Sally Morgan and Kim Stoddart show you how to be a climate change savvy gardener
The orchards are full of blossom at the moment and bees (hopefully) are busy. But all may not be well. I have just watched a Countryfile Spring report on fruit trees, pollinators and the threat of climate change. The item resonated with me as we have a chapter on orchards in the Climate Change Garden…
Kim outlines some additional ingredients for the best ever all-in-one natural soil improver for the veg patch… Your soil is the key ingredient in the success of your resilient produce growing efforts so it’s essential to treat it well. Building fertility can be done in a number of ways, and once you have this there…
Kim explains how to help counter the hungry gap by expanding your salad horizons with leaves from other plants currently growing. If you looked at the average bag of unexciting supermarket salad mix, you’d be forgiven for assuming that all leaves had to look like this. Yet, you’re really missing a trick if that’s how…
It’s time to sit down and look through all the seed catalogues and try not to get carried away. I like to review the successes and failures of the year when choosing varieties to grow for the new year and I check my stocks as you can see in the photo, as I have a…
Its #bigbutterflycount time – walk for 15 minutes and record the species and numbers of butterflies that you see (https://www.bigbutterflycount.org). It’s something I do every year, but this time butterflies have been badly hit by the drought. In fact, insect life is pretty poor at the moment. I can walk along our hedgerows and hardly…
How you can be in good company with a more free-spirited approach to planting on your plot… Most gardening books will tell you about the importance of crop rotation ‘blah, blah, brassicas after legumes”… “waffle, waffle, potatoes first…” It’s a planting system that is undoubtedly sensible if a) you’re a market gardener and will be growing…