Growing

White powder on cucumber and courgette leaves looks like someone dusted them with flour, and the first instinct is usually to blame damp. That instinct gets powdery mildew on cucumbers...

Reach for the spray can and you will lose this fight. Greenhouse whitefly survive contact insecticides because two of their life stages, the egg and the non-feeding pupa, shrug them...

Most greenhouse trouble in a heatwave gets blamed on the watering can, so the fix feels obvious: hold off, dry things out, let the air move. Red spider mite turns...

When a tomato plant tells you something is wrong, it almost always names the cause itself. Curled leaves, a black sunken base, a split skin, hard green shoulders: each marking...

You can grow tomatoes against the south glass, cucumbers up a string and peppers in a pot beside the door, and watch all three flower like mad in July, and...

Look at where the yellow sits before you reach for the feed. Cucumber leaves turning yellow on the oldest growth near the base means one thing; yellow on the brand-new...

The gadget you buy matters far less than two boring things: how much water sits in the reservoir, and whether every pot keeps even contact with it. A £79 timer...

Greenhouse tomatoes catch blight far less often than outdoor ones, until a warm wet August lets it in. How to identify blight in 60 seconds, what to do the moment you find it, and the varieties that keep it out.

By 11am on a warm Saturday a closed 8x6 greenhouse can sit at 35°C. The three moves that bring it back down: the RHS 20% vent rule, shading compared, and a 10-minute heat-day routine.