Hartley Magazine

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

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Starting seeds is a year round activity in a greenhouse

To harvest winter crops in your greenhouse, starting seeds soon is a must. How do you choose the best pot in which to start seeds? Do you use a seed flat? A seed flat with an insert? A square pot? Round pots? Jiffy pots? There is a huge choice of pots and pot materials available […]

Cautionary tale about greenhouse pests – Ticks and Lyme Disease

The doctor said that nobody gets Lyme Disease in December! I did and figured that I picked up the tick in my greenhouse! I wasn’t checking for it because it was, after all, December. But I had seen a mouse in the greenhouse a month or so before the incident. I figured it came in […]

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Potting soil shockers and other news!

Potting soil is the most important ingredient for starting a terrific garden. It is also an important item for most indoor plants (Cactus and orchids being the exception, both require specialized mediums for growing.) Potting Soil Components – this will shock you. Compost is a major ingredient. Good compost is made from rotted vegetation but […]

Introducing Roger Marshall

Roger Marshall’s journey Gardening came to me naturally, while growing up in England in the 1950s. At that time, with war time shortages still distressing the UK economy, commercial fertilizers were hard to come by, so we made compost and used natural organic materials to fertilize our gardens, practices that I continue using today. English […]

Add Hydroponics to Your Greenhouse

For a number of years, I’ve grown lettuce in plastic gutters in my greenhouse. The installation is simple: Each ten-foot-long gutter hangs from brackets on a greenhouse wall, with one end four inches lower than the other. I fill the gutters with clay pellets to give the plant roots something to grip. A fish-tank pump […]