If you keep sowing small amounts throughout the summer, you can harvest fresh produce for many weeks. With a little planning, suitable crops and an eye on crop rotation, a bed, raised bed or balcony box becomes a small, living self-sufficiency plot.…

Self-sufficiency doesn't have to be perfect. It is allowed to start small. With a pot of basil, a few tomatoes on the balcony or a bed full of heirloom vegetable varieties. And it gives us something that goes far beyond the harvest: appreciation,…

Ethnobotany does not have to begin in distant parts of the world. It often begins right on your doorstep: in the herb bed, by the wayside, in the cottage garden or even between the cracks in the paving. After all, what makes plants interesting from…

The Three Sisters is one of the best-known traditional companion planting techniques. It involves growing sweetcorn, beans and squashes together in the same area. Which may sound like there’s nothing much to it – but in fact this is a sophisticated…

If you have ever travelled along the coast, you will know these special plants: low-growing, often fleshy, sometimes shimmering silvery and seemingly unimpressed by wind, salt and poor soil. Many holidaymakers wonder whether you could not also take…

Ethnobotanical plants are not simply “special species”. They are plants that show us how people have lived with nature: what they ate, what they seasoned their food with, what they used against ailments, and which plants they wove into their…

Magic plants tell of protection and healing, of dreams and danger, of myth, dose, and the age-old experience that some plants do more to us than others. Some plants have had a special reputation for centuries. They were gathered for festival days,…

Ethnobotany sees plants not just as useful objects but as humanity’s companions – as food, medicine, fragrance, protection, symbol and memory. Today’s gardeners are often seeking more than just crops or beautiful flowers. Many people long for a more…

In spring, everything begins so easily. The soil is moist, the sun still gentle, and your plants grow almost by themselves. But by summer at the latest, everything changes: the heat increases, the pots dry out faster, and suddenly watering becomes a…

A pot is just a pot, isn't it? If you have ever grown herbs, tomatoes or edible flowers on your balcony, you may know the feeling: some plants grow strong and happy, while others stay small, let their leaves droop or hardly bear any fruit. And often…

Not every balcony is the same. Some bathe in the sun all day, others stay cool and shady. And that is exactly where the gift lies, not a problem. Because once you understand how your balcony “ticks”, gardening suddenly becomes easy. Successful. And…

How to create your own mini oasis between asphalt & flowers Perhaps you know this feeling: you step out onto your balcony, and instead of birdsong you hear traffic. Instead of buzzing insects you see concrete. And yet this is exactly where an…