From Kids to Apartments... Diarmuid Gavin's Top Tips For Gardening in Self-Isolation

The Covid-19 lockdown has coincided with the awakening of the garden. The soil is warming, birds are singing and plants are blossoming.

Diarmuid Gavin joined Alison on Weekend Breakfast to talk through ways to garden during this time.

He chatted through how to get kids interested in gardening, things to plant if you live in an apartment or don't have a garden.

During the lockdown, Diarmuid has started 'Gardening Conversations' on his Instagram Live every weekday at 7pm and weekend at 11am. 

Each evening they give tips, show skills such as sowing seeds, planting potatoes, pruning roses and grafting apple trees. And they talk soil, garden design, plants...and lots of manure.

 

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I’ve been looking at imagery of lots of colourful gardens over the past week, pots of tulips, borders packed with blossom and cut flower arrangements. And I love this celebration of colour...especially in spring after a grey winter. I also love the cleansing tones of green......green on green on green. I used box, yew, pine, birch, bamboo and Japanese forest grass on this garden at the Chelsea Flower Show. The event is on hiatus this year, allowing time for reflection. Creating gardens there is challenging but often exhilarating. For me it’s a forum to experiment With ideas, to push concepts a bit, to challenge norms. I don’t generally like to create something that’s simply beautiful. I feel that there’s more to garden design than that. I like ideas, quirks and some fun. Sometimes these gardens with ideas work......and sometimes they don’t. But to get to try in such an arena is an occasional privilege. The show gave me a voice and allowed me to pursue dreams. It’s always a mixed bag.....beauty, nature, tradition, craft and contemporary. But the lust for medals can restrict true creativity and lead to formulaic creations. While technically adept and crisply planted the main gardens often lack soul. And without that whether it’s music, art, architecture or gardens......beauty can feel a little empty. Join us for Garden Conversations right here each weekday evening at 7pm or weekends at 11. We love opinion. #gardens #gardendesign #gardenconversations #green #greenongreen #chelseaflowershow #creativity #royalhorticulturalsociety #rhs #spring #nature

A post shared by Diarmuid Gavin (@diarmuidgavin) on Apr 3, 2020 at 1:27am PDT

Listen back to their chat by pressing the play button at the top of the screen and his tips for gardening with kids is below! 

Tips for Gardening With Children

Give Them Their Own Garden Beds:

Whether you use raised beds, containers or ground plots, be sure to give each child his or her own separate plot. Keep it small, very small for young kids. Put their plots right in the middle of the action, with the best soil and light. Set them up for success.

Grow An Avocado:

Grow an avocado from the Stone by suspending it over water for a few weeks and watch the roots and shoots develop.

Reuse the Sandbox:

If your children have grown past their sandbox years, consider converting the old sandbox to a garden bed. This gives the child continued ‘ownership’ of a familiar space and encourages a sense of responsibility to the gardening project. Of course, a productive garden bed needs to be in good sunlight and soil should be free of tree roots. It may be necessary to relocate the sandbox if growing conditions are less than ideal.

Show Off Their Work:

Share the gardening projects of your children with friends over Zoom, FaceTime, or Instagram and be sure to point out their achievements. Take a photo of their harvest and send it to the grandparents. The attention given to their work is the best motivator for children to stay involved with a project.

Sunflowers:

A must for a child’s garden, plant just one or two, since they take a lot of room. Sunflowers will sprout in one week, become a small seedling in two weeks, and should be 2′ tall in a month. In eight weeks, the buds will flower revealing hundreds of seed kernels. Be sure to grow ‘confectionery’ sunflowers, the type grown for food. They will dry naturally in the late summer sun; the seeds, rich in protein and iron, can be roasted for snacks. Save a few for next summers’ planting.

Potatoes:

From mid-March until mid-May is planting time. Buy some seed potatoes online..... they're little seeds with stalks coming out of them. Just put them in the ground and as they begin to grow you put soil up around the stem. Make sure they don’t dry out, give them loads of water and it’s remarkable, how easy they are. Then in the summer you have wonderful new baby potatoes.

But also get children growing things like sunflowers, get an old yogurt carton and stick in a few drainage holes with a knife or scissors and pop some compost in. Press the seed down and water it. Watch it germinate. If you want something to grow really fast, and see the wonderment on a child’s face, cress or mustard seed can grow really easily on damp kitchen towelling. So, just dampen a piece of kitchen towel and sprinkles some seeds on them. Within 24 to 48 hours they’ll be fully grown.

Weekend Breakfast with Alison Curtis, Saturdays and Sundays from 8am!