Britons ‘invest £80 billion' in gardens

[Becky]

I just read this article on the Telegraph website:

Britons ‘invest £80 billion' in gardens

£80 billion?!?! I suppose I shouldn't be surprised, it's probably one of the most popular hobbies there is! I bet garden centres are making a good profit though...

 

[zigs]

Doesn't suprise me. Even in the recession Garden Centres are still busy. Gardening lifts folks spirits. Lot more folk growing their own veg because of the rising price of food too.

Due to the disasterous weather last year, i've had to buy a sack of spuds. It was £10, last year the same size sack was £5. Terrible quality too, loads of green & damaged ones.

 

[maddie]

I wish people grew food instead of lawns so at least some part of the money spent on gardening would be spent usefully.
The amount of space wasted in lawns amazes me.. I do love aesthetic looking lawns and ornamental plants.. but so much space dedicated to them is really wasteful in my opinion.
The food we buy off the supermarket shelves are loaded with chemicals .. or cost us a bomb if it is organic.

 

[Pete]

Not sure if the garden centers are doing that well this year. The other night I saw a report about the centers having to throw away thousands of potted plants due to the bad weather. One owner said that he would be lucky to break even, although they didn't mention previous years record highs! You win some you lose some.

 

[zigs]

Thats because they put out loads of tomato plants and only covered them with a light fleece in the frost. Tomatoes will be pretty much useless if they go below 10C overnight, they will just stall and take ages to recover.

Best stick to propper plant nurseries rather than garden centres/diy chains that don't know what they are doing.

 

[Pete]

Zigs - think you hit the nail on the head thanks for your advice will check out local nurseries at the weekend.

 

[zigs]

A good nursery will be able to tell you if plants have been hardened off too. Been so tempted to plant out today, lovely sunshine here, but we've got a 0c forecast for friday night & my plants are only half way thru hardening.

I hear you've got hailstorms this afternoon

 

[Pete]

We had hailstones and a quick snow flurry on Thursday all in about three minutes and then it was over. Today the sun has been shinning all day, beautiful blue sky’s but still little nervous about planting out after Thursday!

 

[zigs]

Been lovely here today too, planted peas & lettuce out, but holding off with the beans till at least monday, still frost forecast for sunday night.

They call this time of year Blackthorn winter, the cold weather from the continent comes back in when the Blackthorn flowers, mind you, it never went away this spring

 

[LindaKay]

Geeesh! That is a fortune! It's totally worth it, though. I'm with Maddie, though....why not spend all that cash on fruit and veggie plants?

 

[Pete]

Beautiful sunny this morning but still a bit of frost in the air will wait until midweek before I plant out my beans