What's new, what's growing, what we're learning. Updates, guides and stories for people who take their garden seriously.
The apple winter cut follows the same order every year. Five steps from dead wood to fruiting wood, plus the trick against biennial bearing's glut and lean years.
Lamb's lettuce takes over the empty beds from late summer and supplies fresh, nutty greens into spring. The most common mistake is sowing too early and too warm. Here is how the cold germinator sprouts and how you harvest all winter.
You do not fertilise all berries the same. Acid-lovers like blueberries tolerate no lime, currants and gooseberries are potassium-hungry, raspberries undemanding. Here is how to sort your berries into a few groups and give each the right thing.
With a little system strawberries bear richly over years. Three decisions count: June-bearing or everbearing, planting in August and the clever handling of the runners. Plus the straw trick against grey mould.
Cabbage has two main enemies: the cabbage white, whose caterpillars strip the leaves bare, and the unseen cabbage root fly, whose maggots destroy the roots. Here is how to keep both off without poison, with net, collar and a look under the leaves.
Thornless blackberry varieties turn the feared bramble into an easy-care nibbling plant. With the simple two-sides rule on the trellis you keep the pruning effortlessly in hand. Here is how to train them and how to spot the right harvest moment.
Every berry has its own pruning time. Bushes like currant and gooseberry in winter, cane berries like raspberry and blackberry after harvest. Your pruning plan for the whole berry garden, with the one rule of thumb that always holds.
When the summer lettuce is done, the time of the bitter salads begins. Endive, sugarloaf, radicchio and Belgian chicory are sown in summer and harvested from autumn to winter. Here is how to tame the bitterness, blanch endive and force chicory in the cellar.
Chinese cabbage and pak choi are fast Asian brassicas for the autumn harvest. Sown in summer they bolt, from late July they behave. Here is how to use the long-day trick, protect the young plants from flea beetles and fill an empty bed in a few weeks.
