I visited the London garden of my friend and fellow writer and blogger Laetitia Maklouf last week, the person I’m going to be when I grow up (and get a bit slimmer and buy some properly fabulous shoes). She is big on sweet peas, being the sort of gal who always has a jug of flowers […]

My greenhouse gets pretty gruesome towards the end of the season. Mine had become quite off-puttingly jungly, filled with collapsed stems, rotten tomatoes and a thriving community of snails. So the other morning I poured myself a big, steaming mug of tea (soon with added sprinkling of compost), rolled up my sleeves and had the […]

It’s been a mellow and mild autumn, and I have been tricked into not quite believing it would ever turn cold. This is a handy state of denial if you own a greenhouse, as lining the walls and doors for winter is truly one of the dullest jobs of the year: hours of painstaking fiddling […]

It’s such a spidery time of year now that I have had trouble finding spider-free pots for my cuttings. It doesn’t seem like the right time for cuttings, while everything is slowly but surely grinding to a halt. Perhaps it isn’t. I meant to do this in August. The idea is to keep my half […]

I have just visited the National Plant Collection of Passiflora cultivars at Tynings in North Somerset, and come away with my very own Passiflora edulis. A great number of the passion flowers produce edible fruits, so says Jane Lindsay, who holds the collection, but edulis is the sweetest and tastiest. It ain’t the prettiest, not […]

I’ve been visiting my nana’s house, which contains the greenhouse of my youth. My granddad always kept up the greenhouse, which was very much an all-tomato affair. I don’t recall seeing another plant in there, perhaps the odd chrysanthemum, on its way to be lined out in the garden, for cutting. All good old-school stuff. […]

Gardeners learn by experience, so everyone says, and if that is the case then I should be an expert on brassicas. I have had such calamitous experiences with brassicas that I have now reached the conclusion that they cannot even venture outside without the full set of belt and braces. They are the vegetable that […]

I started mine off reasonably early in the year, and moved them to the greenhouse at the right time, but they just haven’t come to much. They are very definitely alive but not particularly thriving and certainly not looking like they are going to produce any fruit any time soon. On holiday a couple of […]

A while ago I wrote here about planting potatoes in big pots in the greenhouse. Well they grew like the wind, seven (or so) times faster than those in the ground, filling the greenhouse with big, leafy growth. I decided the other day it was time to try eating some, and I plundered the container […]

I hate – almost to the point of wanting to stop growing them – tomato seedlings that have been in the house too long. Every time you water them the water spills out all over the windowsills (it’s gloss paint so it’s almost a waterproof tray, right) and it’s enough of a faff dashing to […]

Here are the lettuces I sowed in the greenhouse earlier in the year, ready for harvesting. They may not look ready to you, but I am following Charles Dowding’s method, and if Charles says they’re ready, they’re ready. Charles is salad leaf Zen master. His approach is a little different to the usual cut and […]