Always site your glasshouse in your sunniest spot, goes the gardening wisdom, and quite rightly too.  There is little point going to all the trouble of buying and erecting a structure perfectly designed to capture every ray of sunlight and drop of warmth if you then plonk it in the lee of a building or […]

Also known as Fringe flowers and Poor man’s orchids Schizanthus are a glorious way of filling a glasshouse with summer colour. Coming from S. America this small genus related to potatoes derives both common and scientific names from pretty pansy like blooms. These have split corollas and look much like orchids, and even more like […]

Fresh tomatoes eaten straight from the plant, are one of the great pleasures of summer. So to get the best from your plants, keep them well shaded, ventilated, fed and watered throughout the growing season and ‘pinch out’ the stem just above the fourth truss to ensure that the fruits ripen. Feed with Epsom Salts […]

Strawberries are possibly the plant, or fruit that just about everybody wants to grow. And with the extortionate price of these fruits in the shops and the deliciousness of these rich red fruits, it’s no wonder that everyone wants to grow them. When a bowl of strawberries at Wimbledon contains a handful of fruit (usually […]

New research confirms that ‘perfect for pollinators’ plants can contain potentially toxic pesticides – so what can gardeners do about it, and how can we improve the odds for insects? A year ago I interviewed Dave Goulson, Professor of Biology at Sussex University, about his six-year study into the effects of pesticides, particularly neonicotinoids or […]

The tomatoes that started in the greenhouse need planting out now – a little late but life and half term had their own ideas, so a couple of weeks ago I potted them up into big pots to keep them ticking over, and now is the moment to get these big brutes into the polytunnel. […]