Independent gardening advice for real gardens, balconies and windowsills.
Practical advice on growing food and flowers, improving soil, and making the most of small spaces. Start anywhere — the garden will meet you.
In order to protect seeds against birds,insects, and rodents, soak them in water containing 20 or 25 per cent, of mineral oil. Vegetable seeds, such as Haricot Beans and Peas, should be soaked for twe...
To prevent snails crawling up walls or fruit trees daub theground with a thick paste of soot and train oil. There is no remedy so effectual for their destruction as hand-picking.
A greenhouse climbing plant that is admired for its foliagerather than its bloom. A mixture of peat and loam or leaf-mould and sandy loam suits it. Train the shoots up string, and freely water the pla...
A sharp watch should be kept over all slugs, and constantvisits paid to the garden at daybreak for their destruction. If fresh cabbage leaves are strewed about in the evening the slugs will congregate...
Hardy perennial. Sweet, white, and pleasant; the tubersare boiled and served up with butter.
Neat-growing, dwarf evergreen shrubs having Laurel-likeleaves, and producing a profusion of scarlet berries in winter. They succeed in any ordinary soil, but thrive best in peat and loam; and are prop...
A light loamsuits this plant, which is moderately hardy. The soil should be moist, but not wet. It does not like being disturbed, but when necessary the crowns may be divided in autumn, taking care to...
A good and hardy border perennial, whichproduces during July and August large deep orange-yellow flowers resembling a Sunflower. It is very useful for cutting, will grow anywhere, and can be increased...
Elegant plants, delighting in a light, richsoil. Sow the seeds of the annual varieties early in April where they are intended to bloom. Silene Pendula, when sown in the autumn, makes a pleasing show o...
Very pretty hardy perennials, of easy culture. S. Candidahas pure white flowers closely arranged on the upper part of the stems. S. Malvaeflora bears beautifully fringed, satiny pink flowers. They wil...
Plant the bulbs in November, or in February or March, inrows 9 in. apart, and the bulbs 6 in. one from the other. In July, when the tops are dying down, lift the bulbs, lay them in the sunshine to dry...