Gartenkern Magazine

Notes from the garden.

What's new, what's growing, what we're learning. Updates, guides and stories for people who take their garden seriously.

From the magazine

200 posts

Garden tools hanging in order on a wooden wall in a shed: spade, rake, hoe and broom.

Garden Practice

Basic Tool Kit: Eight Pieces Instead of a 40-Piece Set

Eight good garden tools are all you need to start; how to spot quality and where to save.

Wooden crates full of freshly picked apples, stacked ready for storage

Self-Sufficiency

Storing the harvest: a storage map by temperature and humidity

Sort every crop by two numbers, temperature and humidity, and find the right spot for carrots, potatoes and apples in the cellar, sand box or earth clamp.

A blade being drawn at a shallow angle across a wet sharpening stone.

Garden Practice

Sharpen and Care for Your Garden Tools: Angle, Resin and Rust

The right angle on the whetstone, plus resin and rust as the hidden blade killers: how to keep your garden tools sharp for years.

Finished fermented sauerkraut in a bowl, finely shredded and glistening with acidity

Self-Sufficiency

Fermenting: Sauerkraut and Vegetables With Nothing But Salt and Patience

Sauerkraut, salt-brined cucumbers and more: how to preserve autumn vegetables with just two percent salt, keep everything under the brine, and tell harmless kahm yeast apart from mould.

Various dried bean seeds sorted into groups, in different colours and patterns

Self-Sufficiency

Saving Your Own Seed: Open Pollinated Instead of F1

Why F1 seed segregates, how to spot open pollinated varieties, and how to ferment and store your own seed.

A hedgehog walking across an autumn meadow of withered grass.

Natural Garden

Helping Hedgehogs Without the Common Mistakes: Robot Mowers and Slug Pellets Are the Real Danger

It isn't the missing hedgehog house that kills hedgehogs, but robot mowers, slug pellets and open shafts. Here is how to really help in autumn.

Wooden nest box with a round entrance hole, fixed to a tree in a garden

Natural Garden

How to Mount and Clean Nest Boxes the Right Way

Entrance hole size down to the millimetre, an easterly aspect, and the autumn clean-out: this is how your nest box actually gets occupied come spring.

Tiered wild hedge of native shrubs at the edge of a field, densely branched and grown in several rows

Natural Garden

Plant a bird-friendly hedge from native shrubs

How to plant a layered wild hedge from native shrubs this autumn, giving birds nesting sites, cover and food all year round.

Robin sitting with fluffed up feathers on a bare twig in winter

Natural Garden

Feeding and Supporting Birds All Year Round

From the bird-feeder debate to a living pantry: how to support birds all year with clean food, water, and native berry shrubs.