Fruit-Picking Season Starts Now

 Cherries, Blackcurrants and GooseberriesThe fruit-picking season in the kitchen garden has started in earnest. Yes, we have been enjoying some strawberries and raspberries up to now, but this is when it starts to get serious. Yesterday (26th June), I picked the Stella cherries (before...

The Underrated Radish

Harvesting radishes from my Salad/Veg Planter, I came across this whopper weighing 133 g...Scarlet Globe Radish - Size XL...the empty 1 lb (450g) peanut butter jar gives a visual indication of size.The radish is probably the easiest vegetable to grow - the seeds are easy to handle and the plant...

View from the Rear Window - May 2022

May is the last month of meteorological Spring. As the weather warms and the danger of frost recedes, the transition from Spring to Summer unfolds before us. The vibrant colour of Spring (daffodils, tulips, etc) has been replaced by the subtle greens of fresh new growth as the plants prepare for their...

Quadgrow Self-Watering System - Part 2 (Set-up)

 Polytunnel - 3rd August 2021In the kitchen garden, I have a 3m x 4m polytunnel supplied and erected by Haygrove in Spring 2011; this will be its 12th growing season.I used a mix of direct soil planting and growbags for the first four growing seasons but then switched to the Quadgrow self-watering...

QuadGrow Self-Watering System - Part 1 (Introduction)

 Quadgrow Self-Watering SystemThe Quadgrow Self-Watering System, supplied by Greenhouse Sensation, comprises three components - a reservoir for holding the aqueous plant-nutrient solution, a pot containing the growing medium (and the plant, obviously!), and a capillary wick connecting these two...

Pest Control in a Wildlife-Friendly Organic Garden

 It can be disheartening to see your ripe strawberries half-eaten, your green lettuces reduced to a barely-recognizable stump, your potatoes hollowed out by underground miners, and your spinach leaves riddled with small and large teeth-marked holes. While you could reach for those bottles of agrochemicals,...