Category: Techniques
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Shading the Vegetable Garden 2025
This summer as well I’ve been shading the vegetable garden to minimize water evaporation and to avoid sunburned tomatoes. Beginning of August I decided to finally try professional shade netting instead of the white frost protection fleece that is neither long-lived nor inexpensive. I invested about €50 in 10 meters of dark green HDPE shade…
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Trees for a Dry Mediterranean Garden
When we re-did our garden layout in the winter of 2023/2024, the goal was to turn the wide open vegetable and flower garden, where everything burned up in the summer, into a “park garden” with lots of shade trees. I researched a lot and made up a nice little shortlist of more or less drought-tolerant…
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Water Management in a Mediterranean Garden
Water management is a constant topic for gardeners and even more so in Mediterranean regions where rainfall may be scarce and/or erratic and water usage heavily restricted. This year, after two years of drought, we have had a relatively wet and cool spring. Between the beginning of October and until the 6th of July we’ve…
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Choosing Plants for a Mediterranean Garden
The Mediterranean climate is not famous for mild summers, generous rains or generous freshwater supplies. Instead it is famous for scorching summer temperatures, heatwaves with up to 40 degrees and months on end without rain: difficult planting conditions. It only makes sense therefore to choose plants wisely instead of trying to establish old favorites from…
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Summer Dormancy
The Seasons in a Mediterranean Garden Gardening in the Mediterranean, especially in this low-altitude garden, I’ve gotten used to two periods of dormancy. There is of course winter – although, being prime planting season, winter tends to be a busy time when you’re still establishing a garden by planting trees and shrubs. However, nothing much…
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Oh My Darling Clementine…
I was hankering after a citrus tree and I needed to have something vertical on the terrace… so I planted a clementine tree in a large pot. At the moment I’m not sure whether that was really a good idea or more a bit of plant abuse. I planted this “Clemenules” (Citrus reticulata, Clementina fina)…