March is the month of seed sowing, especially in the vegetable garden. Start preparing your seedbeds beforehand by raking the ground to a rough level and covering it with clear or black polythene to warm the soil. Clear polythene is preferable, as it encourages weed seeds to germinate which can be hoed off beforehand, so […]
Yes you can, they are easy to grow, something a little different and a great way to get the kids interested in gardening. Far from being a new super food, tiger nuts were actually a mainstay in the war and post war era, a slightly sweet treat that offered something a little different for the […]
Consider the global air pollution crisis alongside the desperate need to conserve resources and there’s only one possible conclusion: it’s time to extinguish the tradition of the garden bonfire. As a boy, I was pretty whiffy. Out in the garden until dark, I would eventually come indoors, a noxious plume in my wake. A bath […]
If you have made good use of your greenhouse for starting off winter vegetables last spring and summer you will be feeling pretty smug about the so-called veg crisis right now. Even me saying ‘so called’ is pretty smug, but as all good gardeners know, this is not really a veg crisis at all but […]
“Why are you growing houseleeks in your greenhouse?” said a friend looking at some Echeverias I had around the base of a Bougainvillea. An easily made mistake for these are a fine example of parallel evolution. Houseleeks are temperate plants designed to survive conditions as harsh and impoverished as crevices of dirt on rock-piles or […]
Stand your potatoes rose end upwards in a bright, frost free spot. From February onwards, it’s time to sprout (or ‘chit’) new potatoes, to me, it is the first big signal that starts the gardening year. Put your potatoes in a tray or egg box with the ‘rose’ end, where all the buds are, at […]
I talked with Michele Keith about her greenhouse in Wyoming. Michele’s property, which is close to the eastern edge of Yellowstone, is 6,000 feet above sea level and in hardiness zone 4, so it gets very cold in winter. She had 36” of snowfall a week or so before our talk. But cold is not […]
I’ve not grown potatoes in my garden for a while. I’d been keeping my precious veg space for crops that I considered to use the space better. But over this autumn and winter for some reason I’ve struggled to find organic potatoes locally and when I have they have been tasteless. Coupled with some scary […]
If you need to be inspired by the power of composting all over again, just take a look at the figures; the quantity of ‘waste’ that an ordinary bin can divert from landfill is quite remarkable. I stopped, teetering on the bin’s rim, about to make a terrible, albeit colourful, mistake. The first post-Christmas hoovering […]
When everyone else is sowing sweet peas in their greenhouses and cold frames in autumn, I have learnt to hold my nerve and bide my time. I know that an autumn sowing is the accepted way, but it has never really worked for me. Perhaps because my greenhouse is not sited in the ideal sunny […]
Okay of the many tender glasshouse plants Saintpaulias can be one of the trickiest. Yet almost everyone knew an aunt with a massive old African violet enduring on for years blooming almost perpetually. It will have been the original blueish violet flowered Saintpaulia ionantha, and it was probably set on a table in some north […]
Several times over the past few weeks, I have spotted a male Bull Finch among the leafless trees in my garden. It is a beautiful bird with grey, salmon pink and black markings but it can be a pest to gardeners. Normally bullfinches eat grass and weed seeds, but when supplies run low and temperatures […]
