I’m supporting Peat Free April – a campaign by garden writers, nature writers, and gardeners who want to ban the use of peat in horticulture and protect the planet’s peatlands and peat bogs.
We really need your help to push the government to protect peat bogs and peatlands, so please sign this petition to ask the government to ban the use of peat in horticulture.
April is a truly generous and forgiving time of year for gardeners. This month provides us with numerous opportunities to grow an extensive range of exciting and exotic fruit and vegetables from seed.
Although there’s a wealth of seed choices on offer, not all of the unusual edibles we can grow are guaranteed to succeed in our variable climate and not every variety produces the best flavoured harvest.
Here’s my calendar featuring the dates and details of plant sales, plant festivals, and other super opportunities to buy wonderful, locally grown plants! Great quality, rare, hard to find, unusual, choice plants and old favourites can all be found at the specialist plant fairs and other events that I have listed for you below.
I’m a peat-free gardener; I am a passionate advocate for peat-free composts – I want to encourage everyone to go peat-free! However, I do understand that gardeners who use peat-based composts might be reluctant to switch to a peat-free compost, if they aren’t familiar with this type of growing media. Trying a new compost can feel like a venture into the unknown; none of us want to start the gardening season off on the wrong foot, to be unnecessarily delayed, or to have our gardening compromised by using products that are not as good quality or effective as we might wish for.
I set up my Tall Orchidarium in November 2019. I am absolutely thrilled with this custom built terrarium, which Matthew (from Custom Aquaria) built for me in autumn 2019. I’m growing a large number of orchids inside my Tall Orchidarium, so I’ve divided up this update (which covers the period from November 2019 to March 2021) into three posts of slightly more manageable sizes.
Every year, I trial new plants and products in my quest to discover the top performing composts and the tastiest and most productive edible plants.
Last year, the Quadgrow Self Watering Planter performed exceptionally well in my Trials. Growing tomatoes is easy with the Quadgrow; simply top up the Quadgrow’s 30l reservoir with Nutrigrow and water and the planter will automatically water and fertilise your plants for around two weeks.
Hello and welcome to my wildlife pond. In this post, you can see the pictures I’ve taken of my wildlife pond throughout autumn and winter 2020/21, right up to this weekend and the present day (hello future readers, this weekend was the 27th and 28th of February 2021). Other than observing my aquatic plants as they’ve died back, my husband and I have not carried out any maintenance to our pond since my last update, but that’s all about to change!
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.
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 AquariaI commissioned Matthew, from Custom Aquaria, to build my Tall Orchidarium for me.
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!
If you suffered any gardening disappointments last year, I want to help you improve your growing techniques, so you’ll experience the uplifting joy of gardening success, this year!
Gardening is such a positive hobby, growing plants truly enriches our lives; yet it can be utterly disheartening when seedlings die, our plants decline to flower or fruit, or don’t perform as well as we hoped.
If you’re in need of some time out, a delightful and quite simply enchanting activity that you can take part in this weekend is the RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch 2021 – spending a restful, restorative hour watching and counting birds. I love birds, wildlife and nature. I adore taking part in the RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch, this one of my favourite events of the year!
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.
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.
Chilli pepper seeds are usually sown from February to the end of April. However, these vegetables command a long growing season, requiring sufficient time for the plants to mature and their fruit to develop and ripen. Accordingly, I find that chilli peppers are best started from seed sown in January.
Nurseries stock a limited range of chilli pepper plants in springtime, but gardeners who grow chillies from seed are blessed with the choice of a vast range of varieties.
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.
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.
Welcome to the twenty-fourth and final update from my BiOrbAir Review – Growing Miniature Orchids in the BiOrbAir! Since my last update, I’ve been experiencing problems with both my Miniature Orchid Trial BiOrbAir Terrarium’s LED lights and this terrarium’s ultra sonic misting unit. Sadly, as a result of my BiOrbAir’s equipment faults I’ve had to close this Miniature Orchid BiOrbAir Trial; accordingly, this is the final installment and update for my Miniature Orchid BiOrbAir Trial.
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.
Welcome to my 2021 Snowdrop Gardens, Talks, Virtual Events, and Open Days Calendar! Here are the dates, and all the details of the openings of the most beautiful and magnificent snowdrop gardens. These gardens are opening to allow visitors the chance to experience the joy of visiting their snowdrop collections. You’ll also find details of snowdrop study days, open days, virtual talks, lectures, and any other lovely snowdrop events happening in 2021 listed in this calendar!
