Often the most rewarding greenhouse will be one you’ve filled with plants you’ve grown from seed. It’s that personal connection, you’ve known them at each stage, rather like your own children. And if you have children little will give them such an appreciation of nature as growing plants from seeds in fruits they’ve eaten. There […]

I recently blogged how simple it is for you to use your greenhouse to force, that is bring on much earlier, crops than by growing these out of doors. Now as winter approaches we can also use our greenhouse to extend the productive life of other crops, and produce many for eating fresh throughout winter. Obviously […]

I’ve been asked which greenhouse plant is top of the GYO essential list, practical, productive, with the most outstanding nutritional value? Unfortunately this would be trays of kale and watercress. However also high in the ranking is a little grown relative of tomatoes that I featured here a decade ago. Still not widely known the […]

Your greenhouse can increase your GYO production in so many ways. Naturally one’s most often used for starting plants off earlier and in summer most greenhouses are filled with tender annual crops. Recently they’re becoming utilised for growing salads and other leafy crops almost year round. Of course the frost free greenhouse was actually effectively […]

Some may want to move from a purely ornamental greenhouse to also producing items for the table but worried this may result in the greenhouse not being ‘quite as pretty’. Well Citrus may be your answer. No other choice is so good looking the whole of the year, so neat, so reliable, and gives a […]

A greenhouse of foliage and flowering plants is easy to tend. Naturally you water, feed occasionally, maybe dead-head and sometimes propagate. It’s important to open and close ventilation unless you have an automatic set-up. And to keep watch for pests or diseases, and then take action. The care required is not huge however it increases […]

A greenhouse is wonderful full of gorgeous foliage and beautiful flowers with lovely scents but when needed can become a remarkably productive food machine. The extra warmth and shelter enables more outdoor crops, to get others off to a flying start and produces huge quantities of salads and fruits almost year round. Fortunately for us […]

An excellent architectural plant for a frost free greenhouse or conservatory is the Pony-tail, Bottle or Elephant’s Foot palm. A corky trunk with an emerging mane of strange linear leaves makes this most striking and even more so when you notice the exceptionally wide base. Slow growing this relation of the better known Cordyline palms […]

Few flowers are so brilliant as greenhouse or florist’s Azaleas. Coming in a profusion of varieties these are especially welcome bursts of colour throughout late winter. Such vivid blooms come in whites through velvety pinks to extreme reds on neat compact, usually, evergreen plants. Of course just as with their outdoor cousins our indoor Azaleas […]

This curious genus of pretty onion like flowers from South Africa will both grace, and scent, your cool greenhouse though perhaps in ways you did not expect. Much grown outdoors in countries warmer than Britain and often along paths in the manner of chives this tuberous family also much resemble those Alliums in having garlic […]

To grow this really pretty bloom year after year you want a warm greenhouse or conservatory as it is tender. (Though to be fair some have succeeded for a while in sheltered sites outdoors.) Long loved in China and Japan the first Golden Spider lily bulbs arrived in the seventeen hundreds on the clipper ships […]