Use warming mats to heat your seeds | Alys Fowler

Rubberised pads are a cheap, compact alternative to a greenhouse

All my current fantasies are about greenhouses. I am tortured by emails from fancy manufacturers seducing me with modern glass cubes and cute-as-a-button wooden structures. Imagine standing in a greenhouse, I think, as I play Tetris with seedling trays on countertops at home. What starts off on windowsills quickly sprawls on to any flat surface.

So, for a fraction of the price of a greenhouse, I’ve been trying out BioGreen’s rubberised warming pads as a new solution. You sit the seed trays on flat plastic mats that heat the soil to 5-10 degrees warmer than the ambient temperature. If you stick a bit of recycled polystyrene underneath, and add in some cheap LED grow lights with a timer, you’ve got a pretty good propagation unit.

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Gardening tips: plant a rose

Then visit Edinburgh’s Royal Botanic Garden and force rhubarb, sea kale or a dandelion rosette

Plant this Take advantage of the current bare-root planting season to add a rose to your garden. ‘Starlight Symphony’ is a climber with clusters of single white blooms around a pink central boss of stamens. It’s compact, reaching 2.5m tall, and has good resistance to the usual diseases roses succumb to.

Visit this If you love plants, but are more of a palm than a snowdrop when it comes to cold tolerance, the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh has more than an acre of glasshouses to wander around. This year, it is celebrating 350 years. Check the website for lots special of events: rbge.org.uk

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Switcheroo: the former mill that’s now an upside-down family home

How one stylish couple have transformed a rundown cotton mill in Todmorden, West Yorkshire

The toss of a coin decided which half of a rundown cotton mill in Todmorden, West Yorkshire, Louise Lockhart and her husband Paul Slade would make their home. Unable to afford the whole building, they joined forces with another couple and bought the mill together, with the aim of bisecting it to create two separate homes.

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Buying a house in a flood risk area Nottingham Estate Agents

Although most properties in the UK are not at risk of flooding, millions are, even in areas that are not immediately waterside. When a part of the country is devastated by floods and the television news is dominated by pictures of homeowners mopping up their basements, the natural human reaction is to think, ‘That could have been […]

The post Buying a house in a flood risk area appeared first on OnTheMarket.com blog.

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'There is life outside of London': converts to Leeds sing its praises

Art, culture, nature and property prices are tempting people away from the capital

In the past five years the number of Londoners moving up to Leeds has risen by 58%, from 2,720 in 2013 to 4,296 in 2018. Home to several universities and a cosmopolitan population, Leeds boasts a flourishing cultural scene, quality nightlife and large-scale regeneration that has transformed the West Yorkshire city in recent years.

Beyond the Victorian architecture of the city centre, there are leafy suburbs of Victorian terraces and high-rise apartment buildings. With average house prices around £182,700, 62% lower than the capital, Leeds is proving attractive to first-time buyers, families and renters alike.

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Let’s move to the New Forest: jolly, if you have the lolly

Ignore its more suburban edges and concentrate on the oaks, ickle ponies, witches and ye olde Norman lore

What’s going for it? Thanks to the Brothers Grimm, I’ve long had a fancy to live in a forest, aside from the obvious downsides of witches, wood-trolls and big bad wolves. Just a log cabin in a little clearing will do, so I can live out my Henry David Thoreau dreams – in easy reach of a decent coffee, of course. Since we Brits deforested our land centuries before palm oil conglomerates started work on the Amazon, there isn’t much choice on this island. The New Forest just about fits the bill. Brockenhurst and Lyndhurst are the two main clearings: smart, mostly Victorian affairs Lycra-bombed by cyclists on an average weekend, but jolly spots nonetheless. One can quite imagine Arthur Conan Doyle or Alice‑in-Wonderland Liddell trotting the streets here, under gothic gables. Forest would be a slight overstatement to anyone from Brazil or the Congo, but if I squint a bit and ignore its more suburban edges, concentrating instead on the oaks, ickle ponies, witches and local lore from ye olde Norman times, I can fill up on my bosky romance and be within a short drive of, say, The Pig, when I’m in desperate need of some yuzu juice.

The case against Traffic, especially in summer: gridlock, just to get home for your tea. Verges on the unromantically suburban, for those looking for rural idyll. Expensive: I don’t remember any Maserati showrooms last time I read Little Red Riding Hood.

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Let’s move to the New Forest: jolly, if you have the lolly

Ignore its more suburban edges and concentrate on the oaks, ickle ponies, witches and ye olde Norman lore

What’s going for it? Thanks to the Brothers Grimm, I’ve long had a fancy to live in a forest, aside from the obvious downsides of witches, wood-trolls and big bad wolves. Just a log cabin in a little clearing will do, so I can live out my Henry David Thoreau dreams – in easy reach of a decent coffee, of course. Since we Brits deforested our land centuries before palm oil conglomerates started work on the Amazon, there isn’t much choice on this island. The New Forest just about fits the bill. Brockenhurst and Lyndhurst are the two main clearings: smart, mostly Victorian affairs Lycra-bombed by cyclists on an average weekend, but jolly spots nonetheless. One can quite imagine Arthur Conan Doyle or Alice‑in-Wonderland Liddell trotting the streets here, under gothic gables. Forest would be a slight overstatement to anyone from Brazil or the Congo, but if I squint a bit and ignore its more suburban edges, concentrating instead on the oaks, ickle ponies, witches and local lore from ye olde Norman times, I can fill up on my bosky romance and be within a short drive of, say, The Pig, when I’m in desperate need of some yuzu juice.

The case against Traffic, especially in summer: gridlock, just to get home for your tea. Verges on the unromantically suburban, for those looking for rural idyll. Expensive: I don’t remember any Maserati showrooms last time I read Little Red Riding Hood.

Continue reading...

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