Category: January

Featured

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Growing Microgreens & Edible Sprouting Seeds Indoors

One of the many joys of growing our own food is that this wonderful process allows us a marvellous opportunity to eat freshly harvested fruit, vegetables, and herbs, which usually have a dramatically improved flavour and freshness compared to the equivalent alternatives we can purchase in our local supermarket.  Usually, when we imagine growing our own produce, we think of a process that takes anywhere from between a number of months to a number of years to produce vegetables, fruit, or herbs. 

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Tall Orchidarium equipment update

Welcome to the first update for my Tall Orchidarium!  I set up my Tall Orchidarium in November 2019.  This update reveals how the equipment inside my Tall Orchidarium has performed over the past 15 months.

Custom build Tall Orchidarium, made by Custom Aquaria

I commissioned Matthew, from Custom Aquaria, to build my Tall Orchidarium for me. 

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Finding the Best Composts to Grow Tomatoes

I’m a peat-free gardener; I am a passionate advocate for using peat-free composts.  Every year, I uncover the best quality peat-free composts on the market in my peat-free Compost Trials.  I ran this Compost Trial to help you find top quality composts that will enable your tomato plants to produce bumper harvests of tomatoes!

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Book Review: Growing Orchids at Home: The Beginner’s Guide to Orchid Care

Growing Orchids at Home: The Beginner’s Guide to Orchid Care
Authors: Manos Kanellos and Peter White
Publisher: Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
ISBN: 9781842467183

Orchid growing is a wonderful hobby!  You don’t need a garden or lots of space to grow orchids; a wide range of orchid species can be grown inside our homes. 

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Welcome to the Planting List for my Tall Orchidarium.  This is a planting list with a difference!  To find out more about a particular orchid, simply click on the orchid’s profile for more information, where you’ll also find links to every article about that particular orchid species on pumpkinbeth.com.  Some individual orchids can be followed, as they grow from young seedlings to mature flowering plants.

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Specialist Snowdrop Nurseries & Other Places to buy Snowdrop Bulbs & Snowdrops in the Green

I love snowdrops.  If you wish to grow snowdrops in your garden, then I want to make your dreams come true and help you to find the best places to purchase these wonderful plants!

It’s important to buy quality snowdrops from reputable suppliers, firstly to ensure that you receive the snowdrop variety that you’ve purchased, and secondly to avoid purchasing bulbs that have been taken from the wild. 

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Aerangis citrata

I thought you might enjoy following one of my Aerangis citrata orchids through the course of the year; as a result, I’ve been regularly updating this diary to give you the chance to get to know this orchid better.  To make it easier for you, I’ve dated all of my photographs, so you can more clearly see the rate of this plant’s growth and development.

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Mistletoe is a prized plant at Christmas time, when it’s the custom to decorate our homes with the berries and foliage of holly, ivy, and mistletoe, in celebration of the season.

I’ve always greatly admired the evergreen spherical forms that mature mistletoe specimens hold high up in the treetops.  Mistletoe’s naturally forked growth and branching habit display a symmetrical form that enhances the plant’s beauty, highlighting its simple green leaves and white pearl-like berries.

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Do you have enough houseplants? I don’t know about you, but I’m always willing to make room for more indoor plants.  If you’re considering purchasing a new houseplant and you’re keen to make a lasting purchase, hoping for the long-term, leafy love affair we all dream of, then I have some fabulous ideas for you…

Ceropegia linearis subsp. woodii is also known as String of Hearts or Hearts Entangled. 

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The Quadgrow Self Watering Planter

Earlier this year, Greenhouse Sensation sent me a Quadgrow Self Watering Planter to try.  If you’ve not seen a Quadgrow before, it’s a plastic container growing system (made from recycled plastic) that uses capillary action to provide plants with automatic watering.  This clever design alters the way we irrigate plants.  Instead of watering plants in the traditional sense (watering plants from above with a watering can), with the Quadgrow we deliver the water and nutrients right where they’re needed – at the plants’ roots. 

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Phalaenopsis pulchra is still flowering today!

This Phalaenopsis pulchra flower opened on the 8th September 2020, which as I write to you today was fifty-two days ago.  Phalaenopsis orchids can produce incredibly long lasting flowers; although Phalaenopsis hybrids tend to flower for much longer than wild species plants.  A number of the Phalaenopsis hybrids I’ve grown are particularly floriferous, sending out masses of long lasting flowers and blooming continually for longer than a year at a time, without appearing to flag or tire at all.

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Deinostigma tamiana

This is Deinostigma tamiana, a truly marvellous plant that thrives inside terrariums and bottle gardens.  Deinostigma tamiana is a Gesneriad species from Vietnam.  If you’ve not seen it before, yet Deinostigma tamiana looks somewhat familiar, it’s probably because these plants are related to African violets (Saintpaulias).

Growing Deinostigma tamiana

Deinostigma tamiana is an easy going, adaptable plant that’s content growing in a range of terrarium environments. 

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Building a Tall Orchidarium

In November 2019, I set up this new terrarium, which I’ve christened my Tall Orchidarium.  I designate a name to each of my terrariums to help you more easily find every article relating to the particular terrarium you’re interested in.  If you want to know more about my Tall Orchidarium, you can find all of my articles that relate to this terrarium by clicking here.

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Phalaenopsis pulchra growth, development, and flowering

My friend, Gary Firth kindly gave me this Phalaenopsis pulchra plant, for my National Collection of Miniature Phalaenopsis Species, exactly two years and eight months ago.  I must say, it’s always a huge relief when I don’t immediately kill a plant that a friend has given me!  Consequently, I’m celebrating the fact that this orchid remains alive and well and I am delighted to be able to share my photographs of this Phalaenopsis pulchra specimen’s first flowering with you. 

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Wildlife Around my Pond

I am so grateful for my little pond; this small area of water attracts many insects to our garden.  As well as planting up my pond with aquatic plants that live in water, I’ve planted the narrow border around my pond with garden plants that will attract bees, butterflies, moths, hoverflies, and other insects.  If you’re interested in growing plants for bees and butterflies, you won’t need a pond or a boggy area of ground to grow these garden plants – they grow in regular garden soil – my plants are growing in free draining, sandy soil; so I’ve chosen mostly drought tolerant plants.

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Butterfly Conservation’s Big Butterfly Count 2020

I adore spending time immersed in nature, studying plants and butterflies.  Today I wanted to tell you about the Big Butterfly Counts I’ve taken at Bookham Common, in Surrey.

Butterfly Conservation’s Big Butterfly Count runs from Friday the 17th July 2020 until Sunday 9th August 2020 – so you still have plenty of time to join in and enjoy taking your own Butterfly Count! 

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2020 Compost Trial: Growing Broad Beans

I’m a peat-free gardener; I am a passionate advocate for peat-free composts.  I know from my own experience, that it’s not always easy to find a good quality peat-free growing media.  I understand that gardeners who have used peat-based composts all their lives might be hesitant to switch to a peat-free compost and gardeners who have purchased a poor performing peat-free compost could naturally be reluctant to try peat-free growing media again. 

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New English Roses from David Austin Roses for 2020

The RHS Chelsea Flower Show is a much anticipated event in the horticultural calendar.  It’s a week long celebration of plants that provides an opportunity to see plants face-to-face and discover nurseries’ new plant ranges.

I adore fragrant roses!  Each year, I relish meeting the new rose introductions from David Austin Roses, at the Chelsea Flower Show. 

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Wildlife in my Wildlife Pond

The reason we created our wildlife pond was to support and encourage wildlife.  I’d love to be able to tell you about every creature that has ever visited my pond, but I don’t manage to spend as much time here as I would like and I’m not the fastest mover, so I’ve only managed to capture a fraction of the wildlife that has visited this area of my garden.

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My Wildlife Pond in Springtime & Early Summer

I thought I’d share with you some photographs I’ve taken of my wildlife pond this spring and early summertime.  I’m not sure if you’ve seen my pond before; this pond was created last year (here’s the first article I wrote about this pond).  To guide you through the season, I’ve added my photographs to this article in date order.