia called ‘Soft Caress’ Its a prickle free version of the old Victorian favourite that’s so useful for its evergreen structural presence, pretty and often scented yellow heads of flower and its easy to grow too.

We also looked at some new ranges for next years summer bedding and planted containers, we came away really inspired and with some really good ideas - we can’t wait to see what they look like and whether you think they’re as good as we do, but it’ll have to wait a few months!