An eleven-zone garden I look after was using 41 cubic metres of water a week in July. Two summers later the same garden was using 26. A weather-based controller had gone in, along with a rain sensor and pressure-regulated bodies on the…
Six years ago I moved from a courtyard plot to a half-acre with beds at both ends of it. My old 20-metre hose would not reach the far ones, so I bought two cheap 15-metre extensions and joined them together. That was my first mistake. Flow…
Pruning is one of the most important gardening tasks, but it can also be one of the most exhausting. After
Irrigation is one of the most important practices in modern agriculture. As climate change, drought, and water scarcity continue to
Most garden makeovers fail on sequence rather than on taste. The visible things get bought first. Plants arrive, then paving, and the soil takes whatever is left in the account. I have done this myself and watched the bill arrive six…
I can walk onto a plot in late June and usually tell you what happened there in April. One crop filling the whole bed. The same family in the same ground as last season. Bare soil between the rows, so every beetle and moth has a clear run…
Most advice about small-space furniture assumes a small garden. A small garden is generous next to a balcony. I keep a tape measure in my jacket pocket for exactly this reason. Last March I stood in a courtyard in Bristol that measured…
People buy an automatic watering system for the wrong reason. Convenience is usually what tips the decision, but convenience is
The bag on my bench read 10-10-10. It had sat in the shed for two seasons, and I had been spreading it on the same vegetable bed every spring without once asking what those numbers were doing to the soil underneath. That bed had been…
Building a backyard vegetable garden is one of the most rewarding ways to grow fresh food at home. Whether you
