It may be the depths of winter but it will not be very long at all until it is time to start sowing Brussels sprouts. This is how the year turns and surprises us: come February, just a few short weeks away, it will be time to sow. I realise I must get my early-sowing […]
Amongst the benefits a glasshouse offers can be year round flowers for cutting. Cut flowers are more expensive to purchase than most fruits and vegetables so really deserve some attention. And one of the best cut flowers for sheer endurance once cut is the Chincherinchee. Ornithogalum thyrsoides is a bulbous plant of the Lily family […]
With just two years left until the 2020 target for all gardening to be peat-free, it’s now obvious that ‘the market’ should never have been trusted to lead the way. Let’s hit pause on pantomime season, and jog our memories. This is from Richard Benyon, the then Natural Environment Minister, in December 2010: ‘The horticultural […]
As many of you may know I live in the wonderfully named village of Cold Aston, up above Bourton on the Water, and it lives up to its name wonderfully well because it’s chilly throughout the year. Many gardeners get my village mixed up with Cold Aston near Bath, the home of Derry Watkin’s Special […]
You need a greenhouse to crop Feijoas though not to grow these as ornamental evergreen shrubs. For these are fairly hardy, tougher than thought. I’ve had a couple surviving outdoors here in Norfolk for twenty plus years which have never fruited. First introduced from S. America in 1898 these are found in Botanic gardens though […]
Now it is getting chilly, terracotta or glazed pots should be wrapped with several layers of ‘bubble wrap’ or hessian and raised from the ground on bricks or pot feet to stop water-logging and reduce the chances of cracking. They can also be over-wintered in a frost-free glasshouse, at the base of a sheltered wall, […]
It’s very tempting to have an empty greenhouse during winter, but there are things you can grow. For many years now I’ve been taking the tomatoes out of one greenhouse, having a quick tidy up and popping winter salads in. It all began when I read that bagged salads might have been washed in diluted […]
Jean Vernon uncovers a few easy to grow perennial crops for your garden. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have a few vegetable plants in the garden that grow year on year and don’t need sowing, planting and constant attention? Well you can. Just like your raspberries and strawberries that get better and better as time […]
It litters our landscapes and pervades our soils, our seas, our atmosphere – and our plots. Tackling gardening’s dependency on plastic requires some radical new thinking. More moons ago than I dare count, I played my part in creating one of the most urgent and pernicious crises now bearing down on the living world. It’s […]
With the encroaching cold there is propagation to be done in unheated greenhouses or cold frames: hawthorns for hedges. Until recently I had a few hawthorn trees along the boundary with my neighbour, but we have chopped them right down to the base. The idea is to encourage them to sprout from the ground to […]
Often your glasshouse or conservatory collection will have a theme be it edible, scented or just all orange flowers. I have had several queries recently on plants typical of when dinosaurs ruled the Earth. An interesting question as if you want actual survivors from that period then the selection is rather limited and of course contains […]
Start clearing leaves as soon as they begin to fall. Leave a thick layer on the lawn and the grass below soon dies through lack of light – it encourages turf diseases, too. Choose a still day if you can or rake or blow them in the direction of the prevailing wind. After collection, rot […]
