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add a good dose of nitrogen to compost heaps.I think we've seen that nettles are much more useful than midges: nobody has ever considered making soup from midges. We should also be grateful that we don't have any of the southern hemisphere nettles

the grass. But then followed hours of turmoil. We pulled and squeezed at the plant, we even tried to loosen the compost with a bread knife. But the palm wouldn't budge. Eventually, we called in the bigger man of the house. Big toys for big boys; the answer

queen buff-tailed bumblebee, was examining the compost heap; I guess she was searching out a suitable hibernation site. Every now and then something else would buzz past: rosemary leaf beetles, green shieldbugs and ladybirds were all very active

bizarre to be taken seriously. However, there is an absolute King of Vegetables (Kay agrees with this while Pippa still needs to be completely convinced).Perfect raw or cooked, easy to grow, simple to prepare and the pods make excellent compost. (My

, then racing them before letting them go behind the compost bin.Snails can be educational too. Putting one on a pane of glass allows you to see the rippling muscles of the foot as the gastropod glides forward. Most people are perplexed to see that the ripples

then you can assume that I've made a ghastly mistake and am trying to hide the outcome. If nothing else, the prunings make good compost.If you want to see what my garden looked like a month ago then tune in to Gardeners' World on BBC2 this Friday (1 August

't just about not spraying with pesticides and making compost. Being organic is also about creating viable and balanced habitats in which you can grow the plants you want with the help of wildlife (I think I'll come back to this topic in a future blog

Fruitland, Idaho. They were the colour of George Hamilton's suntan and made from tough suede. Sadly, I only have one left, as the right hand glove accidentally ended up in the compost heap and, by the time I found it after about a year's mouldering, a mouse