This week’s first job is getting our sweetcorn planted in a raised bed outside. These plants were sown in a Vitopod propagator just 2 weeks ago and have already grown to around 10cm tall and will now get more benefit from being planted in the ground.

Read more and watch our Gardening Angel James using our roller hooks to support our plants, keeping them on the straight and narrow.

No more relying on the neighbours to look after your precious plants when you go away, as the Holiday Watering Kit keeps your plants perfectly watered for up to two weeks. Read more to watch a video of our Gardening Angel James setting up our Holiday Watering kit with our Quadgrow Planter.

Our radishes growing in the Saladgrow salad planters are ready to be harvested, you will know they are ready when the radish reaches roughly golf ball size and has turned bright red.

Read more to watch our harvesting video

You will need to remove the side shoots of certain varieties of tomatoes, this involves removing the new shoots growing between the leaf and stem ensuring that all the plants energy goes into growing its main stem.

Read more to watch our Gardening Angel removing side shoots

Our brave Gardening Angels Paul & Matt have been tasting some of our electric daisys growing in our Herbgrow Planter. These Daisys taste like citrus followed by a fizzy electric buzz.

Hello and welcome to our new Greenhouse Sensation blog, over the next few months we are going to keep you up to date with the goings on in our greenhouse, polytunnels and raised bed.

We have sown sweetcorn in a Unapod propagator in the polytunnel, they germinate at temperatures above 10^oc, we’ve set the propagator at 18C to give the seeds the best chance of a healthy start. The sweetcorn will be planted in our raised beds once they are ready. We will keep you up to date with the progress over the next few months.

After just 10 days we have had some impressive root growth on our Tomato plants growing in our ViviGrow Planter (previously Hydrogrow NFT). Competitive Gardeners will love our advanced Vivigrow Planter which produces bigger harvests because the roots grow in super-aerated water instead of being constrained in wet soil.

Our fantastic Gardening Angel Paul has been at it again and has already started pricking out the first chilli seedlings of 2013 after just 4 weeks. Watch our video of Paul pricking out Georgia Flame, Lemon Drop (my personal favourite), Portugal and Hungarian Black chillies. When these chillies are fully rooted Paul will transplant them into our Chilligrow and Quadgrow Planters.

Even in February we are still harvesting chillies from our Chilligrow Planter (designed in consultation with chilli experts). We are lucky enough to have been growing our chillies in a heated greenhouse so have been able to keep our chilli plants at about 11c over winter. Take a look at our chilli advice page for some inspiration for your 2013 growing season.

Our chairman, John Molyneux, had a record breaking root ginger harvest of 3.81Kg last month. This beat his previous best of 2.96Kg and the plant had grown to well over 6ft tall in our Rain and Drain planter.

As John was growing the ginger in an unheated polytunnel and was aiming for a huge yield, he used Vitopod layers around the plant to create a warm environment. We’ve all enjoyed the crystallised ginger John made for us.

Watch our very own John Molyneux, founder of Hobby Hydroponics, taking down this magnificent Chilli plant grown hydroponically in our 3 plant Hydrogrow NFT. This is our most advanced planter, producing the biggest harvests. Learn more here.

After just 5 weeks our Gardening Angel Sarah has had a bumper harvest of spring onions from our large Saladgrow planter. You can create your own salad garden with our Saladgrow planter all year round.

We love this planter as it keeps your salad plants watered for up to 2 weeks at a time, so there's no more coming home to wilted salad leaves. Its Smart Reservoir watering system also means that your salad crops will grow stronger and healthier for bumper harvests within 6 weeks.

After 4 months growing in our Root Veg Planter, we’ve harvested our Pink Fir Apple potatoes. Pink Fir Apple is an old potato variety which dates back to 1850. This late main crop potato variety has made a comeback in recent years and produces long, knobbly pink skinned tubers with butter yellow, waxy flesh. It has a great nutty flavour and is great boiled, steamed, baked or in salads. For handy & tips on growing your own potatoes click here

We harvested some of our Home Guard potatoes after they have been growing for 4 months in our Root Veg Planter. The pots were bulging and we harvested the biggest spuds from one of the pots – weighing in at 1.5kg of potatoes! We then put the pot back onto the Root Veg Planter planter to let the smaller tubers carry on growing for a couple of weeks.

Watch our Gardening Angel protecting prized plants from slugs the natural way. This latest spell of unpredictable heavy rain and warm weather has created the perfect conditions for slugs and there’s a new threat in town in the form of an invasion of giant Spanish slugs known as Arion Flageullus.

There are a few solutions you can use to rid yourself of these pesky slugs. Amongst our favourites is Slug Gone Slug Pellets, an effective deterrent to stop slugs in their tracks, made from British Wool.

Slug gone is perfect for also organic gardeners as it contains no harmful chemicals and is safe for animals and children. Simply place in plant pots, around the individual plants in your garden or allotment or use to form a barrier around your veg plots and garden boarders. Click here to learn more.

This space saving 25 litre reservoir is perfect for greenhouses and polytunnels. Connect it to your existing irrigation pipe, use as a water store to save you traipsing to and from the garden tap or connect it to our Click & Drip irrigation kit to keep your plants watered efficiently and with less waste.

5 weeks after sowing our Radish in our large Saladgrow Planter, Gardening Angel Sarah is already harvesting a bumper crop of Radish and we've eaten it all up for some tasty salads.

If you love to grow salad and veggies then our Saladgrow Planter and Vitogrow Mini allotment will keep your crops perfectly fed and watered for bumper harvests.

Our Gardening Angel Matt is harvesting potatoes for our 4 pot root veg planter with space for 4 varieties of root veg.This Potato harvesting scoop makes light work of harvesting spuds. It's bar across the end of the tines/prongs prevents accidental stabbing, but still allows potatoes to be sifted from the soil and the long handle and generously sized scoop make light work of harvesting whether your potatoes are in the ground or in a planter.

Our electronic water timer is perfect for efficient, controlled watering of your plants. With 9 customised program settings, this electronic water timer allows you to choose when you want to water your plants and how long to water them for. 

Gardening Angel Paul is transplanting some of our favourite hot chillies, Madame Jeanette, Trinidad scorpion, Bih Jolokia and Chocolate Bhut Jolokia into the Quadgrow self-watering planter, which keeps plants perfectly fed and watered at all times for strong healthy chilli plants and bumper harvests.

See why our customers love the Quadgrow so much. http://www.greenhousesensation.co.uk/quadgrow.html

Our talented Gardening Angel Paul has been working wonders in the Greenhouse and now his Pineapple is ready to be harvested. This has been growing in our Rain & Drain Exotics Planter and has been growing for 2 years and has grown to approximately 18 inches. To learn more about our Rain & Drain Exotics Planter page

Our Root Veg planter is a great space saving planter which gives you the freedom to plant and harvest the varieties of potatoes or other root veg you want, when you want. We had lots of fun planting our 4 varieties of potatoes including Pink Fir Apple and Maris Piper and cant wait to harvest them for a tasty treat.

Gardening Angels in a Vitopod: We kept Natasha and Ashley warm in an 11-layer - yes ELEVEN layer - Vitopod. How high dare you go? On a serious note, extra layers transform your Vitopod into a mini greenhouse. But we did just want to have some fun locking these two wayward characters away for the afternoon!

Perfect for raised beds, borders & veg plots, our Click & Drip is a complete kit that attaches to your water butt to keep plants evenly watered without wasting a drop. The Click & Drip waters with less waste and less risk of over-watering and under-watering than using a watering can or porous pipe. Click here to learn more about the Click & Drip for Waterbutts.

Our Click & Drip is a complete kit that attaches to your outdoor tap to keep plants evenly watered without wasting a drop. The pressure regulator slows the watering down to 1 litre per drip hole per hour, so that the roots have time to take up the water before it forms puddles that evaporate or run-off. Click here to learn more about our Click & Drip for Mains Taps.

Our Hydropod Cuttings Propagator removes the risk of damping-off and fungal infections and speeds up growth. As used by commercial nurseries.

The Vitopod heated electric propagator provides the perfect environment in which to give your seeds and cuttings the best start.

This Rain & Drain Solar large planter is great for raise bumper harvests. It feeds, waters and super-oxygenates plants 2x every hour thanks to the included solar-powered pump and solar panel.

Our clever Saladgrow keeps your plants perfectly watered at all times and its drip proof design makes it suitable for indoor use as well as patios and balconies. Watch our video and visit our website to find out how you can grow your own salad all year round.

Our Chilligrow Chilli growing kit has been designed by chilli experts for bigger chilli harvests and keeps your chillies perfectly fed and watered without ever over watering.

Watch our Gardening Angel Paul, sowing our first Tomato seeds for 2012 in our Greenhouse. In this video he is sowing 4 varieties of tomatoes, Country Taste, Cristal, Sungold and Sungella. The seeds have been transfered over to a heated propagator and in about 3 weeks time we will be able to see seedlings appear and in 8 weeks time, they should be large enough to transfer to seperate pots.

For hints tips on growing tomatoes, visit our tomato growing advice page.

http://www.greenhousesensation.co.uk/advice/growing-tomatoes/

Watch our Gardening Angel Paul pricking out Piccolo tomato seedlings. When the seedlings have rooted through, he will then transfer them into a larger pot or one of our Quadgrow Planters. For more hints and tips on growing tomatoes please visit out advice page.

Our Gardening Angel Paul is sowing 5 of our favourite chilli varieties - Fresno Supreme, Ring of Fire, Portugal, Hungarian Black and Joe's Long and we just cant wait to see the results.

These chilli seeds will germinate in our Vitopod Heated Propagator and in 3 to 4 weeks times our chilli plants will be ready to be pricked out into small pots. Once our chilli plants have rooted through, we will be able to transfer them into one of our Chilligrow planters, where we can look forward to producing a bumper chilli harvest.

Perfect for growing tomatoes, the Quadgrow planter produces bigger harvests than plant pots and growbags thanks to the clever way that it keeps plants perfectly watered at all times.

Theres nothing more rewarding than growing plants from seed and is alot easier than most would think. Small seeds such as salad seeds are best grown in trays whilst larger seeds such as tomato, peppers and peas seeds are best grown in pots. Take a look at our video for hints and tips on sowing from seed.

The bananas in our greenhouse are receiving some tender loving care from Paul one of our Gardening Angels.

He has split a pup from one of the older plants and planted it into its own planter. Pups form alongside the mature banana plant. The pup was 45cms tall and 15cms wide, so taking the cutting was quite a job. As with all cuttings it is very important to keep everything very clean when taking and planting the cutting/pup. This banana won’t fruit for another year or two, but the other 2 plants in our greenhouse should produce bananas from about June.

We grow Dwarf Cavendish bananas. This variety grows to 6 - 8 ft (1.8 - 2.4 m) and it is very fast growing. The bananas produced grow to 15 to 25 cm in length, and have a thin skin. Each plant typically produces 80 - 90 bananas when it fruits.

The bananas in our greenhouse are grown hydroponically (without soil) in our Rain & Drain planters. In these planters water is pumped from the reservoir planter to the plant roots several times per hour. Whatever the plant does not use drains away back into the reservoir. As the water ebbs away fresh oxygen is drawn down into the root area. This means that plants have great access to water, nutrients and oxygen. We think that the fact that we harvest on average 80 - 90 bananas from each plant is pretty good evidence of the effectiveness of this method of growing.

Our Ginger plant has been planted in a heated propagator in March and grown in a heated greenhouse and harvested in October. In early May, 4 or 5 ginger plants are transfered in to our Rain & Drain Solar Planter. Exotic plants like ginger need regular watering and our planter feeds and waters our ginger plant 2 times every hour. Any water not needed is drained back into the reservoir. Watch the video below to see the results of our ginger harvest.

We produce new plants by taking cuttings from the sidse shoots. Within 14 months from planting cuttings, a bumper harvest of ripe Papaya can be seen on our plants.

Our Papaya plant produces 20 kilos of ripe fruit in our Rain & Drain planter. This tropical fruit makes a great addition to savoury salads, with fish & meat, cakes, smoothies and more.

Our Saladgrow Planters are great for growing tasty salad all year round. Watch our Gardening Angel Paul sowing salad seeds, resulting in a bumper harvest of fresh salad for us to feast on.

Theres nothing more rewarding than growing your plants from seeds or cuttings. Why not try growing more plants for free by taking cuttings from late March to August. Watch our Gardening Angel demonstrate how to effectively propagate cuttings.

Our handy Windowsill propagator is a clever propagator and salad planter in one which traps warm air, creating the moist atmosphere that seeds need for germination and protects seedlings from draughts and drying out. The following video shows how you can use our Windowsill propagator, including with seeds trays or jiffy pellets.

Watch our Gardening Angel Paul sowing Cabbage seeds

Take a look at our video of our Greenhouse Sensation Gardening Angel harvesting ginger which was grown in our Rain & Drain Planter. This year we achieved bumper harvest with an increase to 3.8 kilos.

Take a look at our latest video on our digital Thermometer & hygrometer to ensure your plants are protected from the effects of frost and humidity related problems.

For bigger harvests of your favourite chilli you could overwinter your plant. We overwinter our Trinidad Scorpion, this year is its 5th year. Overwintered plants will usually produce a better crop in their second year as the plants can get started more quickly in the spring and enjoy a longer growing season.

Capsicum pubescens (such as our Rocoto Red chilli) tend to overwinter better than Capsicum annuum (such as Joe’s Long or Portugal).

Overwintering is the practice of providing a protective environment for a plant throughout the winter. The lack of light and the colder temperatures mean that plants don’t grow much at all between October and January, but an overwintered plant can get off to a head start when the light returns in February or March.

Below is a video of Paul, our Gardening Angel pruning our 5 year old Trinidad Scorpion in preparation to over winter. The Trinidad Scorpion will be living our greenhouse, with an average temperature of 12C to encourage growth. Allow plenty of airflow around your plants to avoid bacterial and viral disease build up.  

Unless you are growing tomatoes which are a Bush variety you should remove the sideshoots from your tomato plants to focus your plant's energy into producing fruit rather than foilage. 

A sideshoot is a shoot that grows at about 45 degrees from the main truss (stem) between the leaf and main stem. Take care not to confuse these sideshoots with the trusses which are the stems that produce the flowers, which turn into tomatoes. We find it is better to leave the top few leaves until we're sure they are sideshoots.

Simply pinch the sideshoot out with your thumb and finger.

Remove your sideshoots every week because the sooner they are removed the more energy your plant will out into fruit production.

You will need to secure your tomatoes to a support (whether that's your greenhouse roof, bamboo stakes, a specialist tomato frame or a homemade structure).

Below is a video of Paul, our Gardening Angel, training the tomato stem directly upwards to use the greenhouse roof as the support. You should tie a loop of string around the stem near the bottom of the plant when flowers first appear and then you can gradually twist the plant around the tomato plant stem as the plant grows.  

Take a look at our latest product video's, taken in our brand spanking new poly tunnel which we just love.

Here is our Vitopod Propagator & Hydropod Propagator: 

Self - watering Planters: Chilligrow, Quadgrow and Saladgrow. For efficient watering, the Click & Drip:

Hydroponics: Hydrogrow Solar & Hydrogrow NFT

We had lot of fun setting up the time lapse video for Aubergine Growth in our poly tunnel. The results were fantastic growing our Aubergines in our Quadgrow planter!

We’re growing samphire. This salt water loving veg (it grows in estuaries and along shorelines) has gone from zero to hero in the past year and demand is expected to outstrip supply next year, with a whopping 500,000 servings predicted to be sold. So, I’m not taking my chances, I’m going to grow it.

I’d never heard of samphire until this year and now I can’t escape it, which is fine because it’s absolute delicious with a distinctive crisp and salty taste. I’ve seen it at just about every food fair and farmers market and it keeps popping up at restaurants.

DT Brown have started selling the seeds, so the decision has been made and I’ll be planting it into a Chilligrow as well as standard pots, to see whether the Chilligrow plants outperform the standard pots. We think it should because the plant must not be left to dry out and the Chilligrow provides plants with constant access to water. We’ll let you know how we get on.

Samphire is fascinating, it has adapted to thrive in tidal creeks and estuaries, water accumulates inside its stems, handy considering it gets soaked with saltwater for several hours twice a day, and its leaves are like small scales which reduces the amount of water it loses.

How to grow samphire
The seeds germinate well in moist compost, they are best started indoors in spring. I can’t wait so I’ve ordered some samphire plants from Victorian Nursery http://www.victoriananursery.co.uk/vegetable_plants/samphire_plant/n

Samphire grows to about 30cms tall and it best grown in pots, prefers dampish compost and should never be allowed to dry out. This is why we think the Chilligrow will be handy.

Samphire needs to be watered with salt water. Add 1 teaspoon on proper sea salt (containing no anti-caking agents or iodine) to every pint of water every time you water.

The best news about growing samphire is that it is a cut-and-come again crop. It’s quite slow growing though and should be left a month or so between each ‘harvest’, so I’m going to grow one Samphire plant in each of my 3 Chilligrow pots.

When buying seeds don’t buy Rock Samphire by mistake, this is a completely different plant, which tastes very different.

Here are a few links to some delicious recipes http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2007/jun/30/features.weekend

http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/warmsaladofsamphirea_3290

On Saturday the lambs lettuce in number 1 Saldgrow had reached mammoth proportions, so we harvested it to enjoy alongside chilli and naan breads. I harvested by cutting (so that the leaves will grow back) but was pleased as punch to see that they seemed to have grown back by Monday evening! You just can't keep a good lettuce down...

Back to Saturday, the leaves were as delicious as only a lettuce eaten within minutes of harvesting can be and were the perfect fresh counter-balance to the rich chilli and a bottle of absolutely delicious Argentinian Vinalba Malbec from the lovely chaps at Majestic wine warehouse.

Chilli can be a controversial dish and at the risk of causing an uprising I will admit that I don't put much chilli in my chilli as I prefer spice to heat - better for the wine too; so for me it's cumin, fennel, coriander, cinnamon, black pepper, some chilli and good dark chocolate.

The weekend saw us trek down to  West Sussex for the West Dean Chilli Fiesta. This was the first chilli-event unveiling of the Chilligrow and we were delighted with the warm response it received. John M's Chilligrow stole the show and certainly attracted a great deal of attention.

We had a great time catching up with old customers and chilli friends meeting new customers and, of course sampling th great food at the show.

A big thanks John and Diana from Somerset who have been growing tomatoes in the Octogrow and sent us a great update. Here’s what they said;

“The Octogrow has been amazing this year. We have one in the greenhouse and one outside, and the champion tomato is Brandywine, a wonderful pink-red and each fruit weighing up to 12oz so far, but bigger ones to come! (our local restaurant is now buying them). We have tried growbags, gravel trays and pots but Octogrow is definitely the answer - many thanks.”

Gee, thanks John and Diana, we're pleased that you are so happy and had a great crop.

We’re very excited about our new First Tunnels polytunnel. It has a starring role in our new videos and photos which will be on the website in a few weeks.

This is in addition to our visitor greenhouse and our trials polytunnel in Mawdesley and our outdoor plots at the offices. Our new polytunnel gives us more space for trialling products, developing ideas for new products and training new team members.

We’ve even popped a couple of stripey chairs so that we can sit down whilst considering our product trial results.

The fabulously handy manufacturing folk levelled the ground and laid 4 tonnes of gravel to prepare the way for the First Tunnels team to come along and construct the polytunnel.

Inevitably the heavens opened and it poured it down over the weekend ahead of the construction and when the First Tunnels guys arrived the ground was sodden, that didn't put the brave souls off though, the hob nobs may have helped.

We know that Joe's Long chillies should be - well...long, but this one takes the biscuit at a whopping 33cms. We've checked the World Records and there is no listing for the longest chilli, so we've submitted and entry - fingers crossed.

The prized chilli is growing in a Hydrogrow NFT in our greenhouse and we're under strict instructions not to allow visitors to pick it. We'll keep you posted on how we get on with the record.

Our first tomato to form is a Sungold which is a very sweet cherry variety and an office snacking favourite, though Emma tends to get carried away and burns her tongue on them -something to do with acid and greed!

Sungold takes its name from the colour, it ripens to a lovely golden orange. The Sungold tomato seeds were started in a heated Vitopod propagator in a heated greenhouse on December 20th and transplanted to a Hydrogrow NFT on March 25th.  The plant is already 1.5metres tall!

Our first greenhouse strawberry has formed.

We are growing El Santa, a summer fruiting variety, because they are reliable, we find they fruit early and they taste great.

We’ve just added a brief strawberry growing guide to our website, so if you’ve never given growing strawberries a go take a look at the tips in the Advice section of our website.

A word or two about San Marzano tomatoes

I'm particularly looking forward to the San Marzano tomatoes which we are growing in the polytunnel. Our Chairman and founder John M grew San Marzano tomatoes in his polytunnel last year and they tasted fabulous. This Italian plum variety is considered by many chefs to be the best tomato for pasta sauces in the world and you won't find us arguing with that!

I knew we were right to be fantatical about them last year, they even have their own website

http://www.sanmarzanotomatoes.org/

The skin is quite thick and the flavour has just the right amount of sweetness without too much acidity.

It's an indeterminate (cordon) variety, so it must be grown with supports and ours were huge last year, making several large batches of sauce. The plant looks very impressive when it's fruiting because the tomatoes which are about 3 - 4 inches long, grow close together in clusters.

In the greenhouse, the weather is warming up a little, so Paul's taken the lids off the Vitopod propagators. We still have 12 tomato plants in the Vitopods, we will be picking the best 4 for the Quadgrow veg pots at the Greenhouse Sensation office in the coming weeks.