Thompson & Morgan Gardening Blog

Our gardening blog covers a wide variety of topics, including fruit, vegetable and tree stories. Read some of the top gardening stories right here.

Propagation, planting out and cultivation posts from writers that know their subjects well.

Chillies on the go

by | Mar 12, 2015 | , , | 0 Comments

chilliesThe trick to success with chilli sowing is to keep it simple. I’ve tried all sorts of sowing methods, from expanding coir pellets and thermostatic controlled propagators to expensive home hydroponic systems – but what method has given me quick high-yielding results this season?

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What to grow on the allotment this season

by | Mar 12, 2015 | , , | 2 Comments

With all the crocus and daffodils popping their little heads through the soil, it gets me thinking about my plan on what to grow in the coming season on the allotment. Even though this plan changes and develops beyond recognition, as the year goes on I still use it as my rough guide.

When I first started planting veg I would religiously check the information on the back of the seed packet to make sure I was planting and sowing correctly. However, I found that as time went on, I was planting out way too early and was caught out by late frost on more than one occasion (once bitten, twice shy as the saying goes). Experience has taught me to relax and hold back with the sowing. I’ve just started sowing chilli seeds because germination of some varieties can be roughly six weeks (I get so impatient with these). My hubby and sons are chilli maniacs so I always end up growing too many varieties in the pursuit of heat and flavour balance. This year we are growing Black Olive, Lemon Drop and Chocolate Naga, but I’m sure the list will grow bigger as time goes on. I was also given some Spanish Padron chillies by my good twitter friend, this has sparked a friendly chilli race involving myself and a few others. We have all sown at different times and used different methods so it will be interesting to see how it all pans out. Mine are only just starting to develop they took roughly four weeks, I’ve had them sitting on the window sill as my greenhouse isn’t heated, once the temperature evens out I shall transfer them.

sowing on the allotment

The temperature today in the greenhouse reached 81 degrees but dips massively at night still. I’ve also sown tomatoes. I’ve chosen Tomato Tigeralla, Tomato Choc Cherry, Tomato Romello and my favourite is Sungold and Shirley, these are easy to grow and the Sungold are amazingly sweet. I would highly recommend these if you haven’t tried them before. I use tomatillos for salsa, they grow with a papery casing, once fully grown peal the casing back and the tomatillo will be inside. I’m growing the green variety but you can also get the black variety. When using these for cooking make sure you thoroughly rush them as they have a sticky substance which covers them that is really bitter and awful.

You still have time to plant out your garlic if you haven’t already done so (garlic is best planted between November and April) and also get your onion sets in. I planted Stuttgart white onions and red onions, just make sure you make a small hole with your dibber first as you don’t want to damage the root. Onions need to be planted roughly 4 inches apart and in rows 12 inches apart, from mid-March to mid-April. They don’t need to be planted very deep, just so the tops are showing. You may find the birds occasionally pull the odd one up, it’s not a problem just gently poke it back in and it will be fine. Before planting just check that all your onions are healthy, there is no mould etc. By now I should imagine you have your potatoes chitting, there has been some debate in recent years whether to chit or not (what does chitting mean?) Chitting is basically another work for sprouting, what you do when you chit your seed potatoes is basically to speed up the aging process of the potato by exposing it to light and more importantly a bit of warmth, this will cause the eyes of the seed potato to start sprouting. The sprouts should be small, nobly and green and purple in colour. If you end up with long white coloured sprouts it means there’s not enough light.

A great way to grow herbs – the windowsill gardener

by | Mar 5, 2015 | , , | 5 Comments

windowsill gardeningNow I’m not a drinking person. But the people I live with do like the occasional bottle of wine, so when I went outside the other day and found the glass recycling box was rather full, I decided to do some recycling of my own.

I wanted something that would look neat and tidy but at the same time have a bit of uniqueness to it and wine bottles seemed to fit the bill nicely, after all, they were only going to be smashed up! So if it all went horribly wrong I could pretend it hadn’t happened and take a quiet trip to the bottle bank.

I’m rather lucky in one sense that over the years I’ve managed to build up a collection of various DIY tools and so it didn’t take long for me to dig out my electric tile saw, pop it onto my work bench and make a start. My first attempt at cutting one of the bottles in half was a disaster, I didn’t keep the bottle steady and level and so I managed to end up with a 1cm difference in just one circuit of the bottle, it didn’t look good – one for the bottle bank.

My next attempt was much better; I decided on a line and kept my hand steady, producing a nicely level cut bottle, one down, and five to go!

Once they were all done, I filed and sanded down all the sharp edges, after all, there’s no point in getting cut yourself when reaching for some herbs – which I’d decided to use the bottles for by the way. I lined up my creations on the windowsill and stood back to admire my handy work. They were going to be a nuisance to clean around etc if left loose like that so back to the garage for some plywood off cuts ( a man never throws away any wood “just in case” ). Twenty minutes later a nice little box had been made and everything looked neat and tidy, I was a happy chap.

windowsill gardening

Now for the fun part, the seeds… after much deliberation I decided on Oregano, Mint, Basil, Chives, Plain Leaved Parsley and Coriander. Mint being a bit unusual to grow on a windowsill, but it beats going to get some from the garden in the pouring rain!

I filled about a quarter of each bottle with horticultural grit and charcoal as there were no drainage holes in the bottles so I wanted to be able to see if there was water sitting in the bottom and the charcoal would help absorb any smell of sitting water, which would be unpleasant. Then topped them to within a couple of cm from the top with good quality compost. Once I’d sown all the seeds, I covered with cling film to make a propagator and waited for the shoots to appear.

windowsill gardeningOverall I’m very pleased with the look. I’ve recycled, in my own way, half a dozen wine bottles and a friend will be benefiting from a windowsill herb planter in the very near future (as long as I get to taste them in a nice meal of course).

Last months project was a success all the bulbs have grown well, the crocuses and daffodils have all flowered and the tulips are still to come. On reflection I will probably plant the same bulb variety in each planter next year as now the crocuses have finished it’s looking a little bit untidy and there are gaps.

I’ve managed to acquire some onions and even some shallots which have been planted in another two bottles (the shallots had fewer in the bottle and larger holes to allow room for them to split (hopefully)).

Next month there might be teapots!

Visit our hub pages for all the expert herb growing advice and tips you need.

The quickest way to plant up a new garden

by | Mar 3, 2015 | , | 4 Comments

Are you planting up a new garden and don’t know where to start? I would recommend garden shrubs as a starting point. By selecting more compact varieties, and those which are easier to prune and tame, you can make life easier for yourself! A garden which only includes bedding plants is a blaze of colour, yet is so much more difficult to maintain, and needs re-planting every year, whereas shrubs will last for 20 years or more.

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What’s new at Thompson & Morgan?

by | Feb 17, 2015 | , | 4 Comments

Here at Thompson & Morgan we strive to excel in customer service, to be able to provide you with top quality products, expert advice and a no fuss approach to gardening. That being said, we know that there is always room for improvement and this year we have made a few changes and added new lines to help you create your dream gardens.

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Hardy Fuchsia

by | Feb 17, 2015 | , | 0 Comments

There are few plant groups that are as diverse as the fuchsia. There is a lovely range of hardy fuchsias in the market, many with different colour foliage and form.

hardy fuchsiaFuchsia Genii is a more unusual fuchsia variety, with distinctive yellow foliage. The flowers have inky blue petals backed by magenta tepals, and these blooms are set against golden, glowing foliage. Genii is an easy to grow shrub that will grow happily in sun or part-shade giving your borders a magnificent display.

Fuchsia Hawkshead is a customer favourite and has been awarded RHS Garden Merit. Hawkshead is an upright and bushy cultivar which blooms non-stop from early summer to autumn making a lovely addition to your beds and borders.

 

hardy fuchsiaNew and exclusive to Thompson & Morgan is Fuchsia ‘Pink Fizz’, the best climbing fuchsia you will grow. The vigorous upright stems can extend by up to 1.5m (5ft) in a single season, making it perfect for covering walls, fences, arches and obelisks.

How to care for hardy fuchsia plants in winter

Hardy fuchsia plants are ideal for growing in sheltered borders all year round. These cultivars range from neat compact varieties such as Fuchsia ‘Tom Thumb’ that reaches just 30cm (12″) tall, up to Fuchsia magellanica which can reach a colossal height and spread of 3m (10’) in ideal conditions. Hardy fuchsias are best planted deeply in the ground to protect the crown during cold winter weather. Further winter protection can be provided by applying a deep mulch of bark chips, leaf mould or straw in late autumn each year.

An update from the Greenhouse

by | Feb 13, 2015 | , , , | 5 Comments

Hello everyone!

Firstly can I please say a big “Thank you” to everyone who has read my blog and given feedback. I must say I was really worried that no one apart from my mum would read my blog so it’s really nice to hear from everyone.

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Fuchsias – The Big Bloomers

by | Feb 10, 2015 | , , , | 2 Comments

At Thompson & Morgan, we have been selling plants for over 20 years now, including thousands, if not millions, of fuchsias! Our customers love a good fuchsia; from the small-flowered, table top style to the glorious trailing varieties. But, for now, we’re talking about the ‘big Daddies’ of the fuchsia world; the giant-flowered trailers!

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Making a start on your plot

by | Feb 9, 2015 | , | 2 Comments

allotments with michelleSo you’re now the proud tenant of your new plot. You look, you scratch your head, you stand and survey. The fact of the matter is, there is only one way to get a plot up and running and that’s hard work. I started with cutting through the bramble jungle, once cut down to ground level then the fun really begins. Digging out all of the roots, this is quite labour intensive but unfortunately very necessary it really is the only way to ensure they don’t grow back. If you’re lucky enough to inherit fruit bushes try and salvage what you can as these are usually quite established and still produce good fruit even if you decide to relocate. Just make sure when relocating that you dig down fair enough to get the entire root. I inherited quite a few raspberries on mine which I moved to a different bed and still managed to get a good crop, they fruited much better in the second planting season. I even discovered I had a yellow raspberry bush and they tasted so much sweeter.

After clearing the bramble, grasses and what seemed like 10,000 milk bottle tops (what’s that all about) the big dig started, it seemed to go on forever with moving old bottles and pieces of brick. I even came across several large pieces of old carpet. Sometimes people use carpet to suppress the weeds; you can buy much more environmentally friendly alternatives now thankfully. On our site we have a ban on carpet; we are only allowed to use horticultural tarpaulin.

allotments with michelleThrough the winter months when I am not using so many beds I tend to plant green manure. There are many different mixes to choose from, I personally use the clover mix but it depends on what soil you have as to which mix you choose. The green manure on the whole replaces nitrogen back into the soil. It is a fast growing plant sown to cover bare soil, perfect for allotments. The foliage smothers weeds and the roots prevent soil erosion, when dug into the ground while still green it returns valuable nutrients to the soil and improves soil structure. It is extremely easy to sow and grow, the only thing to remember is to make sure you dig the foliage and plant into the top 2.5cm (10in) of soil and to do this 3-4 weeks before you actually intend on planting or sowing as the decay in green material can hamper plant growth.

After digging, my allotment neighbour informed me he had a rotavator I could borrow. Some people dig, some people rotivate, it’s a personal choice. On our site its split down the middle, the older generation tend to dig whilst the younger ones rotivate (that sounds like a sweeping generalisation but it’s just what I have observed on our site).

Next step I decided I would have raised beds partly so I didn’t loose soil onto the pathways and also so I could use a lot of compost to improve the soil as it hadn’t been used for a long time. There was also a tiny lazy part of me that thought whilst watching my allotment neighbour dig from one side of her allotment to the other only to tread all over it, that surely it’s easier to concentrate on just digging the areas where your growing your veg. We are very lucky on our site we have a wood chip delivery and this is what we use in our paths between our beds, this makes life a lot easier and tidier. Many people use scaffold boards for their beds these are ideal if you can get hold of them, I personally used fencing kick boards.

allotments with michelleNext purchase was a shed you need somewhere to store your tools and escape from the rain and most importantly brew a good cuppa. I purchased mine second hand on eBay for £77, my dad and my partner also added a veranda on the front as it gets quite stuffy in there in the summer. It’s a lovely place to sit and watch the world go by and it’s also turned into the site tea hut. You can have your shed as comfy or as basic as you like. I was lucky enough to be given a second shed 6×6 which became my t&t shed (toilet and tools) we don’t have toilets on our site so I have a camping toilet in mine. A lot of sites have size restrictions on sheds mine is 9ft x 8ft and must confess has become a home from home.

Once your beds are planned and your sheds are up, you can concentrate on your soil before planting and if you’re lucky enough to have a greenhouse it makes your growing season so much longer.

In my next post I shall give you some tips on what to grow and when.

Windowsill Gardening

by | Feb 6, 2015 | , | 1 Comment

windowsill gardeningI have been gardening since I was knee high to my Grandad, he taught me as much about gardening when I was a nipper as I learnt at school about reading and writing! My father is also a keen gardener and so I have had a very well rounded gardening education. I have been working as a self employed gardener/landscaper for approximately ten years and I now work at Thompson & Morgan in the customer care department. I have a passion for gardening, growing things is one of the most rewarding things anyone can do.

I can also tend to be slightly “off the wall” in my thinking. I will try and make / build /construct things in the garden – from Old Compact Disc windmills to planters made from various bits and pieces. I still make Hypertufa using Geoff Hamilton’s recipe and have used it to make fake rocks and fake stone planters in gardens in the past.

But of course not everyone has access to their own (or other peoples’) gardens and so I started to think about growing more things indoors, things that would be useful in cooking, or would brighten up a room. I also wanted to recycle as it’s a cheaper and sometimes more fun way of doing things.

And so I’m going to share my “adventures” in windowsill gardening, I’ll document how I’ve made things and how well they do (successes and failures). I’m really looking forward to it and my brain is already whirring with a thousand ideas – some of which might even work!

So…. Uses for plastic bottles, and where and when? Those are the questions.

After some trawling of the internet, I came up with my first plan… a super windowsill onion planter, great! Onions sets aren’t in season yet and I’m a little keen to try this idea out, then I remembered I had some tulips and crocus and even a few daff bulbs that I hadn’t planted out yet that all had inch long shoots on them and needed using up.

windowsill gardeningSo my first plan is… a super windowsill bulb planter.

We have some very large 4 litre squash bottles at work so I earmarked one of those and waited patiently for the staff to hurry and finish it up, as soon as it was empty I grabbed it and washed it out.

Looking very strange taking an empty squash bottle back to my desk, I started to work out how many bulbs I could plant inside and, armed with a marker pen, I worked out a rough criss-cross pattern which allowed me to put 64 bulbs inside. The next stage was to drill each of the holes out, which is a bit tricky as I didn’t want to split the bottle, I might try using a soldering iron or hot glue gun to melt the holes out next time as they were a bit on the rough side with burrs etc. Then I cut around the top so that I could get my hand inside.

And so to the planting, this was surprisingly easy, layers of compost and then poking the bulb shoots through each of the holes, until they were fairly tight (so that no water could escape), building up until I’d reached the top, I then planted four crocus bulbs in the top and taped the bottle top back, this was hopefully to reduce loss of water through evaporation.

Once I’d watered the bottle thoroughly I put it on the windowsill and I’m now waiting to see what happens…

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