Now that the greenhouse is emptied of summer tomatoes, it’s the perfect moment to move in some bulbs. With a bit of luck and the wind behind you, you can have them in flower for Christmas, but if you don’t manage to hit Christmas just see them as a boon, something spring-like and jolly for […]
Take a wander around your garden, or into your greenhouse and I could almost guarantee there are plants that have a direct memory of a friend or loved one. In my garden I have cuttings of my grandmother’s rosemary plant. That in itself is quite ironic because rosemary is associated with remembrance. So much so […]
Be warned, these unique fruits may lure Blackbirds and Thrushes to venture into your greenhouse just to steal them. There is something about the colour, look or taste of these blue apple-berries that is irresistibly attractive to them. Which is odd as they are edible to us though not remarkably palatable, certainly not very more-ish […]
Now that the weather is starting become distinctly autumnal, it’s time to pick your last tomatoes and ripen them on the windowsill or greenhouse. Some green, blemish free fruit can be stored in a cool drawer, to be ripened in the fruit-bowl or in a paper bag with an over ripe banana, as needed during […]
Scratch beneath the surface, and this too is a season of new life, as the alchemical magic of leaf mouldering gets underway. Autumn may signal death and decay for some, but in my garden it’s when renewable, replenishing new life actually arrives (and no, it’s not a load of steaming manure). This vitalising, life-bringing force […]
My watering can sprang a leak and I went online to find the best one for watering greenhouse plants. Frankly, from what I found, very few cans were worth spending a lot of money on. Most were cheap plastic cans that will spring a leak if you try to use them more than twice. (Then […]
Writing this on the first day of autumn, whistling a sigh of relief that we got all the tomatoes and peaches in before frost turned them to mush or the squirrels got them. I the garden is taking on the shades of fall, burnished gold, steely blue, burgundy purple, while the rugosa roses are setting […]
Lots of people in horticulture will have very fond memories of out late Queen Elizabeth, including the staff and management of Hartley Botanic. Her late Majesty adored going to the Chelsea Flower Show and Hartley are regular attendees. I particularly remember her visit in 2012, the year of the Diamond Jubilee, because an entire military […]
A few weeks ago, I took a day trip to the tiny town of Elkton, Oregon to visit butterflies. The Elkton Community Education Center includes Elkton’s library, community meeting area, and other historic buildings, but the Butterfly Pavilion, a netted hoop house that shares the open parkland on the Umpqua River was my goal. But […]
It’s been an amazing summer in the greenhouse for peppers, aubergines and anything Mediterranean. What these crops need in order to produce at their best is warmth and lots over it over a long period of time, and they certainly got that. So much so that the challenge this year was cooling down the greenhouse: […]
If you grow tomatoes, you are probably now awash with lots of fruit. It’s a great challenge finding ways to use up a glut of tomatoes and there are many wonderful ways to make use of this fabulous, flavour filled surplus. Gardeners that grow tomatoes should now have a bit of a glut and be […]
In my last piece I described a greenhouse gem; the chocolate scented Cosmos, which I also noted was not exactly one of the neatest looking shrubs. Oddly, another powerfully chocolate scented flower, Berlandiera lyrata, also comes as an unruly small shrub. There’s little obvious similarity in these even though they’re both in the family Asteraceae, […]
