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Picking broad beans really is a family affair in the Pasco household. The fat, swollen pods are full of promise and we eagerly pop them open to release the harvest.Much to my wife's surprise, my two children really enjoyed their first taste of broad

It's the ‘Gourmet grower’ and ‘Allotmenteer’ packs that I'm finding most useful. Early potatoes planted this week will have produced tasty new potatoes for harvest in June, while broad beans sown outside into warm soil should have their first pods for picking

.Types to sow now include crimson clover, fenugreek, field lupins - even broad beans. They germinate and grow quickly and reduce weed growth. Flowering varieties even attract bees and beneficial insects.Nothing could be simpler, and the green manures help break

. Others are collected and sown in pots in a more organised manner. Among the seeds I've saved this year are foxglove, hellebore, columbine, scabious, Jacob's ladder, snapdragon and calendula.Around my plot I leave lettuce, mizuna, watercress, broad beans

. Seedlings need watering, as do flowering broad beans and garlic.I'm anxious to get tender crops planted outside so that I can set-up an automatic watering system in the greenhouse for my tomatoes and cucumbers. Chillies, sweet peppers and aubergines grow