We have an evictee from the greenhouse. This is chilli ‘Lemon Drop’, who was sown too late to ever really amount to anything, and so – fair enough – went on to do little. You can see that chillies are now starting to form, but this is not exactly a bumper crop. However it could […]

My greenhouse year started late this year and i am only just starting to celebrate the arrival of the aubergines, but what aubergines. They are fat, black and shiny, and their bottoms are good and wide. This is aubergine ‘Ronde de Valence’, though ours have so far come out more triangular than round. Those fruits […]

In and out of the greenhouse, this is the year of the courgettes. That is, if you can keep them watered. Courgettes are always producing madly at this time of year but the seemingly endless heat is seeing mine pumping out fruits as fast as I can pick them. The watering really has been quite […]

In the spring I started my dahlias in the greenhouse and then planted them half and half at the allotment and on my veranda, wondering which would win the race to flowering: breezy and exposed with full sun at the plot or sheltered and protected but with a little bit of shade back home. I […]

Gardening makes me move about. It makes me stretch and lift and breathe fresh air and all of those other things that make me feel just that little bit healthier at the end of a day gardening than I do at the end of a day sat in front of the computer. But let’s face […]

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 […]

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 […]

These are tough times for those plants that are waiting in the greenhouse for warmer days. They have made it through winter, yes, and it is true that light levels are improving all the time, but many are weakened by their months in less-than-perfect circumstances, and need a little extra help to limp through to […]

It may be the depths of winter but it will not be very long at all until it is time to start sowing Brussels sprouts. This is how the year turns and surprises us: come February, just a few short weeks away, it will be time to sow. I realise I must get my early-sowing […]

I am reaching the very end of the tomato crop that I grew in the glasshouse and polytunnel this summer, the last few that I picked green when the weather started to turn cold, and then left to ripen in a paper bag in a draw. I have checked them whenever I have remembered and […]

With the encroaching cold there is propagation to be done in unheated greenhouses or cold frames: hawthorns for hedges. Until recently I had a few hawthorn trees along the boundary with my neighbour, but we have chopped them right down to the base. The idea is to encourage them to sprout from the ground to […]