Gardening

Snow drifts and badger tracks at the summerhouse
The first time I saw the seas freeze is when I met my mother-in-law (though we have both seen something of a thaw since then). But now the bay at the back of the ’summerhouse’ is largely frozen over and the solstice snow is still 10cm thick after [...]

Much excitement planning for the year ahead at the London Potato Fair
Sunday morning I set off to East Dulwich (or at least I think it was East Dulwich, my mental map of the city doesn’t cover large parts of south east London) to visit the annual Potato Fair and Seedy Sunday held on the 4th [...]

Move will make Green & Black’s the world’s leading manufacturer of organic Fairtrade chocolate
Organic chocolate maker Green & Black’s today pledged to switch its entire worldwide food and beverage range to Fairtrade by the end of next year, in a groundbreaking move that will make it the world’s leading manufacturer of organic Fairtrade chocolate.
The company’s [...]

Lucy Siegle on the return of the slop bucket
If it’s all in the wording and presentation then the rumoured mandatory brown, sweaty-looking plastic box habitually referred to as a “slop bucket” is hardly likely to coax the nation to take food-waste recycling to its collective bosom.
A less hysterical vision includes giving these objects a cleaner, [...]

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Fairtrade chocolate does more than keep consumers sweet – it keeps children off plantations and puts money in the pockets of the poor
It’s Chocolate Week, in case you needed an excuse for more chocolate consumption. But to help you do good while indulging yourself, at Ethical Consumer magazine we’ve rated the most ethical chocolate brands [...]

Rachel Surtees of A Growing Obsession on setting up a cheap and cheerful wormery
I opened the door to find my friend stood there with a bottle of vino in one hand and a box of worms in the other. Hurrah.
I recently decided that it would be a good (read green) idea to start a wormery. [...]

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There really are nutritional benefits, as research to be published next year will show
Ben Goldacre says the Soil Association’s criticism of the recent Food Standards Agency research on nutrients is “not about organic food” and that “the emotive commentary in favour of organic farming bundles together diverse and legitimate concerns about unchecked capitalism in our [...]

Your chance to quiz the Soil Association on organics and its spat with the Food Standards Agency

This week’s You Ask, They Answer guest has been in the headlines a lot recently, but not always for the reasons it would like. Now, with the start of Organic Fortnight, the Soil Association is hoping to regain the [...]

Contaminated manure is still proving a problem for some growers. Photograph: Mulsanne/Flickr/Some rights reserved
Last summer, growers were alarmed by the contamination of manure with aminopyralid, a weedkiller used on pasture. Aminopyralid sales were suspended by Dow Chemical Company, the RHS and others dished out advice on how to deal with contaminated ground and [...]

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Three years ago, I bought a bottlebrush plant cutting at an open garden visit. I put it in a pot and placed it in a sunny position, and in winter I wrap it up in an unheated greenhouse. For some reason it has never flowered and now looks straggly.Callistemons are the ultimate weird and wonderful Aussie [...]

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• More people are growing their own seasonal produce
• Sideline products account for increasing proportion of sales
An increase in amateur gardeners keen to grow their own food is taking its toll on organic farms and shops that deliver vegetable boxes.
Hundreds of health food shops and farms around the country now offer a vegetable box scheme [...]

Do we dare hope to survive without blight on site
Almost too anxious to talk about it, but we are heading into a critical stage for the tomatoes. We are trialling only three of Fern Verrow’s Oli Rose at the plot, plus one nameless self-seeder (though we didn’t grow any last year?)
At home we have [...]

The cropping of all available ground is of the utmost importance for only a limited area of the garden will he available for vegetable growing and the best possible.usc must be made of it. A 4-course rotation of crops should be followed where possible for there are many advantages to be gained by it. The [...]

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Decades after she dug for victory, Queen Elizabeth gives the royal seal of approval to the grow-your-own movement
As a 14-year-old, she picked up a spade and joined with the rest of wartime Britain in the Dig for Victory campaign. Seven decades later, though no longer wielding the spade herself, the Queen, 83, has again embraced [...]

Study finds even ethically-conscious customers swapping to cheaper brands for weekly grocery shop
British consumers who in the past were willing to pay a premium for organic, Fairtrade and eco-friendly goods are now turning their backs on buying ethical in favour of cheaper shopping bills, according to a survey.
It is a trend that is [...]

Classification:
Kingdom: Plantae
Phylum: Angiosperms
Family: Sapindaceae
Genus: Acer
Species: A. palmatum
As the name implies Japanese maple is a woody plant species native to Japan. It is also found in Korea and China. It is now grown in many parts of the temperate world and many different cultivars with attractive leaf shapes and colors are available. It is [...]

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Q Dear Nigel, A few weeks ago you suggested that rhubarb leaves made excellent compost. My father always told me not to put rhubarb leaves on the compost heap as they were poisonous. Can you enlighten me please?Priscilla
A Yes, rhubarb leaves are certainly poisonous, but I can find no evidence anywhere to back up your [...]

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Another year, another Chelsea, and I’m asking myself, why does the RHS still tolerate peat at its garden shows? Especially when climate change was again a prominent theme at last week’s event.
Not only are peatlands important habitats, they are also vital in the fight against global warming. Healthy peat bogs store carbon and [...]

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Decades after she dug for victory, Queen Elizabeth gives the royal seal of approval to the grow-your-own movement
As a 14-year-old, she picked up a spade and joined with the rest of wartime Britain in the Dig for Victory campaign. Seven decades later, though no longer wielding the spade herself, the Queen, 83, has again embraced [...]

A weekend of visitors, sunshine, corn and crowns
Where to start? With the Queen becoming the latest ‘celebrity’ to have an alotment (though not totally sure she qualifies under the enclosures act, which had thought was to protect peasants from posh people)? But happily doff my cloth cap to anything that encourages growing organic food, and [...]

Christening our crooked wooden path at the end of the plot
When we took over our space we quickly decided to build a walkway along the side bordering Ruth’s. There’s a steep bank down to her allotment with a narrow and treacherous path running along the top. It starts gentle enough by the pumpkin pit but [...]

Beans, bees, barbecues and bolting chard
Perhaps the best weekend ever at the plot: lots of weeding to do, lots of broad beans to crop, and lots and lots of sunshine.
Got there at 7am Saturday to water and check on weeds and the salsify flowers. Will have to do something about the salsify soon: [...]

Sensual overload at the summerhouse
Woke up early at the beach hut on Saturday to find myself a stranger in a strange land To explain: a new bank of umbellifers (I think) has swamped the southern border, with the silver birch and blue cedar almost disappearing under a 5ft wall of white pollen. The rugosa, too, [...]

River cafe cook Stevie Parle on the secret to herb recipes
I love herbs. Growing them, picking, chopping, tearing, pounding and frying them makes me happy.
I recently decided to never again buy supermarket herbs. I hate the little plastic packets and try to grow all the herbs I need on the deck of my boat [...]

Time for summery colours and flavours
So our formerly veggie-free roof terrace is now home to three stray tomato plants. Strange really, as my over-excitement over growing tomato seed started our allotment addiction. Used to worry at work about the baby seedlings out in the cold and wet, like abandoned kittens, so was completely ill-equipped to [...]

Spicing up our garden salad with salsify flowers
Recently, I have only been at the allotment in the afternoon or evening when the newly formed flowers of the salsify (Tragopogon porrifolius) are tightly closed. The buds are pretty in themselves, fine conical twists of a dusty green, hiding regal purple petals. It’s known as ‘Jack Go [...]

Happiness is seed-shaped
I’m still getting used to the magnificence of this spring. I can’t remember one like it. The blossom has been heavier and more splendid than I have ever seen. The emerging leaves on the trees softer, fresher and unfeasibly green. Even the masses of dandelions floating in the grass have taken my [...]

Everything you need to know about sowing and growing this month
As the weather gets warmer, the sowing options widen. In May many tender plants can now be sown outside. By the time they will have emerged from the soil, all danger of frost should be over. As the seed propagated inside will grow faster than [...]

Time to get some herbs and salads in
Sun-saturated weekend. Saturday spent potting up windowboxes and pots on the roof terrace. Am aware of slightly neglecting this space since the allotment came into my life and admit the sight of of an organic veggie growbag momentarily quickened my pulse, but there is something serene about surrounding [...]

Summer starts when the beans and the beet break though
Tuesday evening at the plot. It is a ‘leaf day‘, the first for a while and I am keen to get in salad and spinach seed. The claytonia has flowered, so too last year’s rocket. Even the mizuna is a foot high and getting nettley, fribrous, [...]

Seed and sunshine by the sea: there is no beating the retreat
Three days of hot sunshine with one day of cold eerie mist echoing with fog horns and melancholic gulls meant we got pretty much everything done we wanted for the Easter weekend. We scattered meadow seed, we espaliered the pears, we sowed Spencer sweet [...]

Red, white and blue: how heritage potatoes come in colours
Piece in today’s Guardian in praise of heritage potatoes. We have long been fans of growing more interesting seed varieties and have had some success with Red Duke of York and Roseval among others. But this year’s trip to the London Potato Fair, where we had [...]

Wow, what a weekend. Wonderful weather and kids happy to sit and play in the sandpit for several hours at a time. The element of gardening that I miss most since having children is ‘pottering’. I can make planned, strategic hits, usually 20 minutes or so long, or beg days of childcare for big jobs, [...]

There is no denying the signs of spring
First, I would like to apologise to the plot. You see, I am too easily distracted by gaudy Indian opulence and it takes me time to adjust to subtlety. Which is just a long-winded way of saying that after the sun-saturated fertility of the Keralan coconut groves I [...]

Leicestershire council spends £6,000 on system to find out where grass is too long
Lawnmowers in Leicestershire have been fitted with satellite navigation systems to help council gardeners find where the grass is too long.
Leicestershire county council splashed out £6,000 on the technology, which will enable 14 ride-on mowers to be tracked from the county hall. [...]

You might think that the lack of a decent composting system was the least of the Palestinian people’s troubles. But you’d be wrong. For those involved in Bustan Quraaqa (”the Tortoise Garden”), a permaculture farm set up last year in the West Bank town of Beit Sahour, near Bethlehem, composting has become about dignity, self-reliance [...]

Clivia miniata: mine after a 20-year wait. Photograph: yichuanshen/Flickr/Some rights reserved
I first saw it in my teenage bible, DG Hessayon’s The Houseplant Expert, and it was love at first sight. I was seduced by Clivia miniata’s acid-orange exotic flowers and glossy straplike leaves. For some reason, I never got hold of one – probably because [...]

Celebrated gardener and writer Vita Sackville-West wrote a weekly column called In Your Garden for the Observer for 15 years. This column was published on February 26 1950
A purple anemone. Vita Sackville-West recommended Anemone × fulgens Saint Bavo Group. Photograph: Antediluvial/Flickr/Some rights reserved
A dear neighbour bought me a tussie-mussie this week. The dictionary defines tuzzy-muzzy, [...]

Popular panellist on Gardeners’ Question Time with a deep love of his native Yorkshire
Geoffrey Smith, who has died aged 80, was a populist gardening expert whose genial outings on radio and television were backed by formidable knowledge and experience. He perfected an accessible style which made light of his learning, not only through broadcasting but [...]

Christopher Lloyd wrote a gardening column for the Guardian for 17 years until his death in 2006. This piece was published on February 28 1998
A weeping cherry tree. Photograph: corrieb/Flickr/Some rights reserved
Contrasting weeping habits with the way trees and shrubs usually grow has a wide appeal, but how are we to make a choice? My [...]

Home-grown veg, free cuttings and seed swapping can turn your garden into the ultimate environment for cheap living. Dan Pearson reveals where to make the best investments – and how to conjure something out of nothing
Real gardening, not the TV makeover kind, has always revolved around the idea of thriftiness and making do with what [...]

Pick up your tools, pull on your gloves and get outside: the growing season is here and it’s time to sow broad beans, pot on wild primroses and start off onion and garlic, says Carol Klein
Feeling the weak warmth of the sun on your neck for the first time in the new year gives you [...]

Give shrubs a boost
This is a good moment – just before growth starts – to renovate shrubs. Old and overgrown shrubs stop flowering well or simply get too big for their boots. You could show them who’s boss by chopping them to the ground; many shrubs won’t care. However, you will almost always sacrifice at [...]

Are you a victim of allotment envy? Photograph: Addictive Picasso/Flickr/Some rights reserved
Cemeteries, roundabouts, car parks – no piece of land is immune from the allotmenteers in waiting who are desperate to find some space to grow while they languish on a waiting list for a plot.
I’ve written a piece for the G2 section of [...]