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I recently spent a few days in Barcelona. The orange trees growing there were laden with fruit and looked stunning in the February sunshine. I loved seeing them growing outside in the streets, though admit to having felt a pang of jealousy on behalf

. 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

, we've had great results from growing tomatoes in the greenhouse. One of my favourites for flavour is the wonderfully pretty orange- and red-striped 'Tigerella'. The flavour is great, though I do wish I could manage to grow it with slightly thinner

repeated each year!First on my list of 'revolutions' is the vow to improve my meagre success with carrots. Only the purple varieties seem to work for me, so I'll be sticking with them in 2009; I think I'll skip a year before trying orange cultivars again

, coriander, mint, thyme and rosemary.Then there are nasturtiums - vibrant, colourful blooms produced in profusion by these easy-to-grow hardy annuals. They have a warming, peppery flavour, not unlike watercress. Which is hardly surprising when you realise

I'm sure there has been research done on how the colour of food affects our attitude to it. If it looks good then it hopefully tastes good too, but who wants to eat blue potatoes, purple carrots or orange cauliflowers?When it comes to salads I want

. But I love pumpkin curry, pumpkin soup or even just mashed pumpkin with bacon.We grow three varieties. The first is a big orange number called ‘Vif d’Etampes’. It keeps well into the winter, but once cut we have to eat it for at least a week. The second

for eating in salads, some for using in sauces and some for roasting. My aubergines will be so plentiful, I won’t need to buy any again (no matter how many aubergine parmigianas I make). I’ll grow enough garlic to hang in plaits around my kitchen and my

time to swell. This same pathogen attacks leeks, chives, and sometimes onions. The undersides of my garlic foliage became speckled with yellow patches that burst into orange rust pustules, resulting in a poor crop that simply wouldn't store through

instead of flowers.But the rebel in me only goes so far. I do like a straight line, so within the triangles I still grow the veg in rows. It's practical, and makes things easy to plant and harvest. But most of all it just looks so satisfyingly good.I use