We are not stewards. We’re stakeholders.

Delaware State Flower emerges as a symbol of the state’s agrarian legacy and natural allure. Let us learn more about this plant along with its growing requirements and significance.

Header image: Mizuna lettuce growing aboard the International Space Station before being harvested and frozen for return to Earth. Image credit: NASA 

Victoriana Nursery Gardens is a family-run business. They like to help out local schools where they can – gardening is a fun and healthy activity for kids, helping them to learn about the environment and encouraging them to eat their veggies. They’re sponsoring a school garden this year, providing everything the school needs to get their veg plot up and running.

Yesterday I noticed that one of my Calycanthus floridus is in flower. I have two, currently both in pots, and it’s rare for me to be able to find both of them at the same time. They are refugees from the old garden; they were too young to flower there. They were planted in my parents’ garden in Malvern for a year or so – whether they flowered there, I don’t know. I suspect not, as they were given a rather shady spot. After we moved here I reclaimed them and planted them back into pots. So they haven’t had the best start in life, and I’m happy to see that at least one of them seems to be thriving regardless.

Right now, 200 miles above your head, chilli peppers are growing on the International Space Station (ISS).

It used to be that a ripe strawberry was a red strawberry, but things have moved on and there’s a lot more variety in strawberries these days. White strawberries, in particular, are becoming more common, and they offer up a challenge in terms of deciding when they’re ripe.

As I type this I’m waiting for a very exciting delivery. It’s not Santa I’m expecting, but UPS, bringing me the proofs of my new book. It has undergone a slight name change since I last mentioned it – The Small Harvest Handbook: Vol.1 is now The Small Harvest Notebook: Vol. 1. I’m told this is both modest and ‘unassumingly British’, but it feels more in keeping with the book – which is a step on the road towards developing a beautiful and productive kitchen garden and doesn’t pretend to be the only gardening book you’ll need on your shelf.

Over our heads, on the International Space Station, chilli peppers are blooming and being hand-pollinated by astronauts.

Remember the Dark Matter garden from RHS Chelsea 2015? When it was dismantled at the end of the show, it was put on a truck and taken to Daresbury Laboratory in Cheshire. In this video you can watch it being rebuilt and replanted

Ever since we watched Away, Ryan and I have a new toast: “To Mars”. Unlike that fictional crew, we have no hope of ever reaching the red planet. But there are an increasing number of days when I think it would be nice to leave humanity’s mess behind and start afresh on a new world. But the prospect of forming a colony elsewhere in the solar system is a long way off, and when people talk about life on Mars they’re usually referring to alien life. 

You might recall that one of my New Year’s Resolutions was to read one of my unread books every month this year, and to decide whether each one keeps its place on the shelf, or needs to be turned loose to find a new owner. In January I read The Gardener’s Year by Karel Čapek. February’s book was Minding my Peas and Cucumbers, by Kay Sexton – quirky tales of allotment life, it says on the cover. According to my notes it has been on the shelf, unread, since 2011.

It’s time to shake the mud of 2016 off our boots, and to prepare the soil for 2017 (metaphorically speaking). I have the bones of a planting plan for next year, which will be subject to revisions, and we know which areas of the garden still need work.