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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

wasted.Later in October I'll be able to start picking other varieties (I've about 10 in all), including Cox, that have also cropped really well this year. These later ripening varieties do store much better, so I set them out in wooden, stacking trays

garden (in my pyjamas) and pick off the fattest, ripest berries to put on my bowl of breakfast cereal. What a great start to the day.To avoid a painful harvest I only grow thornless blackberries, and have trained two of my favourites, Loch Ness

blogger Kate Bradbury, will hopefully be inspiring many more people to grow themselves healthy in 2011.The campaign culminates with a Harvest Week in September, with advice on storing and cooking those bumper crops I'm sure you'll all be enjoying.

, brought into the warm and protected environment of my greenhouse to ripen in time for Wimbledon. When I came to harvest them, bowl in hand, the fruits were gone.Now it's the blackberries, which are just starting to ripen and will hopefully provide rich

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

perfect, carefully pollinated by hand using a brush to ensure good fruit set. Once early frosts were over I'd inspect my peach tree to count the developing fruits, looking forward to summer harvests.And then the mystery begins. One day the fruit is there

for sowing next year's coriander crop. Allow the seeds to ripen fully on the plant before harvesting.In the greenhouse I save seed from chillies, tomatoes and sweet peppers. The rule of thumb here is not to save seed from F1 hybrid varieties, as their progeny

) – and produced a value for every crop. The main factors she considered were:1.  The length of time a crop is in the ground before being harvested.2.  The number of helpings you'd pick per square metre.Crops that grew quickly and produced high yields received a

Baron' as an example, I can buy a packet containing 250 seeds for £1.45, or a pack of about 40 heat-treated sets for £3.99. If they all grew then an onion grown from seed costs less than 1p, while one grown from a set costs 10 times that at 10p.If you