Having just looked up 'astuce' in my French dictionary the translation is not quite what I thought it would be. There it suggests that it is very similar to the English 'astute', which is to say cleverness, shrewedness, even perhaps perjoratively trickiness. What I thought it meant was 'tips', and I am sure that it is with that sense in mind that it is used in my favourite French TV programme, 'C à vous' on France 5. It is a sort of a chat show that combines the serious and the lightheartedness in for me a completely unique way; utterly relaxed, almost amateurish, but that is its charm. Moreover it is hosted by the beautiful Alessandra Sublet. What it also includes is a meal, and invited guest cooks, all of them charming, and always ready to provide the aforesaid 'astuces'.
Those of you, if any, who read this blog may have noticed that very little practical gardening advice is given. I take the view that most of you will know as much, if not more about, the basics, and anyway there are excellent books that can provide the answers if required. But a tip is something a little more personal and inevitably I have over many years accumulated one or two. One of them would be do not buy expensive secateurs. Bits fall off, or break often making it impossible to close them, or they do not fall off, and they get in the way of cutting. Above all they do not cut well, which rather defeats the object. Instead go for the cheap ones, that appear mysteriously at certain times of the year in French chain stores, often red, under ten euros, with a deceptively fragile if not tinny appearance, but they work, and if they do become a little blunt, they sharpen up extremely well. Sometimes they break, and sometimes they get lost, but their bright colour is a help in finding them. Moreover all secteurs get lost, and with the cheap ones this hardly matters. In fact the best thing to do is to buy two or three of them at a time, so that you will never be without.
Recently I have come across a very cheap version of what I will call a 'long-handled' garden scissor, this something between a secateur and garden shears. Annoyingly I had just previously bought a rather upmarket version, which promptly broke. My new cheap ones, after rather serious use, have resisted well, and in some magic way have remained sharp.
On the other hand cheap trowels, and garden forks are almost certainly a mistake since they bend under the slightest pressure. This is why for many years a heavy screwdriver has been my favourite weeding implement. Not only are they difficult to bend but they enter our usually heavy clay soil, being thin and pointed, much more easily than the more normal weeding implements. However, recently I have moved on to the heavy chisel. This has the advantages of the scewdriver but its wider blade can help in getting out some of the tougher weeds, while it can also be used as a chisel, that is to say one can cut off the weeds with it, in the same way as a hoe, which with the ground as baked as it is now, is almost the best one can do.
I am not really going to enter too closely into the often literally thorny question of pruning, but I am surprised how few people know, or remember, one or two of the 'golden' or at any rate traditional rules. I am on the whole a heavy prunner,following the rule that I was taught all too long ago that the more you prune the more the plant grows. Of course this policy can sometimes result in death - to every rule there are exceptions - but usually it works, and this should help those of you who are too timid with your pruning to be a little braver. Also very much worth remembering is that plants that flower in the first half of the year should for the most part be pruned immediately after flowering to give time for the flower buds to be formed during the second half of the year. If you then cut these off during the winter and early Spring you will not get any flowers during the coming year. Shrubs that flower late in the year create their flower buds during the first half of the year, so cutting them back in February/ March only encourages the flowering stems to grow.
The same rule can be applied to clematis. The later flowerers, such as the viticelli group, my favourites with the smaller flowers but lots of them, should be pruned hard early in the year, similarly repeat flowering roses. Those that only flower once I at any rate treat these like any other such shrub, that is to say I cut them back after flowering, and then leave them alone. But no doubt everybody will have their own approach to the pruning of roses. It is not always easy to know what is for the best, but I am always comforted by the fact that one of great collectors of rose, the late Humphrey Brooke, solved the problem by never pruning at all.
