Garden glory in Spain

By Peter Langdale

AS I write this I can not help thinking that most readers will be thinking more about celebrating Christmas than pottering about in the garden.

For those of you who still enjoy the great outdoors however, maintenance is probably the order of the day – whether it be pruning, hedge trimming or just cleaning the garden path.

Buy your tree now before it is too late.

At Garden La Palma we have a range of Christmas trees available which we must sell now.

I do not want to be like the fairy who asked Father Christmas what to do with the unsold Christmas tree.

His answer is the reason you see the fairy on top of the tree!

In the commercial world this is the silly season for fruit, vegetables and herbs.

For some unfathomable reason the supermarket buyers think they can sell three times more of everything at Christmas.

This puts enormous pressure on suppliers.

We know that come hail, rain or shine we will be working flat out to meet orders.

To try and anticipate every eventuality, we have just finished building a lighting rig so our gangs can carry on working in the fields after dark from an 8am start.

We will have little holiday as our customers expect deliveries on the morning of December 27 and thereafter. To achieve this we will have lorries leaving on the 25th!

Since the deluge of nearly three weeks ago, the land has been drying out nicely and planting and sowing of the whole gambit of veggies and salad items can now continue.

If you like early potatoes, take a look at the fields around Velez and you will see the normal practice of covering the potato ridges with black plastic.

My main tip for now is for the mango trees.

To reduce bacterial infections of leaf and trunk, apply a copper fungicide spray of Bordeaux mixture or similar.

One last reminder as you think of your Christmas lunch: We do have parsnips, sprouts, swede, and most other seasonable salads and vegetables.

A last word to wish you all a Happy Christmas and a (dare I say it Frau Merkel) prosperous New Year.

Contact Garden La Palma on 951 237 013