(c) Jeffrey Tischart, Jr

You won’t be gardening long before you feel the need for a little electricity.

I don’t mean excitement: goodness, there’s quite enough of that what with mouse invasions and that branch falling on my greenhouse roof and stoving in several panes at once. And positive things too, like the gorgeous Ensete ventricosa (deep purple banana) which arrived on my doorstep as a foundling (unwanted gift from a non-gardener); or the loquat tree which miraculously survived losing every single branch in the heavy snows of winter 2011.

No, I mean power: the juice which runs your greenhouse heater, or lets you install a pump in your water butt so you can run a hose off it, or makes a heated propagator and thus transformation of your seed-sowing life possible. [read more…]