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First it was my garlic - a crop I pride myself on (usually) as we get huge bulbs of super-succulent, tremendously tasty garlic that lasts us well in to the next year, generally until the next year's crop is ready...and keeps our friends smelling just as strongly as us! This year ...

, they provide a brilliant pit stop for the blackbirds, thrushes and robins. The great thing is that the hedge runs alongside the bay window where we eat most of the family meals, so we get to enjoy their feasting as we eat. The hedge has been there for years

of exciting things to eat, including the remains of the chard and straggly brassicas.My hens also make a fair amount of fresh fertiliser, which I allow to rot down for at least six months, before returning to the vegetable plot.They can get in the way though

Here we are in early July and I have a horrible feeling that potato blight is just around the corner. The weather has been perfect for this horrible fungal infection to wreak havoc on everyone's home-grown spuds. By the look of the weather right now - varying between warm and wet...

The weather this year has been far from ideal for raising squashes - my plants are still undersized and you'd almost need a magnifying glass to see the fruits! Courgettes and marrows, though, have had a brilliant year, with the marrows reaching epic proportions.However, the recen...

The first of the snowdrops are up, my daffodils are romping away - I can almost believe that spring will actually arrive. But it's the seed potatoes that are really firing me up.I can't resist buying seed potatoes, and have bought three batches already. Top of my list was my favo...

In most years I usually plant some of the more tender veg crops, such as courgette and squash, by late April. If I had done so this year, the plants would be dead by now, as May was so unusually cold. (And I don't even think the chunky bell cloches that I use would have been much...

suggest putting some water out for them now, and letting them eat some of your fruit, too!

It can be much trickier changing the soil in a greenhouse trench than in a garden border. I’m lucky to have trenches with brick bases, but my heart goes out to anyone with borders glazed to the base. It's so easy to break panes when excavating soil.I must confess that I don’t ref...

My elder son Archie made his first vegetable garden this year, in the back garden of a slightly scummy, student infested house in deepest Peckham. It was a very enterprising community effort by all of his housemates, involving sporadic (though manic) digging interspersed with fre...