Now in late summer, the maturity of tomatoes reaches its peak. Despite or perhaps because of the current tomato glut, you should already make provisions now for next year’s tomatoes. A true tomato lover brings together so many treasured varieties over time, which he/she harbours in his/her garden year after year. Often the best varieties are just those that you do not get in every supermarket. In this article you will learn how you can collect tomato seeds in just a few steps and thus grow new discoveries in the longer term.

Do you think a small garden offers no leeway to plant an orchard and plant many different fruit trees? In this article we want to convince you of the opposite: finding a fruit tree for the small garden is not only possible but it also brings you a rich harvest and lots of fun.

When blackcurrants are harvested and the gardener has scrubbed his/her blue fingers, then it's time for an apology: I apologise to all the Cassissimas® and to you, dear fellow gardeners, because I was wrong. I have been claiming that currants are THE super fruit for the cold, rainy, windy north (after all, they thrive in summers with continuous rain and 15 degrees Celsius) and now this: they have survived the first real heat wave and a two-month drought in my garden as if they were cacti and not berry bushes!

When Ötzi was killed on his last Alpine tour, he had eaten dried sloes, which were apparently a refreshing snack 5250 years ago. The blackthorn or sloe is common in our landscape as well as in our culture. Sloes are also the original prunes and primordial damsons; our modern plum and damson varieties are said to have originated from hybridisations of blackthorn with the cherry plum (Prunus cerasifera).

The breeder virus at Lubera® continues to spread. Robert Maierhofer, Lubera® Operations Manager in Buchs, Switzerland, does everything – job-related – at the same time. He discusses the new panicle hydrangeas with Magda Kobelt, he talks on the phone, and he does not forget to select the most beautiful flowers – with his mobile phone clamped in place.

As I stroll through my perennial garden, I am really looking forward to the upcoming Astrantia flowers. The beauty of the single flower can hardly be described. Summed up in an umbel, the flowers look like nostalgic Biedermeier bouquets with their neat cuffs.

Open field and tomatoes? These two words do not really fit together, you might think at first. Tomatoes can only grow and thrive in a purpose-built tomato house. And those who do not have a tomato house do not have tomatoes. The open field/outdoor tomatoes, however, make it possible for you to grow tomatoes in a small garden or even a container on the terrace, without rain protection. Planting instructions and other important information about open field tomatoes can be found in this article.

Those who want to care for hydrangeas have a worthwhile task. The popular garden hydrangeas are stunning with their oversized flower heads in rich blue, bright pink or pure white and they have an old-fashioned charm that is hard to elude. This makes them almost unrivalled in the world of flowering shrubs. If you care for hydrangeas and have the right know-how, you are guaranteed to experience a long-lasting, colourful show of flowers in your garden. Here you will find the most important tips for planting and caring for your hydrangeas.

Anyone who has raspberries in their home garden will come into contact with raspberry yellow rust sooner or later. We are talking about the plant pathogen Phragmidium rubi-idaei, which often appears more at this time of the year, i.e. at the beginning of midsummer. How to identify the symptoms of this disease and how to get rid of it can be found in this article.

The summer has barely begun, but in the past dry and hot weeks, many of our perennials have grown so much that many have already completed their flowering period or no longer look beautiful after the drought damage. Many garden owners are now unsure if and when they may or should cut back the perennials. I would like to write about an easy solution, but the demands and the treatment of the plants is as varied and diverse as the abundance of perennials themselves.

We are confronted with questions about pollination very often. How does pollination exactly work for this or that plant or crop? Are there male and female plants? Does this plant need a pollinator? Of course, God forbid, the background to these favourite questions is not the genuine interest in the sex of the plants, but the concern for the fruit yield. Mostly, the answers to these questions are fortunately less complicated than the questions are intended. This is also the case with the tomato: the cultivated tomato, as we know it, is self-fertile. That’s a fact. Now we should all be relieved of our worries. But it's not so easy with the self-fertility of tomatoes...

Do you know Gillenia trifoliata? No? That's what we thought…few people know Bowman’s root. For years we have been offering Gillenia trifoliata on our sales tables, but unfortunately this plant is rarely bought.