I’ve got two daughters, Frances and Zoe, and Frances used to spend many a happy hour trying to do tricks with her Paul Daniels’ magic set. She’d arrive, complete with cape, top hat and wand, and then she’d entertain us with varying degrees of success whilst we tried to take it seriously. That was the […]
Aphids beware: the earth-friendly greenhouse gardener has a secret weapon, and it’s homing in on you. Don’t dwell on this for too long – it needs your quick-fire answer: which greenhouse gardening ally found in nature… is an acrobat, entertainer and plant pollinator, doesn’t bite or sting (although it fakes the latter), rids plants of […]
This year, British greenhouse and glasshouse manufacturer Hartley Botanic is celebrating a landmark 80th anniversary. The Lancashire-based business, which was founded in 1938 by brothers Vincent (RHS fellow) and Norman Hartley has been making its beautiful, handmade and bespoke aluminium greenhouses and glasshouses for 80 ‘trusted’ years, working from the same artisan factory beneath the […]
Growing dahlias with relative ease is one of the joys of having a glasshouse. Not that it is impossible to grow them without one – you can stick the tubers straight into the ground if you like – but starting them in the greenhouse gives them the best possible head start, and means that the […]
Some plants, and oddly rather many glasshouse plants, have somewhat misleading common names. This gem has perversely come to be known as Cineraria though it is not a Cineraria but a Senecio. Cinerarias are so named for their soft white downy leaves like cineres the Latin for ashes. Some Senecios also have white or grey […]
Have you noticed that produce has become more expensive in supermarkets lately? One reason is the cost of transporting fruits and vegetables from the southern hemisphere, another is unfavorable recent weather in California, a major supplier of produce, and a third is a decreased number of migrant workers available for harvests. If you’re a greenhouse […]
There’s a lot of unnecessary myth and magic about making garden compost says Jean Vernon First let’s unravel the confusion between the compost that you buy in bags for container plants and growing seeds. This, the trade, is called growing medium and is basically specially formulated to a precise recipe with a variety of ingredients, […]
Apart from the few days of summer last month we spent most of last month in low light, constant rain and chilling winds, so the ground is still too cold and wet for sowing crops directly and will be for a while yet, so thank goodness there is plenty to do in the greenhouse. Seeds […]
