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I don’t think my garden could look any worse. The borders I left to rot into themselves have tumbled all over the lawn, the patio is covered in pigeon poo, and there’s now a temporary cardboard compost bin outside my back door because the real bin

Last week I wrote about the wood mouse that has taken up residence in my compost bin. So far I have resisted urges to check up on it, but have enjoyed the odd fleeting glimpse as I've added fresh waste to the bin.With the new resident fresh in my

There's a mouse living in my compost bin. I first saw it one evening the other week, when I added a fresh layer of tomato side shoots and yellowing leaves. It leapt out of the bin and charged through the border. That frog looks just like a mouse, I

raised when tunnels appeared in the borders and holes in the compost bin became a little too wide and numerous to be the work of a wood mouse. Then, my fears were confirmed when I emptied my compost bin and the rat shot out. I’m not against rats and think

, like programming the central heating, putting up shelves, plugging in the DVD player. One Christmas I was handed a spade and told to "kill the rats in the compost bin". My mum has two plastic compost bins next to each other, and the lone rat (as

Last year I had a great crop of chillies. I was so pleased with them that I couldn't bear to throw the plants on the compost heap when they'd finished fruiting. So I saved my favourite two to overwinter indoors as an experiment in chilli endurance

I've just bought a new compost bin. This is all the more exciting because next year I'll use it to grow pumpkins. I plan to raise the bin on bricks and plant pumpkin plants in the exposed compost. The well-rotted matter will provide the plants

), the beans were stringy, the courgettes didn’t thrive and the lettuce was eaten by slugs.  My compost heap was good though. I’ve always loved a good compost heap.I had a break until a few years ago, when my dad brought me a couple of tomato plants to grow

compost. We grow ours in terracotta pots of peat-free, multi-purpose compost with a little added leaf mould, topped with gravel. The terracotta prevents the plants from becoming waterlogged and the gravel stops vine weevils laying eggs in the compost

'll be raising mine indoors in a peat-free sowing compost.After that, I don't really know. In the past I've just planted them out and given them a good water when they've needed it. I've never fed a sunflower (I don't feed flowers, as a rule). A record breaking