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Strummer and the Mescaleros (from their 2001 album Global A Go-Go; watch the video).John Chapman was a hard-boiled and slightly mad frontiersman who travelled from Pennsylvania through to Ohio, ahead of mainstream settlers, planting apple seeds and creating

did a bit of farming and looked after an acre or so of garden.In the summer of 1825 Mrs Cox was sitting in the garden - probably enjoying the sun and, perhaps embroidering a sampler or engaged in some similar 19th Century pursuit. Her attention

Despite summer drought in my part of the East Midlands, my apple crop has been pretty good on most trees, but there’s just one problem. A much larger proportion of fruit than ever before has been pecked on the tree itself, resulting in small holes

of apple trees, a greenhouse (that sadly got stolen), a wonderful bright yellow tub trug, an orange tree, and an incredibly sharp gardening knife. But I've also received some horrors, one of which was so bad I took it back to the shop and exchanged

have dropped low enough to kill off some overwintering pests such as the woolly aphid I discovered on my apple trees last summer. The problem is that frost isn't that discerning, and unless beneficial insects like ladybirds are even hardier, or have

windfalls are left beneath trees for blackbirds to peck at.Hedges and thick shrubs provide shelter and nesting sites - I could show you at least four sites around my garden where sparrows, blackbirds, robin and wren (I think) nested last year. Water