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and disease resistance. Potassium is naturally found in wood ash and deep-rooted plants like comfrey. I grow comfrey in the garden and use it to make a liquid feed for my fruiting crops.It's also important not to let leafy crops, like lettuce, or root crops

It's been a good year for many crops, but there have been so many critters feeding on the fruit.Most years we lose a fair few apples to the local birds. I never really mind, although it is irritating when they peck small holes in fruits, which

through the fruit press. I suppose I should just be pleased it crawled out before the apples were turned into juice.My slug visitor has thrown me into mollusc mania. I’m collecting slugs, snails and their eggs, and feeding them to the chickens.In theory

and cooking crops. Do let us know in the comments section of this blog if there are any harvesting tips you'd like us to cover.Finally, do join me and a host of other experts on the ‘Grow Your Own’ Garden at BBC Gardeners' World Live (15-19 June 2011) for more

hoped the clover would fix nitrogen in the soil, which would directly feed the chillies and encourage new leaves to grow. This seemed to work, and before long the plants were in full leaf and flower and attracting lots of hoverflies.I did get some

, they're certainly easier to peel than grapes).But don't despair if your beans have matured more than you would have wanted. Just cook, peel and mash the beans into a tasty puree.Broad beans are a simple crop to grow, but you do need quite a long row

in hanging baskets and pumpkins confused with courgettes, but everything was slightly leggy (due to the short days and low levels of sunlight) and there were too many plants for me to look after each one properly.Most plants ended up growing well eventually

or Kenya.I sowed the delicious variety ‘Purple Tee-Pee’ 15cm apart in large, 60cm pots, filled with recycled compost from earlier sowings and the dregs of various bags that were lying around. The pot was situated on the path of my greenhouse

and our resident vole have also had their fair share. The vole does test my patience, as it harvests more than it actually eats and makes a series of ‘larders’ – small mounds of neatly cut fruit! I’m too soft to do anything about it, though, and I’m quite

).It's not just my friends, I once viewed a flat and the prospective landlady pulled out a dead tomato plant that had been growing on her window sill, asking me why it hadn't fruited. From what I could tell it was a cordon type and was planted in a 10cm diameter