Sounds like a sneeze, but very pretty, Kalanchoe Kalanchoes are tender greenhouse succulents with masses of brilliantly coloured small flowers that last many weeks in bloom. Most species come from West Africa, Asia and Madagascar, though the name is apparently of Chinese origin. Anyway Kalanchoes have also been called Bryophyllums, Kitchingias, Crassulas and Vereas. One […]
September is traditionally the month of lawn maintenance. If you have a small lawn, rake out the ‘thatch’ or dead grass and moss that has accumulated over the mowing season, with a wire rake; on larger lawns, use a scarifier. Spike compacted areas with a fork, face the front of the fork, then push the […]
Maybe I’m getting old, but I find I am more and more attracted to plant collections these days. I used to think it was a male phenomenon, that need to tick boxes and own every single member of a plant family, but now I’m not so sure. Don’t get me wrong, I haven’t filled the […]
I am quite enjoying the sudden cool, and it is leading to a bit of a changing of the guard in the greenhouse. While this has until now been an incredible summer for anything that loves heat – tomatoes, chillies and even aubergines currently thrive in both greenhouse and polytunnel – there is one crop […]
If you cultivate an enlightened attitude to wild plants instead of trying to eradicate them, your garden can share in their success. Put ‘kill dandelions’ into a search engine and up flash nigh on half a million ‘hits’. A good chunk of these include advice on exterminating dandelions using chemical weedkillers (especially the worldwide pollutant […]
Make Your Own Bumble Bee Nest with our DIY Guide Over recent decades numbers of bumblebees have begun to decline, one of the main causes of this being the changes in agricultural practises that have removed the numbers of flowering plants, giving bumblebees little to feed on. One of the main ways we can try […]
Without a greenhouse you can easily produce a near miraculous wonder crop. Indian cress grows luxuriantly from late spring till the autumn frosts almost anywhere, however under cover you will enjoy it for much much longer and without the weather damaging the flowers or pretty foliage. If this were a new discovery you would be […]
This year’s garlic suffered from leek rust due to the damp spring and the crop is poor. The orange pustules over the leaves appeared early and became so bad that the foliage died before the ‘bulb’ had time to develop. I was growing a variety, that’s normally at home in mid France, just to see […]
