Hartley Magazine

All the latest news, hints, tips and advice from our experts

Written in United Kingdom

Sow simple

‘Expert’ advice is good for filling column inches and boosting social media profiles – but much of it is altogether less useful when it comes to getting new gardeners growing. Whatever happened to simplicity, to straightforwardness, to easiness – especially in our gardens and greenhouses? Amid spring’s usual gardening febrility, there’s a noticeable explosion of […]

Written in United Kingdom

Making the Most of your Hartley Greenhouse

I regret to say that I only have a modest, unheated Hartley greenhouse, although I fantasise about bigger and better on an almost daily basis. However, my greenhouse serves me well in every season, despite its size, because it captures precocious warmth and sunlight. The air inside is often degrees warmer in winter and early […]

The Future is a Garden … with tomatoes.

To paraphrase the 18th-century essayist, Alexander Pope, “hope springs eternal in the gardener’s breast.” Certainly true of this one and others like me across the Front Range, as we keep a watchful eye on the weather, and a hopeful one on our tomato seedlings. Is there anything more redolent of hopeful visions of summer bounty […]

A Country Garden Starts in the Greenhouse

A month or two ago, I was watching an English whodunnit and was impressed by the country gardens where the story took place, so I decided that this year I would expand my English country-style flower garden. I purchased seeds for hollyhocks, cleome, rudbeckia, coreopsis, primrose, and columbine and planted them in my basement germination […]

Written in United Kingdom

Less Welcome Greenhouse Guests

The protected environment inside a greenhouse is not just good for the plants. Jean Vernon has a few unwelcome guests to evict. It’s spring and nature is stirring. The birds are nesting, the bees are emerging, and the garden is surging into growth. There’s that earthy smell in the greenhouse with seeds sprouting, cuttings rooting […]

Written in United Kingdom

April is the month when seed sowing is in full swing.

From now on the weather should begin to warm as spring progresses (note the use of the word ‘should’…. you never know these days!). Sow broad beans, spinach, cabbage, calabrese, kohlrabi, cauliflower, lettuce, peas for pods and shoots onions, salad onions, turnip, radish, beetroot, leeks, leaf beet and chard in the greenhouse. From the middle […]