Jean Vernon explains the June Drop phenomenon, what it means and what to do June can be a strange month in our gardens. While the garden is burgeoning with lush vegetation in the moist warm weather, something very strange is happening on our fruit trees. Particularly the apples. If you watch your apple trees carefully […]

Lobelia is a world-wide genus of uncommonly good glasshouse flowers, indeed almost every member of this large genus has attractive blooms, often coming in masses, usually in a shade of blue. Lobelia has shrubby, evergreen and herbaceous members, annuals, biennials and perennials, there are even a few hardy sorts for the outdoor garden. However the […]

Now your greenhouse tomatoes are growing steadily, it is important to remove the side shoots of ‘cordon’ varieties to form a single productive stem. You don’t need scissors or secateurs, just snap them off with your finger and thumb. Make sure your tomatoes are well watered, too, particularly if they are in growing bags where […]

I’ve got two daughters, Frances and Zoe, and Frances used to spend many a happy hour trying to do tricks with her Paul Daniels’ magic set. She’d arrive, complete with cape, top hat and wand, and then she’d entertain us with varying degrees of success whilst we tried to take it seriously. That was the […]

It’s not just garden plants and wildflowers that offer vital food sources for our wild bees. Many plants that some regard as weeds are also rich in pollen and nectar Plants and bees have evolved together over millennia, with their lives intertwined so intricately that one without the other will struggle to survive. We know […]

Growing dahlias with relative ease is one of the joys of having a glasshouse. Not that it is impossible to grow them without one – you can stick the tubers straight into the ground if you like – but starting them in the greenhouse gives them the best possible head start, and means that the […]

Some plants, and oddly rather many glasshouse plants, have somewhat misleading common names. This gem has perversely come to be known as Cineraria though it is not a Cineraria but a Senecio. Cinerarias are so named for their soft white downy leaves like cineres the Latin for ashes. Some Senecios also have white or grey […]

Apart from the few days of summer last month we spent most of last month in low light, constant rain and chilling winds, so the ground is still too cold and wet for sowing crops directly and will be for a while yet, so thank goodness there is plenty to do in the greenhouse. Seeds […]

There’s a lot of unnecessary myth and magic about making garden compost says Jean Vernon First let’s unravel the confusion between the compost that you buy in bags for container plants and growing seeds. This, the trade, is called growing medium and is basically specially formulated to a precise recipe with a variety of ingredients, […]

There’s one plant I really look forward to in May and that’s the tall, statuesque allium, because they provide strong verticals, round or drumstick heads and vibrant colour. They’re versatile too, because these tall early-summer alliums look equally at home in the vegetable garden, or the flower border, and you can create your own river […]

One of the greenhouse crops that I have never quite cracked is aubergines. Perhaps they just need more than I’ve got: time to get them going early enough; patience and light to nurse them through late spring indoors; and then heat in the summer. Obviously with the eternal optimism of the gardener I am fairly […]

The glasshouse flower if you need bloom almost any month of the year the Poppy Anemones should be more commonly grown as these are also so useful for cut flowers. Anemone coronaria is the original wild species native to the Mediterranean region and this makes it more tender than most other species many of which […]