Maintaining bush plants in pots (or, a recipe for happy gooseberries)

March 20, 2015.Reading time 2 minutes.

I have a certain fondness for gooseberries, something that I think is shown by the fact that I’ve squeezed five bushes (two green hinnomakis, two red hinnomakis and a trusty old invicta) into my tiny space. They’re marvelous things, gooseberries, useful for everything from a liquor to liven up fizz through to pies. They’re one […]

Tempus Fig-it, or, my poor confused Brown Turkey fig tree

January 30, 2015.Reading time 2 minutes.

I brought my very normal Brown Turkey fig tree (because of the usual space problems, I have to grow my fig tree in a pot) in from the garden about three weeks ago thinking that it probably wouldn’t survive a frost. So it’s been happily sitting in the sunlight coming through the French windows for […]

Keeping on top of the raspberries (or alongside them at least…)

July 5, 2014.Reading time 1 minute.

The number of things that I have really not been that efficient at in the garden continues to increase. It didn’t occur to me, when planting my rows of raspberries in my raised sleeper beds, to string up a proper wire frame. This has resulted in having to tie new lines, made of string, across […]

Harvesting home-grown food: Tayberries

June 26, 2014.Reading time 2 minutes.

The Buckingham Tayberry is a lovely and vigorous plant. I erred on the side of caution when it came to planting up my soft fruit raised beds. I wanted to plant fruit that I love to eat, that would save us money and that I know tastes better fresh. So I went for a whole […]

How to plant Pineberries in hanging baskets

June 24, 2014.Reading time 2 minutes.

Via RHS The pineberry (I chose the “White Dream”) is a funny sort of fruit. It’s the sort of thing that one might expect to find at the tea party given by the Mad Hatter. They’re expensive too, at £3.99 for 125g, so they seemed to be a good fruit to try to grow from […]

DIY watering system (drip – feed from soda bottles)

June 22, 2014.Reading time 4 minutes.

When planning the garden, one of the things that worried me most about planting in pots was how easily they dry out, especially on hot days. It’s not good for root structures to get completely parched as the plant stems start to collapse inwards. So my initial thought was to purchase a rainwater butt and […]

Tying in raspberry canes (whether they like it or not)

June 12, 2014.Reading time 2 minutes.

Before the canes My whole garden seems bent on telling me that I’ve started everything too late this year. The learning curve here is nothing if not steep. My six main raspberry canes in my raised beds have burst into life over the last month and so I thought it was probably about time that […]