Winter Veg & Ribollita: have you read @lialeendertz‘s latest Hartley Magazine article yet? https://t.co/mHZINcF6wY… https://t.co/S6ZTohRHGF
Ban the bonfire
Consider the global air pollution crisis alongside the desperate need to conserve resources and there’s only one possible conclusion: it’s time to extinguish the tradition of the garden bonfire. As a boy, I was pretty whiffy. Out in the garden until dark, I would eventually come indoors, a noxious plume in my wake. A bath […]
Handmade business cards
At Hartley we always strive for perfection Whether creating a beautiful bespoke glasshouse, handmade for a customer, or one of our team meeting someone for the first time, we want to express our passion for business and products. Even our business cards get the handmade treatment from the skilled and traditional workforce at […]
Winter Veg and Ribollita
If you have made good use of your greenhouse for starting off winter vegetables last spring and summer you will be feeling pretty smug about the so-called veg crisis right now. Even me saying ‘so called’ is pretty smug, but as all good gardeners know, this is not really a veg crisis at all but […]
Echeverias, houseleeks from sunnier climes
“Why are you growing houseleeks in your greenhouse?” said a friend looking at some Echeverias I had around the base of a Bougainvillea. An easily made mistake for these are a fine example of parallel evolution. Houseleeks are temperate plants designed to survive conditions as harsh and impoverished as crevices of dirt on rock-piles or […]
The top ten shrubs for your winter #garden: https://t.co/JW6V7DbYX6 #gardening #plants https://t.co/38Mqx2Cis9
Chit Chat
Stand your potatoes rose end upwards in a bright, frost free spot. From February onwards, it’s time to sprout (or ‘chit’) new potatoes, to me, it is the first big signal that starts the gardening year. Put your potatoes in a tray or egg box with the ‘rose’ end, where all the buds are, at […]
Michele Keith’s Greenhouse – in Chilly Wyoming
I talked with Michele Keith about her greenhouse in Wyoming. Michele’s property, which is close to the eastern edge of Yellowstone, is 6,000 feet above sea level and in hardiness zone 4, so it gets very cold in winter. She had 36” of snowfall a week or so before our talk. But cold is not […]
Organic Potatoes
I’ve not grown potatoes in my garden for a while. I’d been keeping my precious veg space for crops that I considered to use the space better. But over this autumn and winter for some reason I’ve struggled to find organic potatoes locally and when I have they have been tasteless. Coupled with some scary […]
Is gardening really green? asks @earthFgardener in this fascinating article: https://t.co/uFU7yjIv96 #gardens… https://t.co/GxCtaxntVT
Compost by numbers
If you need to be inspired by the power of composting all over again, just take a look at the figures; the quantity of ‘waste’ that an ordinary bin can divert from landfill is quite remarkable. I stopped, teetering on the bin’s rim, about to make a terrible, albeit colourful, mistake. The first post-Christmas hoovering […]
Growing Sweet Peas
When everyone else is sowing sweet peas in their greenhouses and cold frames in autumn, I have learnt to hold my nerve and bide my time. I know that an autumn sowing is the accepted way, but it has never really worked for me. Perhaps because my greenhouse is not sited in the ideal sunny […]