Greenhouse - increasing the possibilities of a greater variety and continuous supply

There are a thousand plants we’d like to have in our gardens, and a hundred things we’d like to eat all year round. Nobody can guarantee both, even if we had the room for them, but it is possible to increase your plant range and the supply of edibles at either side of the growing season, by using your greenhouse as a supply source.

Many plants are difficult to propagate and don’t come true to type, this is why garden centres make so much money out of us – they put in the years necessary to raise some of the world’s most temperamental plants so that we can buy the finished product. However, if you set aside say a quarter of your greenhouse for experimental growing, you can find you’ve got the space to explore some real exotics: carnivorous indoor plants, bananas, tea bushes, avocado pear plants (after three years you’ve got a houseplant to be proud of, or to give away to newly married friends) etc.

You can use another quarter for rotational sowing – planting annuals all at once means a glut, but by sowing flower seeds at four to six week intervals and carefully controlling the conditions of light and heat, you can hold back plants like marguerites, coleus and dianthus to flower later in the year. And we all know about greenhouse forced bulbs being open at Christmas, when the garden is dank and bare.

Remember to record when the seeds were sown, the germination date and success rate, and when seedlings are ready for transplanting each year, so that you can build on your success year on year.