Get Christmas Cactus Ready to Flower

So like everyone else you have weeds you want to ‘get rid of’ and here is how.

Courgettes

Think before you allow poppies to proliferate. Poppies rob a lot of goodness from your soil.

This selection of top ten Roses to grow as cut flowers has been chosen for their scent and the length of the vase life. If Roses are picked as the buds are breaking they will last at least a week and if they are picked fully open it will be several days.

Alstromeria are one of the longest lived cut flowers I know. Several weeks of flowering are possible if the bunch is bought with colour just showing. Ensure there is plenty of bud and you will be delighted.

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.

This is one of the many books in my collection but the only one to focus on growing big, bigger and biggest vegetables. If you want to grow giant vegetable for exhibition or to get large crops then there are many pointers in ‘How to Grow Giant Vegetables’ by Bernard Lavery and below.

If gardeners are exceptional people then buy them a copy of this book for Christmas. It contains 20 stories and profiles about encounters with gardeners and a day in their life to provide reading matter for dark garden-free evenings.

There are all sorts of presents you can give an avid gardener for Christmas. A concept present may be a small collection of garden ornaments or some funny sayings. More seriously garden tokens are always useful but I like to select my own tools.

I have just bought a non-stop flowering begonia cunningly entitled ‘Begonia Orange’. Here are some more orange blooms until the begonia gets going.

Japanese maple or Acer palmatum are popular trees and small shrubs. They are grown for an attractive habit and dramatic foliage.

You can grow fresh relatively clean vegetables in containers. This is useful for gardeners with restricted space or where you want vegetables close to the kitchen door.