https://wintergreenquarterly.co Seeds, beds, weather, and the years they take. en-US Sun, 14 Jun 2026 09:00:00 GMT https://wintergreenquarterly.co/post/the-medicinal-garden-at-cluain-na-bplandai/ https://wintergreenquarterly.co/post/the-medicinal-garden-at-cluain-na-bplandai/ Sun, 14 Jun 2026 09:00:00 GMT Octavia Bryne garden-visits On a half-acre in west Clare, an Irish herbalist tends a garden of three hundred medicinal plants, most of them native, in beds laid out by traditional use. https://wintergreenquarterly.co/post/the-codling-moth-pheromone-trap-on-a-small-orchard/ https://wintergreenquarterly.co/post/the-codling-moth-pheromone-trap-on-a-small-orchard/ Fri, 12 Jun 2026 09:00:00 GMT Tristan Aoki pests Tristan Aoki spends a year monitoring three apple trees in southern Kyoto with a single five-dollar pheromone trap, and reports what he learned about timing his only spray. https://wintergreenquarterly.co/post/companion-planting-a-20-foot-perennial-bed-zone-5/ https://wintergreenquarterly.co/post/companion-planting-a-20-foot-perennial-bed-zone-5/ Wed, 10 Jun 2026 09:00:00 GMT Octavia Bryne beds-and-borders Octavia Bryne profiles a small Vermont border where pest pressure has fallen sharply through deliberate plant pairing rather than spray. https://wintergreenquarterly.co/post/two-rows-of-corn-and-the-distance-between-them/ https://wintergreenquarterly.co/post/two-rows-of-corn-and-the-distance-between-them/ Wed, 10 Jun 2026 09:00:00 GMT Sage Marchetti seeds On a small farm in southern Vermont, the experiment of saving open-pollinated dent corn seed when the neighbour's field is half a mile downwind. https://wintergreenquarterly.co/post/the-perennial-trial-beds-at-bressingham/ https://wintergreenquarterly.co/post/the-perennial-trial-beds-at-bressingham/ Tue, 09 Jun 2026 09:00:00 GMT Eloise Vinter garden-visits In a working corner of the Bressingham Gardens in Norfolk, the family that ran Britain's most influential perennial nursery for half a century still trials new cultivars, quietly. https://wintergreenquarterly.co/post/the-aphid-on-the-mint-an-integrated-account/ https://wintergreenquarterly.co/post/the-aphid-on-the-mint-an-integrated-account/ Sat, 06 Jun 2026 09:00:00 GMT Octavia Bryne herbs A small infestation in a Wellington herb garden, three weeks of observation, and the question of when to intervene. https://wintergreenquarterly.co/post/the-kneeler-the-mat-and-the-question-of-the-knees/ https://wintergreenquarterly.co/post/the-kneeler-the-mat-and-the-question-of-the-knees/ Sat, 06 Jun 2026 09:00:00 GMT Octavia Bryne tools A close look at the unglamorous tools that keep a gardener's lower joints in working order across a thirty-year garden life, and the small case for the right pad under the knee. https://wintergreenquarterly.co/post/wood-ash-from-the-stove-into-the-garden/ https://wintergreenquarterly.co/post/wood-ash-from-the-stove-into-the-garden/ Sat, 06 Jun 2026 09:00:00 GMT Eloise Vinter soil Eloise Vinter weighs the case for and against putting wood-stove ash on a Norwich kitchen garden, and arrives at a careful, smaller answer than most gardeners want. https://wintergreenquarterly.co/post/the-glasshouse-floor-as-a-design-decision/ https://wintergreenquarterly.co/post/the-glasshouse-floor-as-a-design-decision/ Thu, 04 Jun 2026 09:00:00 GMT Tristan Aoki greenhouses Tristan Aoki compares concrete, gravel, brick, and bare earth as glasshouse floors, and finds that the question is older and more consequential than it appears. https://wintergreenquarterly.co/post/carrot-fly-and-the-meter-high-fence/ https://wintergreenquarterly.co/post/carrot-fly-and-the-meter-high-fence/ Wed, 03 Jun 2026 09:00:00 GMT Eloise Vinter pests A simple barrier and the careful timing of sowing turn a long-running carrot fly problem into a non-issue on a quarter-acre garden in Norfolk. https://wintergreenquarterly.co/post/autumn-border-planned-around-grasses-and-seedheads/ https://wintergreenquarterly.co/post/autumn-border-planned-around-grasses-and-seedheads/ Tue, 02 Jun 2026 09:00:00 GMT Sage Marchetti beds-and-borders Sage Marchetti walks an Iowa border designed for September through January, where the gardener has stopped deadheading entirely. https://wintergreenquarterly.co/post/seed-drying-on-a-screen-porch/ https://wintergreenquarterly.co/post/seed-drying-on-a-screen-porch/ Tue, 02 Jun 2026 09:00:00 GMT Eloise Vinter seeds Why the post-harvest week matters as much as the growing season, and how one grower in upstate New York lost a year of pepper seed to a closed pantry door. https://wintergreenquarterly.co/post/an-allotment-in-walthamstow/ https://wintergreenquarterly.co/post/an-allotment-in-walthamstow/ Tue, 02 Jun 2026 09:00:00 GMT Sage Marchetti garden-visits Plot 47A at the South Grove Allotment Society in east London has been worked by the same family since 1973, and is now in the hands of its third gardener. https://wintergreenquarterly.co/post/growing-shiso-in-a-vermont-greenhouse/ https://wintergreenquarterly.co/post/growing-shiso-in-a-vermont-greenhouse/ Sat, 30 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Octavia Bryne herbs A small lean-to in Brattleboro, four shiso varieties, and a season that begins six weeks earlier than the garden allows. https://wintergreenquarterly.co/post/a-japanese-saw-for-the-home-gardener/ https://wintergreenquarterly.co/post/a-japanese-saw-for-the-home-gardener/ Sat, 30 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Tristan Aoki tools A Silky Gomboy 240, carried in a leather scabbard through a season of fruit pruning, brush clearance, and one small carpentry job, and the case for the pull-stroke in the garden. https://wintergreenquarterly.co/post/the-quiet-case-for-mulching-with-straw/ https://wintergreenquarterly.co/post/the-quiet-case-for-mulching-with-straw/ Sat, 30 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Rowena Bell soil Rowena Bell makes a deliberate, undecorated argument for straw mulch in the home kitchen garden, after twenty-eight years of testing every other option. https://wintergreenquarterly.co/post/gravel-garden-as-drought-response-in-southern-france/ https://wintergreenquarterly.co/post/gravel-garden-as-drought-response-in-southern-france/ Thu, 28 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Octavia Bryne beds-and-borders Octavia Bryne reports from a hilltop garden in the Aude where rainfall has dropped 27 percent since 2010 and a gardener has rebuilt from the soil up. https://wintergreenquarterly.co/post/wireworms-in-a-new-potato-bed/ https://wintergreenquarterly.co/post/wireworms-in-a-new-potato-bed/ Thu, 28 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Rowena Bell pests Rowena Bell on the small orange larvae that turned up in a first-year potato bed converted from old pasture, and the three-year plan to undo the problem. https://wintergreenquarterly.co/post/the-dobby-stove-in-the-walled-garden/ https://wintergreenquarterly.co/post/the-dobby-stove-in-the-walled-garden/ Wed, 27 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Eloise Vinter greenhouses Eloise Vinter visits a 1924 cast-iron paraffin heater still in use at a Norfolk walled garden and considers what the old fuels can still do. https://wintergreenquarterly.co/post/the-monastery-garden-at-clonfert/ https://wintergreenquarterly.co/post/the-monastery-garden-at-clonfert/ Wed, 27 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Rowena Bell garden-visits Behind a Cistercian wall in east Galway, three brothers and one lay sister grow a year's worth of vegetables on roughly half an acre, and have done since 1971. https://wintergreenquarterly.co/post/the-tea-pea-of-coleraine/ https://wintergreenquarterly.co/post/the-tea-pea-of-coleraine/ Mon, 25 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Tristan Aoki seeds An Irish heritage pea, nearly lost in the 1980s, kept alive by one family and now back in the seed exchanges of three countries. https://wintergreenquarterly.co/post/sage-after-the-flowering-when-to-prune-when-to-leave/ https://wintergreenquarterly.co/post/sage-after-the-flowering-when-to-prune-when-to-leave/ Sat, 23 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Eloise Vinter herbs A neglected woody perennial, six years of mismanagement, and the small annual cut that would have prevented all of it. https://wintergreenquarterly.co/post/the-watering-can-as-design-object/ https://wintergreenquarterly.co/post/the-watering-can-as-design-object/ Sat, 23 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Sage Marchetti tools Three cans, a Haws long-reach in galvanised steel, a Bosmere copper, and a French Sèvres-style plastic, weighed and used through a summer in a small Massachusetts greenhouse. https://wintergreenquarterly.co/post/the-earthworm-as-a-soil-indicator/ https://wintergreenquarterly.co/post/the-earthworm-as-a-soil-indicator/ Sat, 23 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Octavia Bryne soil Octavia Bryne explains what a count of earthworms in a forkful of garden soil actually tells the home gardener, and what it does not. https://wintergreenquarterly.co/post/north-facing-shade-border-in-a-yorkshire-stone-garden/ https://wintergreenquarterly.co/post/north-facing-shade-border-in-a-yorkshire-stone-garden/ Wed, 20 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Eloise Vinter beds-and-borders Eloise Vinter visits a forty-foot dry-shade border behind a Pennine stone cottage and reports on the plants that earned their keep. https://wintergreenquarterly.co/post/a-quiet-year-with-the-cabbage-root-fly/ https://wintergreenquarterly.co/post/a-quiet-year-with-the-cabbage-root-fly/ Wed, 20 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Octavia Bryne pests Octavia Bryne traces a single season of brassica losses on a wet West Coast garden, and the simple felt-disc collar that ended the problem. https://wintergreenquarterly.co/post/the-overwintered-fig-in-a-cool-glasshouse/ https://wintergreenquarterly.co/post/the-overwintered-fig-in-a-cool-glasshouse/ Wed, 20 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Rowena Bell greenhouses Rowena Bell visits a 1908 Victorian glasshouse in Kent where the same Brown Turkey fig has fruited every year since 1949, and considers what the tree teaches. https://wintergreenquarterly.co/post/twenty-six-square-feet-in-shimokitazawa/ https://wintergreenquarterly.co/post/twenty-six-square-feet-in-shimokitazawa/ Tue, 19 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Tristan Aoki garden-visits On a third-floor balcony in west Tokyo, a translator grows seventeen herbs, three tomatoes, and a single fig tree, and considers what a garden owes its keeper. https://wintergreenquarterly.co/post/isolation-distances-for-the-home-saver/ https://wintergreenquarterly.co/post/isolation-distances-for-the-home-saver/ Mon, 18 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Sage Marchetti seeds A practical look at what your neighbour's squash patch is doing to your saved seed, and what to do about it on a fifth of an acre. https://wintergreenquarterly.co/post/lovage-the-forgotten-celery-of-the-cottage-garden/ https://wintergreenquarterly.co/post/lovage-the-forgotten-celery-of-the-cottage-garden/ Sat, 16 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Rowena Bell herbs A tall, intemperate, deeply useful perennial that almost no one grows. https://wintergreenquarterly.co/post/the-wooden-handle-and-why-it-still-wins/ https://wintergreenquarterly.co/post/the-wooden-handle-and-why-it-still-wins/ Sat, 16 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Eloise Vinter tools On ash, hickory, beech, and the small case for wood over fibreglass and steel in the hand-tools that the home gardener actually uses every week. https://wintergreenquarterly.co/post/compost-tea-and-what-it-actually-does/ https://wintergreenquarterly.co/post/compost-tea-and-what-it-actually-does/ Sat, 16 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Tristan Aoki soil Tristan Aoki tests the claims for actively aerated compost tea on a Kyoto vegetable plot over two growing seasons, and reports what he observed. https://wintergreenquarterly.co/post/ventilating-a-small-greenhouse-without-electricity/ https://wintergreenquarterly.co/post/ventilating-a-small-greenhouse-without-electricity/ Wed, 13 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Octavia Bryne greenhouses Octavia Bryne examines the wax-cylinder autovent, the manual roof crank, and the propped-door tradition, and weighs the case for each. https://wintergreenquarterly.co/post/long-border-at-great-dixter-through-the-seasons/ https://wintergreenquarterly.co/post/long-border-at-great-dixter-through-the-seasons/ Tue, 12 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Rowena Bell beds-and-borders Rowena Bell spends four visits across one calendar year at the celebrated Sussex border, reading what changes and what holds. https://wintergreenquarterly.co/post/the-hartford-public-library-seed-room/ https://wintergreenquarterly.co/post/the-hartford-public-library-seed-room/ Tue, 12 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Sage Marchetti seeds On the second floor of the main branch, a converted card-catalogue cabinet now holds four hundred and twenty varieties of vegetable and flower seed, free to any library patron with a card. https://wintergreenquarterly.co/post/the-slug-as-a-fact-of-cool-climate-gardening/ https://wintergreenquarterly.co/post/the-slug-as-a-fact-of-cool-climate-gardening/ Tue, 12 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Octavia Bryne pests Octavia Bryne on the gardener's long settlement with the slug — what works, what doesn't, and the philosophical adjustment that has to come first. https://wintergreenquarterly.co/post/a-tea-garden-of-six-perennial-herbs/ https://wintergreenquarterly.co/post/a-tea-garden-of-six-perennial-herbs/ Sat, 09 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Rowena Bell herbs A small bed in north Yorkshire, six plants, and a year of kettles. https://wintergreenquarterly.co/post/a-wheelbarrow-tested-over-a-decade/ https://wintergreenquarterly.co/post/a-wheelbarrow-tested-over-a-decade/ Sat, 09 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Eloise Vinter tools A single Chillington Plantation wheelbarrow, bought new in 2016, weighed annually, and finally retired in March 2026 after carrying an estimated 318 tonnes of soil, compost, and grit. https://wintergreenquarterly.co/post/a-3-year-soil-test-rhythm-for-the-home-gardener/ https://wintergreenquarterly.co/post/a-3-year-soil-test-rhythm-for-the-home-gardener/ Sat, 09 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Octavia Bryne soil Octavia Bryne lays out a simple cycle of soil sampling for a small kitchen garden, with notes on what to test, when, and how to read the results without overreacting. https://wintergreenquarterly.co/post/a-small-farm-near-petaluma/ https://wintergreenquarterly.co/post/a-small-farm-near-petaluma/ Fri, 08 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Sage Marchetti garden-visits On three acres in west Sonoma County, a former restaurant cook and her husband grow cut flowers, salad greens, and the kind of tomatoes that do not travel well. https://wintergreenquarterly.co/post/a-polytunnel-as-a-household-appliance/ https://wintergreenquarterly.co/post/a-polytunnel-as-a-household-appliance/ Wed, 06 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Tristan Aoki greenhouses Tristan Aoki spends a year with a 24-by-12 polytunnel in suburban Kyoto and concludes it is less a garden structure than a kitchen extension. https://wintergreenquarterly.co/post/cottage-garden-in-a-brooklyn-side-yard/ https://wintergreenquarterly.co/post/cottage-garden-in-a-brooklyn-side-yard/ Mon, 04 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Tristan Aoki beds-and-borders Tristan Aoki visits a fourteen-by-thirty-eight-foot plot in Carroll Gardens where a former chef has built an English-style border between two brownstones. https://wintergreenquarterly.co/post/what-the-first-true-leaves-tell-you/ https://wintergreenquarterly.co/post/what-the-first-true-leaves-tell-you/ Mon, 04 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Rowena Bell seeds Two weeks after germination, the seedling becomes itself. A close look at the diagnostic moment in the propagator. https://wintergreenquarterly.co/post/how-to-read-leaf-damage-by-the-bite/ https://wintergreenquarterly.co/post/how-to-read-leaf-damage-by-the-bite/ Mon, 04 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Rowena Bell pests A close examination of the marks left on bean, brassica, and apple leaves through a single July week in Devon, and what each pattern actually tells the gardener. https://wintergreenquarterly.co/post/preserving-herbs-without-freezing/ https://wintergreenquarterly.co/post/preserving-herbs-without-freezing/ Sat, 02 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Tristan Aoki herbs Salt, oil, vinegar, paper, and the older grammar of keeping a summer garden through January. https://wintergreenquarterly.co/post/a-clean-spade-and-why-it-matters/ https://wintergreenquarterly.co/post/a-clean-spade-and-why-it-matters/ Sat, 02 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Eloise Vinter tools On the small ritual of scraping, oiling, and sharpening a digging spade between uses, and what a clean tool teaches the gardener who carries it. https://wintergreenquarterly.co/post/leaf-mold-as-a-slow-fertilizer/ https://wintergreenquarterly.co/post/leaf-mold-as-a-slow-fertilizer/ Sat, 02 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Eloise Vinter soil Eloise Vinter has been making leaf mold in Norwich since 2009. She keeps three bays, turns nothing, and waits two years for each batch. https://wintergreenquarterly.co/post/heating-a-small-greenhouse-with-hot-composting/ https://wintergreenquarterly.co/post/heating-a-small-greenhouse-with-hot-composting/ Wed, 29 Apr 2026 09:00:00 GMT Sage Marchetti greenhouses Sage Marchetti tracks a winter in which a Hampshire grower kept his 80-square-foot greenhouse above freezing using nothing but a steel mesh cylinder of composting horse manure. https://wintergreenquarterly.co/post/twelve-months-at-great-dixter/ https://wintergreenquarterly.co/post/twelve-months-at-great-dixter/ Wed, 29 Apr 2026 09:00:00 GMT Tristan Aoki garden-visits A Wintergreen contributor spent a year on the gardening staff at Great Dixter in East Sussex, and came home with a notebook of weather, failures, and one very good salad burnet. https://wintergreenquarterly.co/post/replacing-800-square-feet-of-lawn-with-meadow/ https://wintergreenquarterly.co/post/replacing-800-square-feet-of-lawn-with-meadow/ Sun, 26 Apr 2026 09:00:00 GMT Sage Marchetti beds-and-borders Sage Marchetti reports on a three-year conversion in a Hadley, Massachusetts front yard, and the patience the work demands.