Sometimes December creeps by without much troubling the winter inhabitants of the greenhouse, which in my case are sort-of tender aeoniums and pelargoniums, and a couple of other tough succulents. But this year has been different. Winter has come on hard, with frosts and snow and many days and nights of sub-zero temperatures. These plants […]
Frosts really must be starting later, as I am sure that by this time in previous years I would have been forced to bring all of my tender plants into the greenhouse by increasing threats of icy nights and early mornings. Only in the last week or so has it felt cold and gloomy enough […]
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 […]
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: […]
We are finally into tomato season in the greenhouse. All of that preparation, nursing through the spring, staking, feeding, watering and general encouraging begins to finally pay off properly in August. Was it worth it? Well that depends. With a bit of luck you planted some beefsteak tomatoes. In a cool overcast summer you might […]
My scented pelargoniums have long been released from the greenhouse and are beginning to look their leafy best now, and producing their myriad scents in abundance: cinnamon, lemon, peppermint, spice, cola, and more. These plants are closely related to the bedding pelargoniums that we all plant in terracotta pots and hanging baskets to flower through […]
If you are lucky, and if the weather is warm and sunny, this should be the month when the crops sown in the greenhouse earlier in the year start to ripen. This is particularly the case if you don’t wait around for them to become big, allotment show prize-winning specimens, or even as big as […]
It is basil time in the greenhouse. The greenhouse is slowly emptying of seedlings as the weather warms up and I start to feel that it is safe enough to plant some things out, and so that makes room for those plants that will always need the little extra warmth. Basil is one of these […]
This month is a good moment to use the glasshouse to start off some annual flowers for cutting later in the summer. I am sowing some half hardy annuals at the moment: sunflowers, snapdragons, cleome and of course cosmos. All of these could potentially be sown direct out of doors once the weather warms, but […]
It is about this time of year that I start getting a little twitchy to do some sowing in the greenhouse. This is a bit unfortunate, as it is way too early for the vast majority of things. The exception is chillies and pea shoots, and so I have sown them both. They are sown […]
If you had space in the greenhouse, and time on your hands, you may well have sown your sweet peas in autumn. They are very happy with this treatment, and will put down good roots over winter and be ready to produce good early flowers this year. If, like me, you did not find the […]
The greenhouse is emptying now, with all of the tender vegetables of summer and autumn well over. The inhabitants from here to spring will be a very different set of plants, not those that need as close to Mediterranean heat as we can give them in this country, as is the case with the aubergines, […]
