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trumpets bursting open at tip of yellow courgettes are pure beauty – and yes, they are good enough to eat (deep fried in a tempura batter sounds appetising).Flowers adorn climbing beans, squash, tomatoes, aubergines, chillies, garlic chives and many more

are swelling, garlic bulbs fattening nicely, and the first chillies and peppers almost ready for the kitchen.With the 'grow your own' year now in full swing, and more crops coming on stream each week, you begin to appreciate just how much can be grown, and how

'Charlotte' for our lunch. (I've still got a few Charlottes left in store and although it's a second early salad variety I find it keeps really rather well). I've also got plenty of garlic and onions still in store for the obligatory turkey curry!But up

such as aliiums, including chives and garlic.Grow with alliumsSow carrots among your vegetable crops rather than in large areas together, which makes it easier for pests to locate them.Mix with other cropsSow carrots late in the season – sowings made from June

the top layer of soil, replace it with fresh, home-made compost and give all the plants a good water. Any vine weevil grubs will be dispatched to the blackbird, and the thyme replaced with some garlic chives, which I'm ready to plant out. I'll prune out

.I love the way home-grown salads start off as a meagre collection of leaves in spring, then steadily grow as tomatoes, broad beans and other ingredients are ready to harvest. The watercress growing in my pond is always the first leaf crop I pick, followed

. 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

. But the reality is that so many artichokes sold in this country are old and tough.Artichokes do take up a lot of space - about a metre per plant. But if you love their taste, growing your own is the only thing to do.  If you don't have a vegetable patch

pretty garden and home-grown veg.Starting indoors, there's a propagator, containing seedlings of basil and garlic chives, which are in dire need of transplanting. I also need to pot on the sunflowers I'm growing as part of the Gardeners' World sunflower

It's Gardeners' World 'Grow Your Own' Week and I really am trying to grow my own, honest. Up at the allotment, everything's looking a bit bedraggled after the rain. The onions and garlics are looking just about OK; I'm hoping the strawberries