Social distancing quandaries, money worries and stock shortages are making garden centre trips fraught with anxiety – but home-mixed solutions will eke out your compost supplies. Seedlings need potting. Young plants are dropping through the letterbox, ready to pot up. Your greenhouse tomatoes, peppers and other veg are ready for their summer containers. You’ve got […]
The most experienced of gardeners can be bested by vine weevils – but calling in a microscopic earth-friendly ally will settle the score. Otiorhynchus sulcatus got me in the end. After 17 years of mostly grub-free bliss, when I’ve relied largely – apart from the occasional gentle shove – on nature (and some wire mesh) to […]
In the troubled weeks ahead, greenhouses will become hubs of solace and sustenance – so if you don’t have one, or can’t use yours, some joined-up thinking is in order. Big or small, bought or inherited, loved or neglected – there are tens of thousands of bits of gardening kit scattered across our anxious land […]
Amidst mounting evidence of climate chaos, how best to cultivate a planet-friendly garden? As the flood waters rise, so do new and troubling questions. I live and garden in a land of conundrums. The sheer power of our two most recent storms – Ciara and Dennis – has hit communities hard here in Snowdonia’s foothills. […]
It’s time for some citizen gardening: instead of glib media soundbites about using peat-free compost, let’s crowd-source the low-down on what actually works. This spring needs a gardening health warning: there may be ill-judged and unwise information ahead, and we need to be on the lookout for it. Big, positive things will be happening in […]
A deep winter freeze can be filled with challenge, surprise, sadness – and moments of unfettered joy. My tips, and findings from winters past, will help to keep your greenhouse and garden ticking over when temperatures plummet, keep wildlife safe, and keep you cheerful through the bleak months ahead. Snow load Most greenhouses are strong […]
Daily tidings of impending ecological catastrophe make it hard to stay positive – but gardeners have can-do ways to mitigate the crisis. Down one day, up the next. Gloom and doom gathers, before some light shines in. ‘Why bother?’ worms its way in, and then is cheerily ousted (usually) by a jolt of ‘Yes!’ can-do […]
Boost your weary greenhouse soil in autumn, watch nature work its magic over winter, and see it come back to life in time for spring. One minute it’s flooded, the next it’s baked dust-dry by the sun’s glass-amplified rays. It’s flogged like a workhorse, non-stop, from the first hints of spring to the fading days […]
Let locally adapted self-seeders run wild, and watch your garden come alive. It’s been a wild summer in my garden – in every sense. Diminished gardening time has meant that many plants and projects have run away from me, unleashed and untamed, egged on by peaks of heat and unseasonal lashings of rain. Stuff has […]
As global heating escalates, we can’t go on gardening as usual. It’s time for disruptive gardeners’ questions – and for some serious answers from our ‘experts’. ‘Thought I’d never make it!’ A middle-aged, tanned and fragrant woman slid in through the back door. ‘What’s going on out the front?’ She dabbed sweat from her forehead. ‘We’re […]
Forget complex, resource-hungry gadgetry, and soak up simplicity: earth-friendly mulches make greenhouse watering easy and guilt-free. Gardening – especially any-weather greenhouse gardening – is a just-steps-away activity that offers us sanctuary from our increasingly busy-busy, rushed, technology-driven lives. Plants don’t go ever-faster to keep up with the latest app, or to improve their efficiency; they just grow, chasing […]
Cut your ties to plastic – there are plenty of renewable options that provide plant support without microplastic pollution. Off they go, carried on the breeze – motes of pink, persistent pollution blowing up and away into our world. A small, shimmering cloud of glinting alien fragments, destination uncertain, their effect on the web of […]
