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Sally Nex

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Sally Nex

Category Archives: greenhouse

Guernsey, Garden Isle #1: Of gardening heritage

28 Monday Mar 2016

Posted by sallynex in greenhouse, overseas gardens

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

arum lilies, daffodils, glasshouses, guernsey, horticulture, Plant Heritage

guernsey_stpeterport

St Peter Port, the capital: elegant, beautiful and full of yachts

Hah. Flights. Like number 67 buses. You don’t so much as look at an aeroplane for years, and then you’re in one four times in two weeks. To say nothing of a 600-mile round trip to Cumbria in between.

I’ve been off on my travels again, for the third time in as many weeks. I am not accustomed to such excitement, and it’s left me a little breathless. And with a huge backlog of work to catch up with. It’s all very well this gallivanting malarkey but you do pay for it after.

Anyway, mustn’t complain. The most recent of my gallivants was to Guernsey, to give a talk or two at the invitation of the Guernsey branch of Plant Heritage.

I was more than a bit chuffed to be asked, as I’ve long been curious to see Guernsey. Just nine miles by five, a few miles from the coast of France, this little lump of rock is nonetheless a horticultural legend. I know it chiefly as a place where, above all other things, they Grow Stuff.

guernsey_coastline

Rocky coastlines and secret sandy coves to explore with rock pools to die for

It is an elegant isle: wild rocky coastline tumbling down to little secret sandy coves and mile-long pristine beaches, rolling round to a more urbane, harbour-dominated sophistication around the capital, St Peter Port.

It is also resolutely and proudly British. The Queen is head of state, and the flag is a Union Jack. They have pound notes, for goodness’ sake.

But on closer inspection, it isn’t quite that simple. The island has its own government (the States) able to set taxes – though not defence or foreign affairs – and the people have no vote in British elections. Shop names, entire restaurants, most people’s surnames, the street names and many of the place names are in French.

The last time the island belonged to France was in the middle ages, when it used to be part of the Duchy of Normandy. It became British in 1204, when the people had to choose and voted to join Britain. But – in a quirk which says it all – they also chose to retain a Norman legal system.

Guernsey is far closer to the French coastline and everyone goes to St Malo and Paris for the weekend. But they send their kids to school in Britain and commute back and forth for work. The truth of it is that back in 1204 they were choosing to be British, but with French food. Sounds eminently sensible to me.

guernsey_greenhouse

These greenhouses once housed arum lilies: you can still see them, abandoned, in the field next door

Even as I flew in over the island’s rocky coastline the island’s horticultural heritage was obvious: below were rack after rack of massive greenhouses. Even in private gardens people seem to have bigger-than-average greenhouses here. And in fields, by farms, in fact studding the island wherever you look are massive ranks of horticultural greenhouses, covering acres of land.

But things ain’t what they used to be. Guernsey’s horticultural industry is reeling in the wake of a fifty-year battering. First it was cheaper imports from the Netherlands: grapes, tomatoes and more recently daffodils and other cut flowers succumbed. Then changes to close a VAT loophole a year or two ago mainly aimed at the record company, HMV, had the devastating side-effect of removing all the mail-order horticultural business the island had come to rely on, practically overnight.

guernsey_daffodils

This field is now used for grazing, but the daffs speak of a cut flower industry now long gone

It’s left many horticultural businesses broke, dozens more clinging on by their fingernails, and just a small core of success stories still standing. It is still a place of horticultural excellence, with a handful of companies flying the (British) flag for Guernsey with pride and considerable success. But that’s a shadow of the hundreds of horticultural companies there used to be.

But what that horticultural legacy has left behind, more hopefully than the broken, empty greenhouses, and improbable fields of abandoned arum lilies, is an island nation of gardeners.

Every garden is beautifully tended and full of half-hardy delights like Madeiran geraniums and self-seeding echiums, relishing the benign climate and the envy of shivering gardeners on the mainland. ‘Hedge veg’ honesty boxes are a popular way of distributing the surplus from enthusiastic veg growers; and there are some spectacular Victorian greenhouses, and subtropical gardens full of gingers, palms and colocasia.

It’ll take something stronger than tax laws and EU competitors to drive the horticulture out of Guernsey. They may be a bit confused about the whole British-French thing, but they’re gardeners to the core.

Let sowing commence…

26 Friday Feb 2016

Posted by sallynex in exotic edibles, greenhouse, seeds

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Tags

seed, seed giveaway, seedlings, seeds

IMG_3390

Seedlings coming along nicely! Here’s the tray of mixed salad seedlings I put in at the beginning of February. Alongside them are beetroot, turnips, kohl rabi and early peas (Meteor).

Generally speaking it’s a bit early to be sowing just yet – even in a greenhouse (there’s been the occasional frost on the ground in the mornings this week: I’d almost forgotten what it looked like).

But this year I’ve been trying a new regime and it’s worked a treat.

I set the propagator – my beloved Vitopod – to 12 degrees, optimum for germinating hardy seeds. Then the moment they emerged, I shifted them out of the propagator onto the shelving in the open greenhouse. This is kept a tad above freezing, so regularly (especially lately) falls to about 2-3 degrees.

That means the seedlings grow ‘hard’ – developing protection against the harsher, colder conditions so they become sturdier, shorter and stronger. They’re perhaps a tiny tad more spindly than seedlings started later in spring, but nothing like they have been in previous years when I’ve probably cossetted them a bit too much.

IMG_3392
Back in the propagator and the heat has been turned up to 18 degrees: it’s now the turn of tomatoes, half-hardy annuals and a whole slew of exotica including mashua, yacon and oca. Plus Chinese gooseberries and gherkins. I do love this time of year!

Chilli fiesta

21 Saturday Nov 2015

Posted by sallynex in greenhouse

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Tags

chillies, rocoto, tree chilli

greenhouse1

Ah. Yes. The tree chilli.

Also known as a rocoto, it’s one of the few varieties which you can overwinter fairly reliably in a frost-free greenhouse in the UK. This monster has just finished its third year: it is my pride and joy (I think I have mentioned it here and in magazines and basically anywhere I can get away with several times as I am so inordinately pleased with it).

Apart from a close encounter with a bevy of marauding aphids earlier this year it’s been quite easy to look after (once I got the message that it needs serious support: that lot is braced with two-by-one posts at each corner). It is absolutely enormous. And it’s laden down to the ground with dozens of lovely fat red chillies.

chillies1

Trouble is, we still have bags of chillies in the freezer from last year’s bumper harvest. I have palmed off as many as I can on friends, family and passing dog-walkers: but I now need to pick the rest. The overwintering routine for my pet chilli monster is to cut back the top growth by about a third, then bubblewrap the greenhouse (somehow working it behind that forest of branches) and switch on the heater to just above freezing.

Cutting off the top third of this lot is going to involve removing most of the chillies. So – anyone want some?

I have come up with a scheme so we’ll see if it works. What I suggest is that if you send me a fiver by Paypal (including postage & packaging), I’ll send anything up to 10 fresh chillies to you by post (if you don’t want all 10, please specify how many you would like).

chillies2

You can use them in your cooking, of course: they’re pretty hot at between 50,000 and 250,000 scoville heat units (around the habanero scale of pokiness), so you only need about a quarter of a chilli to turn the heat up quite considerably. You can’t dry them, as they’re too fleshy, but you can freeze them: I do mine individually in muffin trays, then decant them into a plastic bag till I need them.

Or of course you can extract the (jet-black) seeds and dry them for sowing next year, so you too can have one of these fabulous plants staging an invasion of the end of your greenhouse.

So – what do you think? First come, first served: post here with your name to bag your chillies (UK residents only I’m afraid), then once I’ve confirmed that you have the chillies send your payment via Paypal to sallywhite (at) hotmail (dot) com. Once I’ve run out of chillies, I’ll let you know in the comments below!

Life in the greenhouse: November

20 Friday Nov 2015

Posted by sallynex in greenhouse, herbs, kitchen garden, my garden, self sufficiency

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

bubblewrap, insulating, life in the greenhouse, overwintering salads, winter, winter salads

greenhouse1

There is a distinct air of panic hanging around my greenhouses this weekend.

This is because I have been caught on the hop. Two weeks of double-digit temperatures in November lulled me into a false sense of security: it may have been raining, but global warming and all that – I expected another winter like the last one, when the first (half-hearted) frost didn’t arrive till February.

So I’ve been eyeing the deepening blues on the weather forecast with increasing alarm: and this Sunday there is an undeniable minus figure on the chart.

This has become highly unusual here in Somerset, and it’s sent me into a bit of a tailspin. I had already cleared out the tattered remains of the old crops, at least, although that was mainly so that I could plant the salads in place of this year’s tomatoes.

This morning saw me start the process of covering the borders with weed-suppressing membrane and lining the inside of the frost-free greenhouse with bubblewrap. A heater will go in here on Sunday, set to a couple of degrees above freezing. I’m kind of hoping I won’t need it for more than a few nights. And I’ll be spending my Sunday afternoon moving in the entire collection of scented-leaved geraniums, a couple of lemon verbenas, several Mexican sages, the prickly pear that’s been holidaying outside for the summer and a purple banana (I live in hope).

(In case you’re wondering why I’m not mentioning the monster tree chilli in the corner, by the way – that’s because there’s more on that tomorrow.)

greenhouse2

There are potatoes in here – second-cropping ones, timed to be ready for Christmas. But I’m a bit worried about them: they’ve been growing like topsy lately but are showing definite signs of blight. No wonder: it’s been so damp lately I think I’m getting blight. I’ve trimmed off the worst and am now keeping my fingers crossed the disease will be slowed by cold.

greenhouse3

The other greenhouse, meanwhile, is looking much more shipshape: I have planted out the lettuces and moved in my three-pot salad and coriander plots (read all about it in the bookywook next Easter folks!). I just cleared the latest pot so once the cold snap is over I’ll sow this with a winter mix.

All set for winter then: and looking like a good supply of leafy salads for us till spring. In here there are several kinds of lettuces, mibuna and chard; I have some mizuna in a container I’m wanting to move in here too as it’ll keep growing much longer under glass. And I’m expecting the coriander to keep leafy till it gets seriously cold: it’s miles easier to grow at this time of year as it’s not so inclined to bolt.

So we’re almost shipshape and ready to go: just got to figure out where that last sheet of bubblewrap has got to…

 

So farewell then…

14 Saturday Nov 2015

Posted by sallynex in greenhouse, kitchen garden, recipes

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

fried green tomatoes, Gardeners Delight, green tomato chutney, green tomatoes, Roma, tomatoes

tomatoes

…greenhouse tomatoes. I have cleared this year’s crop: always a marker that you can no longer kid yourself: the season has really, truly ended.

I’ve been putting it off for a while, mainly because the ‘Roma’ plum tomatoes – pictured above – have been gratifyingly ripening at last. I’ve been waiting for them for ages: they grew like mad then just sat there with a load of green tomatoes, taunting me. But now the cold(ish) weather and dull days are here they’ve decided to get on and ripen everything. Don’t they read the textbooks or anything?

It did occur to me to wait till the bitter end with them, but I need the space for the winter salads which are in the cold frame and already a couple of weeks overdue for their transition into the greenhouse.

The other two varieties, ever-reliable ‘Gardener’s Delight’ and ‘Black Cherry’, have been prolific but undeniably over for quite some time now, sad grey raggy shadows of their former selves. Still got a few of the last green cherries off them though.

tomatoes2

I actually like getting green tomatoes at the end of the season and make no particular extra efforts to ripen them. You can fry them (as in Whistlestop Café) – Nigel Slater’s recipe calls for garlic mayonnaise to dip them in too.

Or better: turn them into green tomato chutney. This is one of the finest you can make: tart, crisp, rich and utterly delicious. Here’s my recipe:

2.3kg (5lbs) green tomatoes
450g (1lb) onions
1 tablespoon salt
225g (8oz) raisins
225g (8oz) sultanas
a thumb of root ginger
a red chilli
1 tablespoon black peppercorns
12 cloves
570ml (1 pint) malt vinegar
450g (1lb) Demerara sugar

Chop tomatoes and onions and tip into a pan along with the salt, raisins and sultanas. Pour over the vinegar and give it all a good stir.

Now chop the ginger and chilli and put into a little bag made out of muslin along with the peppercorns and cloves. Tie the bag firmly round the neck with string and float this in the pan.

Add the sugar and bring to the boil, stirring all the time so the sugar dissolves completely. Then turn down the heat until it’s just simmering – a sort of energetic blup is what you need – then leave the lid off and let it carry on cooking, stirring occasionally.

You will read in recipes that chutney takes a couple of hours to cook: this is baloney. It takes about six hours of gentle blipping for the liquid you start with to turn into a brown molten chutney, thickening to the point where if you pull a wooden spoon across the top it leaves a channel for a few seconds. You’ll need to stir more frequently towards the end of cooking time to prevent it sticking to the bottom.

Once it’s ready, spoon into sterilised jars (good wash in hot water then ten minutes in the oven at 100 degrees). Leave for three months to mellow before eating. Yum.

Bean there, done that

13 Friday Nov 2015

Posted by sallynex in greenhouse, kitchen garden, seeds

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Tags

beans, borlotti beans, dried beans, harvesting, Lingua di Fuoco, shelling beans

borlotti_freshbeans

I do love it when you figure something out all by yourself.

I’ve always been slightly mystified by the instructions for drying shelling beans. You are supposed to dry them on the plant if at all possible: but of course this being Britain that’s a bit of a pipe dream as it always, always rains from August to about, well, June. And the September to October bit is just when your shelling beans – in this case, the sumptuously beautiful borlotti bean ‘Lingua di Fuoco’, or Firetongue – are mature and ready to dry.

So failing unending sunshine – and we really do fail quite well here – you’re supposed to take the entire plant and hang it indoors, upside-down so the beans can carry on drying.

Eh?

Anyone who has grown climbing beans knows they are monster plants, wound and twisted around their supports in a Gordian knot only the bravest would try to untangle in order to pull up said plant. It stumped me totally.borlotti_hangingupWell: I had a bit of a brainwave this year. It suddenly occurred to me that you didn’t need to take the plants off the supports: keep ’em on. And since at around 8ft high they were never really going to go literally upside down (the highest ceiling in our cottage is only about 7ft – we are not allowed to have tall friends, and bean plants are out of the question) – how about horizontal?

So I hung them off their handily sturdy cane, horizontally from the roof of the greenhouse. Took about five minutes: job done.

Trouble is I now have a further problem: I live in one of the damper corners of the world and it has been extremely damp in the last few weeks. So even the greenhouse hasn’t been the driest of places.

To harvest good quality shelling beans the pod should be crisp brown and rattle when you shake it. Unfortunately a couple of weeks later when I returned to my borlottis, too many of the pods had turned grey and mouldy instead. I wonder if I’d kept a closer eye on them and picked them as they dried whether I could have avoided this.borlotti_beans

The beans inside were quite badly affected, too. I got enough unblemished beans which should keep well enough to sow again next year. But it wasn’t quite the generous winter’s supply I’d hoped for.

Ah well: onward and upward. The search is now on for a properly dry place, large enough to take a hefty cane with attached beanstalks plus pods. Any ideas?

A Tynte of Victoriana

05 Thursday Nov 2015

Posted by sallynex in design, garden history, Gardens of Somerset, greenhouse, kitchen garden

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

national trust, public gardens, Tyntesfield, Victorians, William Gibbs

tyntesfieldI’ve been wanting to visit Tyntesfield in Wraxall, near Bristol, for years. So on the slightly shaky pretext of tracking down a grapevine to photograph for the book (in all good bookshops from next Easter, assuming I can find a blimmin’ grapevine – Ed), and a passing mention of there being a grapevine somewhere in the grounds, I set off up the M5 on what passed for work but was actually a garden visiting jolly.

The house is a spectacularly beautiful Gothic revivalist confection, bought by the Gibbs family in 1843 and owned by them for four generations until the National Trust took it over.

The Gibbs family wealth was built on Peruvian bird poo: apparently guano was a hot commodity in Victorian times. They made fertiliser out of it. What the difference was that made it necessary to ship poo all the way from Peru when there was plenty to be had on the coasts of England is a mystery.

tyntesfield2

William Gibbs – who bought the house – was made a rich man by his lack of squeamishness about trading in the sort of stuff most buttoned-up Victorians wouldn’t even admit existed (and by not caring all that much about the thousands of African and Chinese slaves who died in his Peruvian guano pits, some 40 years after Britain abolished slavery).

He was known as the richest non-nobleman in England, though Victorian music-hall singers, in that wonderfully arch snobbery that was a feature of the period, were less kind: the song went

‘William Gibbs made his dibs,
Selling the turds of foreign birds.’tyntesfield3
Anyway, I digress.

Of course I was there mostly to see the vegetable gardens: and a fine walled kitchen garden it is too, though it’s tucked a bit out of the way like an afterthought at the bottom of the hill that slopes away from the house.

The grapevine, along with some excellent peaches, was in a fine row of lean-to glasshouses (not your average off-the-shelf from the garden centre: think scalloped glass and metal frames). Unfortunately you couldn’t go inside, rather annoyingly, so that was it for my book photography excuse. I just about managed to squeeze the camera in through a side window to take the above photo of an exceptionally well-trained fig tree round the corner, though: must attempt this on a couple of figs I look after for clients.

tyntesfield4
It’s a modest sort of garden, run largely by volunteers with an honesty box outside for the veg. I did like their careful use of traditional materials: here old clay pipes used for forcing chicory and the like. There were some lovely rhubarb forcers too: and I do like a well-written slate plant label.

tyntesfield5

All very shipshape and lovely: even if I wasn’t a bit biased, the veg garden would actually be the best bit of the whole garden for me. There was a rather fetching spot just outside, full of dahlias (of which more later); alongside that was a newly-restored Grade I orangery, but the plants were a half-hearted afterthought – just a few slightly diffident-looking pot plants inside looking as if they’d rather be somewhere else. It was crying out for some majestic lemon trees dripping golden fruit and blossoms.

There’s also a not-bad rose garden, but all on its own, separated from the house by a rather unnecessarily long path (and unfortunately suffering badly from box blight so part-cordoned off when I was there). And there’s a formal terrace in front of the house itself.

But that’s pretty much it – in a 500-acre estate. I came away a little disappointed.

The garden didn’t hang together, somehow: to me, it felt like a series of slightly inconsequential interruptions to the otherwise expansive (and presumably easier to maintain) lawns-and-trees combo the National Trust is so fond of. As if someone had gone along thinking, hmm, we’d better have a bit of garden here – without really thinking about how it all links up.

An interesting lesson, perhaps, in how not to design a garden: it would have been better to group the disparate areas together, leading one into the other and relating to each other in some way. Like the gardens around the house at another local National Trust house, Knightshayes, perhaps – a similar era and style of house, yet the gardens so very much more successful (though for some reason there the kitchen garden is miles away too).

Just goes to show: bird poo can buy you a grand house but it can’t buy you discernment.

Life in the greenhouse: July

21 Tuesday Jul 2015

Posted by sallynex in greenhouse

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chillies, life in the greenhouse, plant supports, rocoto chilli, tree chilli

greenhouse1

Help! We’ve had a bit of a disaster.

My tree chilli is my pride and joy. It’s now three years old and has settled in nicely, colonising the back left-hand corner of my no.1 greenhouse with such enthusiasm that nothing else gets a look-in.

But oh dear. I popped by this morning and look what’s happened to him. There are two sweet peppers under there somewhere, too. Somewhat squashed by now, no doubt.

greenhouse3

Tomatoes in greenhouse no.2 are more straightforwardly supported with canes – though even then they’re escaping off the tops. I am about to bolt a horizontal cane across the glass to take them all up to the roof.

I never had much luck with chillies before I found this one: they struggle to get enough light and heat in a single growing year here in the rainy old west, and since they die as soon as it gets cold the odds are stacked against you right from the start. Keeping them in the greenhouse seemed to help, but still the results were so-so.

Then I stumbled upon rocoto chillies, Capsicum pubescens – one of the few types which are more tolerant of cooler temperatures. Crucially that means that they have half a chance of surviving the winter, especially tucked inside a cool greenhouse: they can even – just – manage a couple of degrees of frost as long as they’re not damp at the roots. And two-year-old-plus plants are not only more productive, they’re also more resilient so can cope with more cold… and you have a virtuous circle.

greenhouse2

Jolly handy, these things – though be careful as if you tie too much weight to them the whole greenhouse buckles in a rather alarming sort of fashion.

My chilli is now so perennial it has a trunk. The fruits are fantastic, prolific and ripening to fiery red with the jet-black seeds typical of rocoto types: they’re blisteringly hot, about the same heat as a habanero, so you only need a quarter of a chilli to fire up a whole dish. They’re too fleshy to dry so I freeze them whole: I had so many last year I was supplying all my family and friends too.

I had been optimistically propping him up with a few canes and some string but they were as matchsticks when it came to holding back this behemoth. His relentless rise to the roof ridge – he hit it last year and I fear may push it off its moorings this year – has made him so top-heavy he’s collapsed sideways in an ungainly heap. And he’s not even laden with fruit yet: who knows how heavy he’ll get by then.

greenhouse4

Early results are looking promising…

I do have some rather handy bolts in the greenhouse frame which I shall have to press into service for this one, I think: I’m thinking three sturdy tree stakes driven into the ground, plus horizontal slats to make a kind of cage around that corner.

As always I wish I’d done it at the start of the season: staking late is never a good thing as you invariably end up trussing things up and that’s no good for air circulation or health in general. But I shall have to live with it for now as the status quo isn’t an option. I may need a bigger greenhouse…

This month in the greenhouse: April

21 Tuesday Apr 2015

Posted by sallynex in greenhouse

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

mice, pelargoniums, pests, Potimarron, scented leaved pelargoniums, sowing, squash, Uchiki Kuri

greenhouse1

Heeelp….!! I’m running out of room…

As always in April, there’s a traffic jam in my greenhouse. Outside, the cold frame is jam-packed with evicted seedlings but still they keep coming, as April is second only to March in terms of how much needs sowing yet you’ve still got the tender plants sheltering and taking up space, to say nothing of last month’s seedlings taking their time over growing big enough to go outside in their turn.

Still, so far, so good and there are lots of promising little things going on.

greenhouse2Uchiki Kuri squash seedlings, for instance. Aren’t these lovely fat little things? I do think they’re gorgeous. They’re getting in urgent need of potting on – amazing how quickly five fat squash seedlings can fill a 10cm pot.

It took me a long time to realise that Uchiki Kuri were the same thing as Potimarron – a French squash I’ve grown before and absolutely loved. They taste of chestnuts – a smoky, savoury flavour quite different from ordinary squash. I’m growing these just to make sure that they really are the same thing and not some Japanese upstart imitator (with apologies to the Japanese, who thought this was their heirloom squash and have no doubt been cross with the French ever since).
greenhouse3I have had great success overwintering my little collection of scented-leaved pelargoniums this year: this one is P. quercifolium, with pretty leaves the shape of oak leaves. I took quite a lot of cuttings this spring too as I was potting the parents on and trimming them back in their start-the-season haircut: and most of them have taken, so it’s going to be a bit of a scented-leaved pellies summer. These are going outside to harden off just as soon as there’s space in the cold frame…
greenhouse4And finally I thought it might give you a laugh to see the tip that passes for my potting bench, in one corner of the greenhouse taking up valuable room when actually it ought to be in the shed (but we didn’t get around to building it this winter).

In case you were wondering, the peanut butter is for trapping mice (I keep the last scrapings from our breakfast spread, which is why it’s three pots – only a little in each one).

Three casualties so far in the gardener-vs-whiskery ones skirmish which followed the clandestine savaging of a mangetout pea sowing one night, but it’s all gone quiet again: I even dared to put in the beans a week or so ago and nothing’s gone missing (yet). So I’m hopeful that they’ve learned their lesson and are staying clear.

I do hate trapping mice – it’s far less humane than our feral cat which is my usual control method. But they make it impossible to grow any legumes (or sweetcorn, come to think of it) if you don’t – so I grit my teeth and get on with it. Artemisia leaves laid on the floor of the greenhouse are supposed to keep them off, as is mint – they don’t like the smell, apparently. I’ll give that a try next time – but I’ll keep the traps handy, just in case.

Power to the people

31 Saturday May 2014

Posted by sallynex in climate change, greenhouse

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

design, greenhouse growing

(c) Jeffrey Tischart, Jr

(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…]

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