I confess—I’m a poinsettia composter. I tried growing them on after the holidays with my other houseplants, and the results were leggy and dismal. Now I’m talking with Kym Pokorny, a gardener, a 20-year veteran garden writer, and communications specialist at Oregon State University Extension Service. She’s always been interested in this iconic holiday plant. […]
Weave magic with willow, for seasonal cheer without an entwined ecological cost. Bar a few rare leaps, my heart is apt to sink at this time of year. Often, it quietly howls, when bemusement turns to anger, then despair. I know it doesn’t sound like I’m brimful of seasonal spirit – winter solstice or Christmas; […]
These days, more than ever, words matter. And in the realm of this column I got to wondering about the meaning of conservatory, which is more complex, it turns out, than the one for greenhouse. The latter is pretty much self-explanatory, a house where green things grow. But on turning to my copy of the […]
For a frost free greenhouse African Corn Lilies are one of the easier tender spring flowers to grow for cutting though left they make a grand display over many weeks. Ixias have been popular in the U.S.A. and other countries since these were first introduced from South Africa a couple of centuries ago yet have […]
The winter months, when apart from popping into the garden to enjoy the winter flowers and harvest vegetables are one time of year when you really appreciate the pleasures of having a greenhouse to potter in. It’s not the busiest period of the year but you can still weed the benches, continue to sow ‘Cut […]
I recently cooked a Thai dinner with ingredients from my greenhouse, including kaffir lime leaves, galangal, lemongrass, Thai basil, and Thai hot peppers. Here are tips on growing each. Kaffir lime is a small tree with serrated leaves that are chopped or sliced into tiny slivers. To harvest these leaves for Asian meals, buy a […]
It is just about time for the dahlias that I planted in pots in the greenhouse in spring to come in for the winter, or else to be prepared for a winter outside. The latter is a bit of a risky game, particularly if we have a winter like last year’s. It chilled many dahlia […]
It’s the time of year for giving thanks. And as a professional garden writer, I am thankful for the exciting new plants from growers and marketers that I get to trial and review. However, sometimes many seasons pass before plants demonstrate just how good they really are. So, I’d like to share a couple of […]
One of the first things I did when I moved to Cold Aston, some fourteen years ago, was to plant five fruit trees. I chose three apples and two pears, but I’ve had far more success with apples than pears. You see, apples cope well with my chilly conditions and we’ve been eating ‘Pitmaston Pine-apple’ […]
Until plastic started washing up on our beaches and hitting the television screens with heart wrenching scenes of wildlife entangled in rubbish, plastic was fantastic. In many ways it still is fantastic, it’s not really the plastic that’s the problem, its what we do with it and how we dispose of it. For such a […]
As I write this in the days before Thanksgiving, snow is falling steadily in the Rockies. It was 60 degrees yesterday, so I had an energetic day, washing windows (the better to see the snow!) and hauling the lawn furniture indoors. In these days of indoor/outdoor blurring, where the conservatory is another room of the […]
The other day I finally got to the bottom of something that had nagged at me for a long time: the compost bin. I hadn’t gotten around to actually harvesting finished compost from that bin for months. That’s an absurd waste in at least two ways: If it’s still in the bin, the compost isn’t […]
