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what the mysterious scrambling plant with White trumpet like flowers was. As you have probably guessed, it was a fine specimen of convolvulus, or common bindweed.The next trauma to hit their nascent efforts was the cabbage white butterfly, which

pots and flower beds, keep an eye out for slug and snail eggs, plus leatherjackets (the larvae of crane flies, pictured, left), chafer grubs and vine weevil larvae. Removing these pests now will save you time (and your crops) later, and the birds

. And why not? Last weekend I made the most wonderful apple crumble I have ever eaten, using this BBC Good Food recipe (I ignored the instructions to add jam and orange juice to the apples).My garden might not be too small to grow apples, but its soil is too

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

as the plants start to flower.The spinach I'm growing in troughs as a salad crop, as you need to grow buckets of it for cooking and I don't have the space. Spinach is also prone to leaf miner fly, which bores holes into the leaves and lays eggs, so picking

with bell cloches for my courgette plants has paid off. Planted before my recent trip to the Canaries and Madeira, the plants are now covered with flowers, and this morning I spotted the first tiny courgettes forming. I can’t wait for the harvest.I’ll plant

-trained plum. It forms quite a thicket, with stems growing 3-4m long by the end of summer, so it does need a bit of space. Tiny white flowers will form on the stems that developed into fat green pods. Picked small I throw the whole pod into stir fries, but when

as growing plants. Last year I planted some seedling rhubarb plants from an organic veg plant supplier, but seedlings were only available of the popular 'Victoria'.We expect a lot from our rhubarb, so it's important to dig plenty of rich organic compost

for many months.I've never known greenhouse tomatoes to grow so quickly, with the tips of most plants already reaching the roof. Each is carrying four or five trusses of fruit, with more flowers opening, but ripe fruits so far eluding me. Golden courgettes

knows, perhaps salad crops growing in lawns will be next year's big trend at the Chelsea Flower Show. Don't forget you heard it here first.There is a small allotment outside the offices of Gardeners’ World magazine, where there is space for a few of us