One of the exciting things that happens this month in my greenhouse is the blossoming of the nectarine. It always feels too early, blossoming while it feels so wintery out there, and is one of the first bits of blossom in my garden. It is a wonderful harbinger of spring. My ‘tree’ is actually a […]

The weather may be cold and grim and the days short and unpromising, but a great use for the greenhouse in these colder months is to use it to bring on some early spring flowers. They bring with them that whisper of warmer, lighter, more hopeful days to come, and even the act of planting […]

There is not a great deal going on in the greenhouse at the moment. It is doing its job, protecting those plants that need to be kept out of winter rains, or that need just a little bit of protection from the cold, and those plants are in a bit of a holding pattern – […]

Now that the greenhouse has been emptied of the mass of soft green growth that fills it over summer – mainly tomatoes, which are now thoroughly over, those many that didn’t ripen sitting preserved in chutney in the cupboard – I can think about how I might use it over winter. One of the ways […]

It is becoming hard to ignore the fact that my tender plants need to go back inside the greenhouse. It has been a mild autumn so far, and the temptation to leave them outside is huge. They look so nice, and are still mixed up with the houseplants too, which have been outside for a […]

Among the many seeds we sowed in the greenhouse this spring was a selection of annual climbers. They have taken their time to get going, perhaps owing to being sown a little later than ideal, I have to admit, but I think some of the blame can be laid at the door of this gloomy […]

Harvest time is here in my garden, and the plants that were nurtured in the greenhouse during the chilly, uncertain spring months are finally coming into their own. My produce has been a little slow in coming this year, which I can blame on the cool, wet summer although I suspect human error had something […]

The greenhouse is full to bursting at the moment with tomatoes coming into fruit, peppers still thinking about making fruits but looking very happy and healthy as they do, as well as a couple of cucumbers, a melon and lots of basil plants, created from buying one supermarket pot and splitting it, to make a […]

If you didn’t manage to get your vegetable seeds sown in the greenhouse earlier in the year, you can still fill your veg beds for summer. Go into any garden centre now and you will find rows and rows of small vegetable plants, ready to plant straight out. These little plants are a great resource […]

Nothing about this year is making me want to start moving anything tender out of the greenhouse and into the open air. Normally around this time I would be starting to think about planting out – a tiny bit earlier than elsewhere but generally here in Bristol in the south west we have a mild […]

It is not too late to use your greenhouse to force some early strawberries. There have of course been strawberries in the supermarkets all winter long, but these are grown in much warmer parts of the world, often with supplementary lights and heating, and then flown to us, coming with a huge carbon footprint and […]

A few years ago I moved my dwarf nectarine into the greenhouse, and it is at this moment in the year that I am glad I did. My nectarine is a dwarf variety, and has lived in a pot out of doors for many years, and so I am lucky that it is moveable. It […]