RHS Level 2 Practical: Month 1

First steps into hort

Wow, September was a blur! I'm now three weeks into the RHS Level 2 practical certificate at Capel Manor College, as we started on the 11th.

Other 90s kids will remember reading the list of required Hogwarts equipment in the first Harry Potter book and feeling excited by the idea of stocking up on pointy hats, magical ingredients and familiars. I may never have received my Hogwarts letter, but for a keen gardener the equipment list for the RHS practical certificate was pretty exciting too. A college course which requires me to bring a trowel, steel toecapped boots, gardening gloves and a fork? Sounds great!

The first lesson was all classroom and induction stuff. Having left college in 2009, I was unpleasantly surprised to start with an English and Maths test. This is to establish your baseline - I think the college offers you extra help if you come in below a certain score, but I haven't been offered this, so I'm guessing I remembered to scrape together enough vague memories of 'how to find the area of a triangle' to pass.

Although the course is practical, there is some classroom learning on things like health and safety, how to optimise plants' growing conditions, and their needs. 

There are also regular 'plant idents', which I'd heard are onerous, but actually aren't too bad providing you're OK at memorising things. Essentially, every two weeks or so the class is shown ten plants and their scientific names. You memorise these, and the following week you're shown them again to test whether you can identify them. 

Over the year, you end up learning around 200 plants and their scientific names, but it's broken up into manageable chunks. 

Here, the Hogwarts similarities continue. I've been wandering around my house muttering "Araucaria araucanum" under my breath, and I'm pretty sure my husband thinks I'm cursing him.

At Capel Manor, you don't see the whole of the plants you're identifying. It's a sample cutting in a vase, which adds to the challenge. Because the exams will be in February and June, and we're seeing the current sets of plants for the first time in September, some of them are a bit dead. Like this Muscari armeniacum (grape hyacinth), which the class agreed looks like a wilted spring onion lying forgotten in the bottom of a salad drawer.  

You need to be able to identify the plants, not just by their most recognisable attributes, but by foliage, habit, stem etc. Could you identify a rose without its flowers?

There are also tests on the knowledge you gain in class. Some learning, such as familiarising yourself with all the health and safety legislation relevant to horticulture, doesn't fit into the part-time course's six hours a week, so you have to learn it at home. I initially struggled a bit with this while working full-time, but it's getting easier as I get into the swing of things.

There isn't a textbook for the practical certificate, but my tutor has recommended Horticulture Level 1 Unit 1 by Barnaby Millard as an unofficial guide. It focuses on the theory portion, but also includes summaries of health and safety regulations and lots of other useful info for the practical course. That said, it is out of stock on Amazon right now, so nab it quickly if you see it! Update: Millard is now only selling via The Great British Bookshop. 

In terms of practicals, so far we've practiced seed sowing and leaf cuttings. This has involved a lot of time in the college Venlo, a marvellous mad scientist's greenhouse full of misters puffing away and well-organised equipment. Everything is run through in a good level of detail by the tutor, then the class has a go. 

In the practical assessments, you'll be given three to five practical tasks to complete, and the examiner will judge you on criteria including technique, safety and efficiency. I recommend writing plenty of notes, taking photos and videos - at Capel Manor there are no written handouts and the class relies on each other to produce good write-ups, which was unexpected.

This tray of leaf cuttings, showing different styles of cuttings in compost and perlite, has come home with me. The peperomi leaves (top) are doing well, as are the snake plant chevrons (next). The softer leaves have failed. First to go was the big begonia leaf sliced at intervals and simply laid on top of the mix: it curled up away from the compost on the car journey home, then rotted within a few days. 

One of my classmates has had much more luck - she had a short journey and a heat mat, and that seems to have made a lot of difference!

A word of caution: reading through plant ident lists, and looking them up online, can lead to unplanned shopping. Thanks to this phenomenon, I now have a couple of Cyclamen hederifolium (ivy-leafed cyclamen) in my front garden and others on the course have made similar acquisitions!

I'm looking forward to more outdoor time in October, and to getting spades in the ground - it might sound masochistic but I do love a bit of digging, it's great exercise!

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