Gardenig in Spain. Tips & Guides

As far removed from an English cottage garden as you can travel, the passion flower (Passiflora) is one of the most theatrical and exotic of plants. The weird and wonderful blooms are embellished with many showy parts that together remind you of peering into a kaleidoscope as a child: in the centre, the anthers, stigmas, and ovary protrude over the filament rays, which are marked with circles of incredible colour.

I spent a lot of my childhood holidays on the Costa del Sol, soaking up the Andalucian atmosphere. When I went to secondary school I chose Spanish as my second language (French was compulsory!), and ever since then Spain has been in my blood. I love the culture, and the food, although not their obsession with all things pork. As an adult I even spent a week living with a Spanish family, a holiday filled with memorable meals. They were worried I would be fussy, but the only thing I turned down was squid cooked in its own ink.

A lot of new gardening and plant books have landed on my mat this spring, and I need to up my book reviewing game! I like to do them justice, and spend some time reading them before I write a review, so that does create a bit of a backlog. Right at the time when the garden is demanding my attention. Anyway, the book that has found itself at the top of the list is one that really encompasses the gardening zeitgeist – The Community Gardening Handbook, by Ben Raskin. I looked him up, and he has impeccable credentials. He’s currently Head of Horticulture for the Soil Association; prior experiences include working for Garden Organic, running a walled garden and being a Horticultural Advisor for the Community Farm near Bristol.

When I happened upon this recipe for caramelized onion marmalade made in a slow cooker, I just had to try it.

In a typical year, I do my garden planning before Christmas. But last year wasn’t normal, and normality (whatever that means) has yet to return. I thought I’d thought about it, but it turns out – not so much.

When the weather was still warm and dry, I lifted my onion crop. According to last year’s records, I planted 60 onion sets in 6 rows of 10 on 12th September 2017. I left them outside to dry, but then the weather turned wetter and I had to bring them inside to finish off. I wasn’t in a hurry to lift them, or use them, because we were still eating our way through the previous onion crop (chopped and frozen) that we hadn’t needed earlier in the year because of the plentiful leeks.

Guy Singh-Watson of Riverford Organics is warning about the risks of Brexit-related disruptions to our food supply, timed to coincide with the ‘Hungry Gap‘. He says “to be told by people who have no idea how their food is produced that this is ‘project fear’ makes me incandescent with rage”. Farmers and seasoned gardeners will be nodding their heads, but everyone else may be a little perplexed. What’s the Hungry Gap?

Another week in Lockdown, and another edition of Gardeners off World. We’re all now supposed to feel like astronauts, cooped up inside a small space with the same companions for weeks at a time. The barrage of isolation advice articles from astronauts, analog astronauts and Antarctic scientists continues. If you’re not bored of them yet, Space Nation has thoughts from Jane Poynter, who spent two years locked inside Biosphere 2 and Smithsonian magazine has spoken to people from all three groups of career isolators. I prefer Marina Koren’s article in The Atlantic, which explains why advice from astronauts may not be enough to help us survive a pandemic.

It has been a momentous week for space news, with the USA announcing its new Space Force insignia. It’s very much like the old Air Force Space Command insignia, and also very much like the Star Trek logo, which had the internet in stitches. And this just days after they announced their new uniform, and it became apparent that they would be going about their business in a totally appropriate woodland camouflage pattern.

Join Emma the Space Gardener as she explores gardening on Earth… and beyond! Emma’s guest on the show this week is Dr Javier Medina, a Space Plant Biologist with the Spanish National Research Council. He talks about why it’s essential we grow plants in space, what we’ve learned from his experiments, and when there might be a greenhouse on the Moon!

What kind of traveller are you? Do you prefer to lie in a hammock slung between two palm trees, reading the latest blockbuster novel? Or would I find you soaking up the local culture along with the sun? I’m more of the latter, and it helps to know a smattering of the local language if you go off the beaten track!

On 31 January 1971, Alan Shepard, Edgar Mitchell and Stuart Roosa launched on their Apollo 14 mission to the Moon. While Shepard and Mitchell walked on the Moon, Roosa stayed in orbit, taking photographs and performing experiments. Tucked away in his personal belongings were 500 tree seeds, which orbited the Moon 34 times.

Papa Johns is launching the world’s first-space-inspired pizza – a giant leap for pizza lovers everywhere.

Jill Edmondson, University of Sheffield and Jonathan Leake, University of Sheffield

Chris D Thomas, University of York; Jack Hatfield, University of York, and Katie Noble, University of York

Header image: Noah Silliman/Unsplash

Brie Goldman. Food Stylist: Annie Probst

There are many great Houseplants That Can be Used as Christmas Tree Alternatives, and apart from that, they look good as well.

It’s that time of year again! The much-anticipated listener question and answer episode. Carol and Danielle look forward to this special episode (sometimes TWO episodes) because it allows them to offer real-life advice for the plant and garden design issues that are troubling all of you out there in the podcast universe. This time, we got a slew of great questions via email and social media and we’re going to do our best to get through as many as possible. The inquiries included advice on planting under trees, attracting hummingbirds, and info about what garden tasks we’re tackling during the dog days of summer. Tune in to see if we fielded your question, or if someone else’s problem spot is something you can relate to.

…well, one bee, although there were several on the echinops above, E Arctic Glow’, when I was trying to take a photograph, but they wouldn’t stand still or long enough! The garden, is, however, currently swarming with bees and butterflies, which is good to see.

After salad crop failures in Spain and shortages of courgettes, broccoli and other ‘long distance’ vegetables gardeners could to worse than focus on traditional and non-traditional root crops.

Some flowers look best in groups or large swathes. These fields of cultivated Lavender demonstrate the point clearly. Imagine the scent from all these individual stems of flowers a heady experience. For commercial purposes growing in rows makes Lavender easier to mechanically crop and maintain.

The seeds of Islamic gardens grew from Persian gardens that were created to be oasis in the desert. Islam spread the sphere of influence to India, Turkey, and Spain from the Taj Mahal to Alhambra.

As part of your Premium access, you can send your gardening questions to our horticultural experts each month. They will then answer a selection of the questions they receive, and share the advice at the end of the month.

Native to Mexico and Central America, the dahlia (Family asteraceae) is a bushy and beautiful flowering perennial. The dahlia is Mexico's national flower, and its tuberous roots were eaten by Aztecs before the Spanish Conquest. Following Central America's colonisation, the dahlia was exported to European nations, where it thrived even in countries with harsh or cold winters. Since the 18th century, botanists, taxonomists and gardeners have held a certain fascination for the flower, identifying over 850 different species each with unique petal or stem structures (this number includes the plant's hybrids, too). Since dahlias are extraordinarily varied in appearance, they also tend to be categorised by the shape of the flower, with 10 categories that include anemone, peony, pompom, ball, decorative, cactus, single and waterlily.

Blue and Yellow Flowers offer a soothing combination and also match really well with the other plants in the garden. We have the best ones for you!

Marion Brenner

The tomato is a fruit from the nightshade family native to South America. The Spanish first introduced tomatoes to Europe, where they became used in Spanish and Italian food.

Food Insecurity and Food Deserts are terms used in the news to describe society’s status with food.

Want to know how to get two distinct flavors from one plant? Well, the plant known as Coriandrum sativum can provide just that. C. sativum is commonly cultivated as a low growing, vegetative herb known as cilantro that adds a savory flavor to many foods and dishes. However, not everyone knows that the seed produced by C. sativum is commonly referred to as coriander. Coriander is used whole or often ground as a spice to provide delectable flavor to many traditional and newer fusion-type meals. The herb and the spice come from the same plant, just different parts. For this reason, C. sativum is referred to with two different common names.

As I’ve transitioned my garden into a more age-friendly space, I am always on the search for interesting perennials to add to my planting beds. Gone are the days of planting large swaths of annuals each season. These days, I grow annuals in containers for easier maintenance and relief for my aching back and knees. Plus, I can move them around for a pop of seasonal color.

As I mentioned in my previous blog about the French style of floral design, I was inspired to create my Southern style arrangement using flowers and foliage from my own South Carolina landscape. The only floral items I purchased were a bouquet of fall floral mums and a bag of dried, sustainably gathered Spanish moss.

Want to spice up your holiday decorations this year? Creating a holiday garden gnome from a tomato cage is an activity that can include all ages and become a family tradition. All you need is a tomato cage or cages, zip ties or floral stem wire, greenery, a stocking hat and mittens, a nose, and yarn or Spanish moss for a beard.

You can create fresh or preserved moss balls to add interest to your floral arrangements. If using fresh moss or reindeer lichen, please don’t collect entire populations of them from a single area. Only gather small amounts from different places to allow the moss or lichen to regenerate. Commercial dried moss and Spanish moss that has been sustainably sourced can be purchased from your favorite craft store. The dried materials will last much longer than the freshly gathered ones.

Whilst photographing and writing for my EOMV post yesterday, I was struck by how quickly and seamlessly the woodland had morphed from the whites of snowdrops to the pinks of fritillaries and the early rhododendron and then suddenly into the blues and whites of bluebells and wild garlic – all in the blink of an eye! Nature continues to bowl me over with her subtle trickery…

I got my first glimpse of what have become my seasonal favorites almost 25 years ago, in the Connecticut garden of Marilyn Barlow, when she was starting Select Seeds (which I’m proud is an occasional advertiser on A Way to Garden). Then, the “nursery” was Marilyn’s yard, and the “office” was her kitchen table. And then, I hardly knew any of the vintage plants, climbing or otherwise, that Marilyn was collecting.Though Select Seeds’ focus is on oldtime plants or ones with an oldtime look, the nursery has taken an increasingly forward-looking approach to environmental practices.On the path toward organic growing, says Marilyn, use of neonicotinoids and other systemic chemicals has been completely eliminated. “Right now we’re growing naturally, with the plants and with the seeds that we do grow here,” she explains. “We use predator insects as the main