In the deep midwinter…you can still sow broad beans and peas. The great thing about the greenhouse is that it provides an opportunity for the most out-of-season seed sowing. It isn’t actually out of season, it just severely feels it. I sowed my broad beans the day before midwinter’s day. The day had been dull, […]

Where are the weather forecasters who suggested that this was a going to be a long, cold winter? Some of the borders are waterlogged, as the saturated clay soil can absorb no more rain. It certainly limits gardening activities, other than spiking the lawn with a garden fork in a futile attempt to improve the […]

A sun-soaked holiday taking in some of the world’s most beautiful gardens is a lovely idea, given the growing year we’ve had – but only until you join up your thinking. I have waited long enough. I had hoped, given time, that some celebrated gardener would, during some queasy moment on deck, look out across […]

You can grow cucumbers without a greenhouse but these are poor things by comparison with varieties grown under cover. Outdoor or ridge cucumbers are spiny and stumpy whilst indoor ones are smooth skinned, long and gently curved. Both originated long ago in India with the greenhouse strains selected and improved in China and Japan. The greenhouse […]

D-e –c-e-m-b-e- r say it slowly, because it has come round so quickly! Can’t believe it – is it my age? (no, cheeky!), probably because there has been so much to do in the garden and last month’s weather lurching from waterlogging to freezing then back, hasn’t helped at all. The most aggravating disruption has […]

Now that I am the proud owner of not one but two greenhouses – the ultra gorgeous and swish mini one and the ancient, tumble down, normal-sized one at the end of the garden – I suppose it was inevitable that sooner or later one of them would start to get neglected. I expect you […]

Which came first: The grower then the greenhouse, or the greenhouse then the grower? The vast architectural wonders on show at our national botanic gardens are a beauty to behold, a statement of wealth and abundance and a result of the plant hunting mania that gripped the aristocracy with its green-fingered hunger for exotic rarities […]

Both these are hardy fruits and so do not need a greenhouse, however having one gives much earlier and much more reliable crops. Just the protection from frosts, rain and birds is immensely valuable, the earliness is a huge bonus. Apricots and cherries need similar treatment to peaches though preferring cooler drier conditions, a freer […]

Chrysanthemums are a proper, old-fashioned allotment flower. The sort of plant your granddad grew in perfect rows in order to cut a neat bunch of flowers for your granny – if she was lucky – but more likely to compete with the other old boys on the allotment over who could grow the biggest, and […]

What do you get when you cross crowd funding with plant breeding? At the Sárvári Research Trust, it’s the chance for ordinary gardeners to have a stake in the future.