Jumbo56

if you could only have 2 pears...

What I did when I wanted to add to my pear 'orchard' - now up to three - was I waited until the other two were in flower, then rang the closest nursery to ask if they had any pear trees in blossom...it worked a treat, and each year all three are in blossom at the same time, and I just let the wild bees - resident somewhere in the garden - do the rest.  Result lots of pears to eat and cook with...short of recipes though!

Talkback: Growing chillies from seed

Can I grow peppers and cucumbers the same? I grow them the same as tomatoes at the moment.

In answer to Townsend. I have started using string, which I feed through bottom of eventual pots and tie off, then tie to high rail in greenhouse. Tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, then can be tied onto individual string or wound up string. Advantage is that you don't have dangerous sticks to poke yourself with - disadvantage is that the pot is less 'mobile', but if you decide to move the pot outside you can tie it to the branch of a tall shrub, just need to be an octopus to do it. I use this method to grow beans up a fence, and last year tried it with pumpkins, and that worked a dream. Just used thin rope rather than string.

Conifer Hedge dead or alive.

I've noticed that some gardeners tend to cut conifers back to dead wood, which then can't recover.  I did it with one of mine which was in the way of the step leading off the patio, so in the end it had to come down.  Perhaps if you leave them untrimmed at the place they are brown, or use them as a frame to grow a vine or creeper over rather than pulling them down.  I think they must be like lavender, once you cut past the live wood it won't recover.

Plants still in flower

I live in the East Midlands (cold in the winter - hot in the summer...well that's what folk reckon anyway) but I have marigolds in flower and my snowdrops and some crocus are in flower.  I just dread to think how many bugs will survive.  In the autumn we had lots more ladybirds than I had ever seen in the garden, but this week I have seen midges in flight, and a blue bottle, plus several 'bishy barnaby' (as they call ladybirds in Norfolk - lovely name for them).  Last week about ten miles away I saw a garden full of lady's smock. 

Talkback: Unwelcome wildlife

I really could have written your article Adam...I feel just the same about many things, well except for the slugs and snails, who are welcome to stay in the wild part of my garden, to encourage hedgehogs and thrushes to the banquet they provide, but I have been watching our 'squirrel free' bird table this afternoon, and three starlings dessimated the food we'd put out in just a few seconds. Then a woodpigeon found the holly berries I had left for the fieldfare and such-like. At the end of the day we are only keepers of our little plots, and in the same way that we nurture flowers and pull the 'weeds' which are only flowers in the wrong place,so we try and form our space into havens for wildlife and h'e'aven for us. Keep up the good work.

Carrot Tops