The past few weeks have been quite exhilarating for gardeners: chores to tackle like cleaning out the potting shed, waking up the garden then attacking with vigor all the prepping, planting, and sorting before summer heat sets in. Along the Front Range the weather has been mixed, to say the least, with 90 degrees F […]
There’s a miracle ingredient that can keep your potting compost going on and on… but it comes with an environmental price-tag. This time last year, I was astounded by how well my greenhouse tomatoes were doing. Twelve months on, I’m truly gobsmacked at how well this year’s plants are faring. My astonishment has nothing to […]
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 […]
Diva or dependable? That is the question… As many of you know I’m wedded to my garden, my little corner of paradise in the Cotswolds. In late spring and summer, my sixty or so peonies open and the brashest of all is a lemon-yellow Itoh peony named ‘Bartzella’. The huge, flouncy flowers have led the […]
Don’t let the dreaded tomato blight reduce your harvest to mush; Jean Vernon has some timely advice. Anyone who grows tomatoes has probably experienced the highs and lows of the fantabulous greenhouse crop. Let’s be honest, tomatoes are fairly high maintenance. We spend time and effort sowing, growing, repotting, tying in, pinching out and feeding. […]
The Flowering Maple was once also popular as a houseplant but now sadly has fallen from favour. Our homes were colder and damper then than most are now and this tender shrub likes it cool definitely not hot and dry. Generally though this is an easy to care for and potentially flowering 365 days a […]
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The weather has been strange this spring, with low temperatures and chilling winds, punctuated by hot days. Gardeners are used to erratic conditions, for sure, but this spring has been very odd. One interesting feature is that drought and dry cold wind have meant the best slug free hostas in the garden for years and […]
Jean Vernon explains how going low-mow is good for your garden’s biodiversity and especially your garden pollinators If you’ve seen the call for no-mow May you might be wondering what it’s all about?? So, let me explain. No-mow May is a bandwagon that anyone with a garden can jump on. It’s a call to let […]
Plants will salve the wounds humans have inflicted on the landscape – but a little citizen rewilding can speed the process… and sow joy. It’s taken two decades for me to fully realise it: I’m gardening – in the foothills of Eryri in North Wales – in a land of industrial, human-made scars. A buzzard’s […]
Dahlias come in many colors, shapes, and sizes, which is a major reason for their popularity. If you’re a fan of huge flowers, you can grow dinner-plate variety dahlias, with blooms up to a foot across. If compact blooms are your preference, you can grow small, pompom dahlias with tight flowers balls only about two […]
