“That Computer Goggle Box” may be a clunky nickname for YouTube, but people goggle at the Computer Goggle Box far more these days than they ever goggled at Ye Olde Goggle Box with its handful of channels for everything. Just by way of example, our fruit tree planting video has been goggled at over a million times thanks to Rodney’s charms.
Now there are hundreds of gardening channels alone, so without further ado pull up to a tasty beverage, park yourself in your fave chaise longue, and engage your goggling gear as we list our favourite channels, and assign each of them a mascot animal.
Ivans Gardening Allotment
I found Ivan through his Homegrown Kitchen Recipes cooking channel, but since I eat almost exclusively bacon and eggs, it’s Ivan’s small space gardening channel that really keeps me coming back for inspiration, especially for container growing.
Ivan’s regular updates are handy for the “weather allowing” nature of British gardening, while many of his pottering tips and experiments with household items are timeless home horticulture know-how: definitely a wise snow-owl of a channel.
David The Good
Homemade music, cinema, natural tobacco, broccoli adventure stories, and discussion on the finer points of composting the troublesome. David’s work is reminiscent of a Kermode bear, but he can hop around with the best of them, all over the Americas (hot bits and cold bits), which gives British gardeners “pushing the zone” plenty of inspiration to grow warmth-loving plants in places they wouldn’t normally. And his family is exhibit A for why you should get married and start your own: who else is going to cook and eat all those yams?
In most cases, the British viewer will have to substitute the particular plants David grows for suitable equivalents, but his techniques are gold, gold I say, we’ll be rich!
And he is no slouch on the microphone
Stephen Hayes
As dextrous and deliberate as an elephant, with the wind in his microphone and pruning saw in hand, Stephen is a retired YouTube pioneer with videos going back to before 2010, when potatoes were the main source of mobile phone cameras. Stephen’s opus on apple trees is a national treasure for orchardists and home growers.
The Gardening Channel With James Prigioni
James is a roaring lion in a woodchip covered food forest with his guard dog Tuck, keeping the energy high in New Jersey, which does have hotter summers and colder winters than the UK but not by much, so as always it’s a case of choosing cultivars that suit our slightly cooler and shorter growing seasons. And woodchips.
Gardening at 58 North
This is an all-round garden channel rather than one dedicated to crops, but the allotment playlist is so tasty. The presenter is something of an elusive lemur behind the camera, which is ideal for giving you a better view of the garden without lemurs all over it.
A personal favourite: the mail order plants in the below video are not from Ashridge and are in significantly smaller mini-plugs, but that aside, he gives solid care instructions for plant plugs in Autumn, when the best thing is to pot small plants up to grow through winter in a bright sheltered place.
If this were in Spring when the soil was warm, planting outside would be fine, with adequate water and wind shelter, and it also helps to start with larger plugs like all of our plug-grown Spring Bedding like Cosmos and Sweet Peas, along with Herbs and Vegetables – all ready to plant now!