This year I am actively planting for hope. I’ve decided that the only way to offset all the doom and gloom on the news is to make small but powerful steps that will make a difference not just to me but to the garden and the greater environment too. Focus on the positives Everything we […]

It is hard not to fantasise about summer during these dark days, particularly when one of the very few jobs that really needs in the greenhouse doing propels you forward to the warmest days of the year. Right now not a lot needs sowing, but chillies do, their season so long that if they are […]

With a greenhouse we can start producing crops months sooner than outdoors. Most advantageous is bringing in tub grown fruit trees and bushes to force earlier, weather and bird-proof, harvests. Indeed bringing in Peaches, and even more so, Nectarines, in tubs is THE way to prevent Peach Leaf Curl, and ripen perfect fruits, earlier. Apricots […]

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 […]

Of all the gardening gifts that go on giving, there’s a clear – and solar-powered – winner. Many of us gardeners, myself included, are about to be crushed under a barrowload of gifts we never wanted – much of them little more than ephemeral, opportunistic tat. It’s easy for this season of goodwill to slip […]

It’s just turned December in the UK and until a few days ago there were still butterflies and bumblebees foraging on the winter shrubs. In my garden my resident wasp nest was still very much active, and there were many late summer flowering plants actually still in bloom, like cosmos and coreopsis and roses. Social […]

The darkest days of the year find me in limbo land, because the garden’s largely hibernating. There are snowdrop tips everywhere, a promise of things to come. The witch hazel buds hang in the air, like tiny fists in snuff-brown gloves, but soon their marmalade strands will break free and flow. For now, I’m reduced […]

We heat greenhouses to keep tender plants safe through winter and start off outdoor plants earlier. In my last piece I noted how we could save on that heating by maintaining good air circulation with low humidity. These conditions reduce mould on our plants, something surer to kill than the low temperatures themselves. However keeping […]

Plans to redevelop ‘redundant’ commercial greenhouses overlook the huge opportunity to redeploy them: the means to renewable ultra-local horticulture is standing right there. Big greenhouses mean bigger opportunities: I don’t know any gardener who wouldn’t upsize their undercover growing space if they could. In a greenhouse, bigger means more of everything: space, potential, food, flowers, […]

I spend a great deal of time in my study. Many a time I sit there wishing I was in the garden instead of being tied to my screen, metaphorically speaking. However, when I get a whole day in the garden the weather sometimes lets me down. A few days ago, it lashed down for […]