In those rare years when the summer has been unusually hot and dry, with water restrictions and parched soil, the beginning of autumn can be a blessed relief. This year is not one of those, despite the notably high temperatures, Read more »
It feels good to have got to September with everything in the garden looking pretty healthy and organised. August is always a tricky month as a vegetable grower—trying to balance the time spent harvesting with the time spent turning over Read more »
The trend over the past quarter of a century, or so, has been to move away from the traditional ‘mid-summer’, herbaceous border, plants towards a later flowering, ‘new perennial’, palette. This means that the season of interest has extended so Read more »
July was pretty full on in the garden—its a time when a lot of change happens, as early crops are cleared and autumn crops are planted. Beds were prepared for planting salad turnips, more salads—the first of the chicory, endive, Read more »
The record breaking hours of sunshine, with the associated high average temperature, during the spring seems to have brought on some of the later summer flowering plants so that they are already flowering. The daisy tribe, chiefly the border stalwarts Read more »
July is definitely the month that we start fully seeing the fruits of our labour. The fruiting crops are either well under way in terms of production or are on their way. The courgettes and cucumbers have been fruiting through Read more »
The easing of lockdown has certainly made gardening a little easier. The ability to visit garden centres has relieved some of the frustration of having the time and opportunity to tackle the garden but without the normal means to stock Read more »
I love June in the garden! A lot of the stress of being a vegetable grower often subsides by June (as long as the weather has been fairly kind throughout Spring), and most of the first lot of planting is Read more »
Last month we had just entered the ‘lockdown period’ and it was all a bit of a strange new world. As I write, we are still locked down, for good reason, and my heart really goes out to anyone who Read more »
May is one of the busiest months in the garden, April is a pretty busy one too (partly why I didn’t have time to write anything for last month’s issue, along with having to completely rethink our business of selling Read more »