I’ve been sowing vegetables in the greenhouse this week, going by my usual method at times of high intensity sowing, which is to say: one thing at a time. I concentrated on sowing five different courgettes on Monday, put in a second lot of peas on Tuesday, sowed some radishes in a quick tea break […]

The greenhouse isn’t just handy for heat and protection from the elements; this year I am using it as protection from pests too, like a massive environmesh tent. Once upon a time I used to grow lots of lilies. They were a favourite and a regular. I was a sucker for a properly heady scent, […]

Lily of the valley is easy to force in the greenhouse or the house, or at least this is what I have been told. Despite the fact that I really love the scent of lily of the valley and own a greenhouse, I have somehow never quite got around to forcing my own for pots […]

If you have a grapevine in your greenhouse this is the perfect moment to give it its annual prune, and I have been attacking my absolute beast of a vine. Grape vines make wonderful greenhouse plants in one way: the warmth and shelter makes for an environment much closer to the climates they like to […]

I am starting to choose seeds for next year’s greenhouse growing and one of the crops I am most keen to try again is melon. This is a crop I have only recently started growing, having in the past not entirely believed it possible. In a former, more carefree life I backpacked around Australia and […]

There has been a rather delicate new addition to my greenhouse this year. Not only delicate, but expensive. My new kaffir lime tree cost £30, and ‘tree’ is really stretching the trades descriptions act to its limit. It’s a stick with a few branches coming off of it, but it doesn’t need to be big, […]

By anyone’s measuring, this has been a rubbish year for chillies, tomatoes, aubergines, and all things Mediterranean in temperament, even if you have had the luxury of a greenhouse in which to grow them. A greenhouse or polytunnel magnifies the warmth of summer, but if the summer doesn’t have much in the way of warmth […]

There have been few times the greenhouse has looked scruffier. This year I have grown a couple of tomatoes and aubergines in there, rather than transferring everything to the polytunnel, and it is true that these few lonely plants are still ripening up their fruits and looking green and healthy. But the rest of the […]

I count an excess of basil as one of the real luxuries of owning a greenhouse. I was never able to produce much of it before, but now I have it in aromatic abundance. Outdoors it always struggled for me, and created a meagre, sickly crop that I would have to eke out with a […]

My grape vine isn’t quite in my greenhouse, but it is in the next best place. I have a deck outside my back door, covered with polycarbonate sheeting to keep out the rain but let in the light. Here I have tried to emulate the vineries in grand walled gardens by planting the feet of […]

Somehow it is June, and yet the greenhouse is still full. Everything should be out and yet there it sits, or at least, a good deal of it. I can quite easily blame this on the cold weather: I have visited a few gardens recently where the plants were planted out ‘on time’ and now […]

Now here’s a sight to strike fear into the heart of any greenhouse owner. The greenhouse is full to bursting with healthy young plants, all waiting to head out into the allotment. Despite a few false starts and a couple of non-germinations it has been a productive spring, most things were sown around the correct […]