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Sally Nex

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Sally Nex

Tag Archives: citrus

Life in the greenhouse: January

20 Friday Jan 2017

Posted by sallynex in greenhouse

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

citrus, frost, frost protection, greenhouse, lemon verbena, lemons, tender plants, winter

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Half-finished insulation to the left, not-quite cleared cucamelons to the right: I have, it is fair to say, totally failed to sort out the greenhouse this winter.

Blimey it’s chilly. Inside and out: life got a bit hectic last autumn and I didn’t get around to my usual bubblewrap-insulation-and-greenhouse-heater routine. So my greenhouse – usually a cosy refuge at this time of year – is distinctly less than welcoming at the moment.

However: the decision not to heat the greenhouse this winter, if a little unintentional, has been enlightening. Normally I would have the heater on 24/7 when the weather is like this: I don’t heat my greenhouse to tropical temperatures but I do like to keep it somewhere around the 5°C mark. When it’s -5°C outside, as it was last night, that would mean having to lift the temperature by a whole 10°C above ambient – loading my electricity bill to groaning point and playing who knows what havoc with the environment.

I’ve always felt mildly guilty about heating the greenhouse. As well as being positively profligate with resources I normally shepherd carefully – that is, electricity and warmth – it is very expensive and makes something of a mockery of my pretensions to thriftiness. After all, when your overwintered chillies cost you at least £50 to keep alive in a frosty winter you could probably buy gold-plated ones for less.

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But – avert your eyes from the weeds, please – I can’t be going far wrong when I’ve got lemons like these

Failing to heat my greenhouse, though, has been an eye-opener. Just look at my lemons! (No smutty jokes at the back, please). The scented-leaf geraniums have fared well too, and the lemon verbena.

Most of the tender herbs and edibles which I move into the greenhouse over winter to protect them from frost can survive down to a few degrees below. Lemons, for example, can tolerate -5°C; geraniums (pelargoniums), lemon verbena and French tarragon to about -1°C. The secret is to keep them dry. Soggy compost freezes at anything below zero, wrecking delicate root systems, while dry compost, though cold, will not freeze so does no damage.

So I haven’t watered my lemon tree, or the geraniums, since I brought them indoors in early November. They’re fine. So is the grapefruit, and the lemon verbena, and even the Nerine sarniensis which is the only thing in here which isn’t edible but I can’t bear to evict it as it’s so lovely when it flowers. The overwintering chilli (an Aji type, one of the more hardy) has succumbed, so I’d guess that very heat-loving Mexican types with fleshy, tender stems freeze at zero.

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I brought my three-pot salad system in here this autumn too: the extra shelter has kept them growing and I’ve had salads to pick since October.

But for most, just bringing them into a greenhouse without heating it has been enough. The glass alone raises temperatures by about 5°C, after all (and much more on a sunny day, though that heat is lost by nightfall). So if you take last night, the coldest here for several years at about -5°C, inside the greenhouse it will still have been only just at freezing. Not enough to do any damage. Line the greenhouse with bubblewrap or – I’m told but haven’t tried myself – cardboard, or wrap plants individually in horticultural fleece, hessian with straw tucked underneath, or more bubblewrap – and you can raise that by a few degrees further, potentially keeping even quite tender plants frost-free without the need for heating.

Other little tricks to try include keeping a pond in the greenhouse to act as a heat sink, absorbing the sun’s heat by day and releasing it by night; and of course hotbeds, which is too big a subject to tackle here but the most natural greenhouse heater you’ll ever have.

But I think my days of artificially heating a greenhouse are over. I’m sure the environment will thank me one day. My bank account certainly will.

Didn’t we have a luvverly time…

22 Tuesday Jul 2008

Posted by sallynex in wildlife gardening

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Agrostis stolonifera, Anizoganthos, bamboo, citrus, Colocasia, fig tree, garden shows, Loseley House, pomegranates

I promised you some pics of our weekend at the Great Gardening Show at Loseley House – so here they are…


Our humble little corner – that’s my hubby and dog looking rather lugubrious (or is that just embarrassed?). We sold quite a few of those nice oak boxes and got lots of interest in the garden storage solutions. Quite a hot topic at the moment, it would seem (all the better for our bank account, then).


Then I set off to have a look around. Got very excited about these “hanging bamboos” – finally, I thought, I’ve found a way of using bamboos that keeps them in their place. But then I found out they’re not bamboo at all but a grass – Agrostis stolonifera. I suppose bamboo is a grass, strictly speaking, but I think my campaign to outlaw the stuff continues unabated.

Loads and loads and loads of flowers everywhere – I thought this display was a riot…


…and so did the bee, which took absolutely not a jot of notice of me while I took this photo. Far too busy. As you would expect, from a bee.


This fig tree was on the rather wonderful stall from Plants On Line. They had some fabby citrus and olives too (I’m a bit obsessed by exotic-ish edibles at the moment as I’m cooking up a scheme for my garden – literally…) And a few pomegranates, which is another tree I hanker for. Apart from their rather regrettable predilection for bamboos, this is a seriously good nursery which I hadn’t come across before.


Further indulging my edible exotics fetish, this is my must-have plant for this year: I spotted loads of colocasia at Hampton Court and this one was a beaut. Just look at those leaves… the edible bit is the tuber, which tastes a bit like potatoes so they tell me. I’d like to know who digs up £20 tubers to eat, mind you…

Last but not least, on the same stall as the colocasia (that’s Athelas Plants – another fantastic exotics nursery) was this gorgeous Anizoganthus in full flower. It’s called ‘Gold’ (can you tell why?): don’t know the plant well but apparently it’s not that easy to get it to flower like this. The label tells me it needs sun and well-drained soil – might do well in my acid sand, then…

My “must-grow-before-I-die” list is getting longer and longer. Better make it to my Queen’s telegram otherwise I’ll never get through it at this rate.

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