RHS Level 2 Practical: Month 5

When Capel freezes over

A frosty walk near home

Time has flown by - this blog is six months old! January started with the first real frosts of the year, including a beautiful hoar frost mid-month. Generally, though, it has been mild, and I even saw a bumblebee mid-month.

Last week brought Storm Eowyn, who battered parts of the country with 90mph winds. Here on the Essex/Suffolk borders, they reached 50mph. This cycle of brief frost, then unseasonable warmth, then storms has become the norm of the past few winters as climate change continues. At home, I've been anxiously watching the weather, planning to buy bare-root plants for my own garden when the frost and winds abated. 

In the meantime, it's been a busy month at college.

Exams are coming 

Mock practical exam on first week back - you can read more about how these work in my recent post about RHS Level 2 assessments. I passed! The real thing is coming up in March, which isn't long now.

Soil. Just soil

Staying grounded

Classroom learning returned, for the first time in a couple of months. Nice on a chilly day to be nestled indoors, studying soil texture, pH, electrical conductivity and other properties. We've also been outdoors, conducting soil testing and writing up an assessment of a site. 

This is a detailed two-page form, including the basics like aspect and drainage alongside things more easily overlooked like root activity, points of interest and people flow. I might use Capel Manor's form to reassess my home garden planning and make sure I'm not missing anything.

Soil learning was really fun, if you're a bit of a soil geek like me. If you're not, you may yet become one! Understanding the soil you're working with is vital to choosing the right plants for the right place and giving them the best treatment to thrive. We're taught in primary school that soil is basically a blend of minerals that plants draw nutrients from, but it's so much more than that. 

Soil is, in a very literal sense, life. It's comprised as much of the worms, insects and microorganisms that live in it as of the bedrock that it's based on. This is a pretty recent realisation. As a result, humans have been mistreating the soil for most of the past century through overcultivation (and growing monocultures, and using certain pesticides and herbicides), and this is bad for both the wider ecosystem and the future of our own food production. Oh, and it also contributes to climate change.

There's a really good documentary about this called Kiss The Ground, which I recommend if you can find somewhere to watch it. Also, try not to dig any more than you can help!

Site assessment on a sunny afternoon

Plant health

Once you've chosen the best plant for your soil and situation, it has to survive. The class has now learned all 46 plants in Unit 1 of the course (hurrah!), so idents this month have included pests and diseases. 

This has involved staring at photos of chafer grubs and honey fungus strands more than I strictly enjoy on a weekend evening, but is extremely useful. It's also been good to learn or recap how to treat these various lurgies. I'd like to have an encyclopedic knowledge of plant problems, but there are so many that having a good book on pests and diseases to hand is always useful.

Also discovered we all share a deep hatred of fungus gnats - my nemesis since a bad houseplant infestation last year. And if you get them, skip the neem oil, mosquito dunks and drying-out - the only thing that worked for me (and everyone else apparently) is 5cm of fine gravel mulch on every plant!

A rosy outlook

A trip to RHS Hyde Hall was arranged for the class on 22nd January, and there was also a masterclass on roses with a professional from Peter Beales on the 20th. Sadly, work was busy and I could only make one! 

Since I go to Hyde Hall quite often, I opted for the masterclass, which turned out to be very interesting. There was some fascinating stuff about propagation (did you know a 'contract budder' can graft up to 8,000 roses in a day?) before we delved into the detail of caring for climbing, rambling and shrub roses. 

I've developed a lot more confidence in pruning, and better understanding of different roses' tolerances and needs for a hard prune at intervals. To celebrate, I bought myself a bare-root David Austin climbing rose (sorry, Peter Beales) which is now gracing my garden.

Paving the way

A garden isn't all about plants, and this month also included a lesson on cleaning and repointing (refilling the gaps in) a patio. Cleaning a patio, whether with a brush or a jetwash, is not rocket science and I won't dwell on it. 

Repointing isn't either, really, and quite a few of us had done it before - but it was great to get a masterclass from Nev, who makes doing a tidy job look extremely easy! He taught us some good techniques for dealing with tricky or misaligned slabs without relaying them if necessary. 

Frozen cabbage, anyone?

Career progression

I've also been lucky enough to secure a traineeship under the WGFA's Work & Retrain as a Gardener Scheme, starting in February. This is a great initiative, which provides paid work in a garden where you can learn from somebody experienced for one or two days a week. It's good for new professional gardeners finding their feet, and it's open to both beginners and those with qualifications.

The placement is in a private garden, and thus it wouldn't be right to blog about it, so it won't feature much here. But I look forward to practicing what I learn on the RHS course in a larger setting! 

I'm also starting to take on some gardening work in my local area. More on that in the coming months. 

Excited about this. Can you tell?

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