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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

Two years, I felt the need to grow a local, native plant in my garden. I gathered rosehips from a field rose at the edge of a nearby canal, soaked them in water and sowed the seed in coarse compost.The pots sat in a corner of my patio, doing nothing

I'm not sure I like moth orchids. They're pretty to look at when in flower, but a bit of a pain to care for if you want them to bloom again. And I think it's a bit sad that these beautiful plants, which should be growing in the canopy of an exotic

pot of moist compost beneath the flowers to catch the seeds when they fall. You can transplant them when they're bigger.I dutifully placed a pot of compost beneath the plant. But then disaster struck.  Munching away at the flowers and unripe seeds

in their final positions last weekend. They're roughly 50cm tall and healthy looking, but they're not as tall as Adam Pasco's greenhouse-grown ones. Obviously they'll catch up and take over his soon.All but one of the sunflowers are planted in well-rotted compost

In last week's Observer Magazine, Dan Pearson wrote about collecting berries from hedgerows near him, so he could grow plants with local provenance. This is a subject I've been thinking about a lot recently, so I read on with interest.Put simply, a

the offending plants and what to do if you have them growing in your pond (remove and compost them, basically).Great. But what should we plant in our ponds to replace the offenders? My blog on dead frogs highlighted the need for oxygenating plants to maintain