Resources

By Jon Gunson of TTL. To understand our changing climate, we need to examine records of earlier variations. Some of these - dendrochronology, or the Greenland ice-cores - can be wonderfully precise. Others, like the journals of eighteenth-century phenologists, are...

By Jon Gunson of TTL A hundred and fifty years ago, all the farmhouses round here would have had pottery mugs for beer and cider. Many of them would bear the motto, 'GOD SPEED THE PLOUGH', and under that, a verse from a song called 'The Farmer's Toast': " Let the...

I suppose many of those interested in the Transition Towns movement will live in an urban environment- the clue being in the name - and the urban gardener faces particularchallenges. One can cope with a lack of space by using containers, byfinding an allotment or...

I seem to spend half my time at work repatriating rather confused bush crickets. That will be late summer, then. The apples are ripening on the trees, and it is time to decide what to do with them. Take them to Octoberfeast to be pressed for juice, or leave them as...

A few hundred years back, some quite serious wars were fought for control of the spice trade. At this time of year, one can see why. The crops available during an English winter are pretty bland, aren't they? And quite a lot of them taste of cabbage, which is not to...

February is the ungardening month, best seen from the warm side of a window. If you are looking for excuses, there are a couple of good ones - walking on a frosted lawn will do it no good at all, and walking on a sodden bed will compact the soil, which makes roots...

  You can plant almost anything in March, or you could, if the ground was not so depressingly wet. Walking on wet beds is not good for soil or carpets, and if the damp persists anything you have planted out might well rot. Raised beds, of course, are quick to...

We never did get a winter, did we? Autumn went on forever, and now spring seems to be here. Mild, wet and windy weather has brought some beneficial effects for the gardener; however, it probably means that we will have a bumper crop of slugs. Now, to my mind, slugs...