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Following my recent blog Top 10 plants for a dream garden, I’m expanding the wishlist to include fruit and veg. I think it’s good to have a goal, no matter how distant it may seem.I like to think that if I have a decent-sized garden, with room for a

I’ve grown garlic successfully for years. But last summer was an exception, as the warm, wet weather provided the perfect conditions for garlic rust to thrive. Bulbous plants infected with rust usually wither and die early, before the bulbs have time to swell. This same pathogen ...

I’m a big fan of raspberries, which are the most reliable of all the soft fruit crops that I grow. My soil is heavy and alkaline, and I’ve found that autumn-fruiting raspberries last much longer in it than summer-fruiting varieties. So now I stick to growing autumn varieties such...

Growing tomatoes with ring-culture pots involves surrounding the crop with a bottomless ring and adding layers of compost at 10-14 day intervals. This encourages the tomato to root from the stem so it can take up more water and nutrients than it would get from the growing bag alo...

and there are flurries of snow whipping off the roofs, and a rather disgruntled chicken is scuffling about like a well-wrapped babushka haggling in a street market in Minsk.Gardeners are obsessed with weather. It’s often too dry, too wet, too cold, too hot, not snowy

There's a lot more to a great salad than lettuce. Apart from a nice assortment of colourful leaves and a slight crunch if they're fresh, I'm not convinced that lettuce adds much more to salad than bulk!I prefer to grow salad leaves with real flavour like rocket, watercress, and a...

CanesChicken wire meshFebruary - April10 minutes to sow the seedsJune - AugustFor early crops, sow seed indoors now in pots or cells. Transplant into the garden when the seedlings are about 12-15cm high. This helps reduce damage from slugs, snails and pigeons

simply sold as 'sweetcorn', 'tomato' or 'white potato' when you haven't a clue what the variety actually is? We can be far more discerning, as both consumers and gardeners, choosing and growing named varieties of crops that have the flavour and eating