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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

I've just picked, and eaten, my first home-grown tomato of the year – and it was delicious. It's actually a brand new outdoor bush variety, and yet to be named, but on my sunny patio it has even beaten the greenhouse crops to produce the first ripe

first harvest. And by picking them just before you're about to eat you know they're can't be any fresher or full of goodness.Many are cut-and-come-again varieties, so by just picking the baby outer leaves as they develop the centre will be left

Every few days I'm picking handfuls of gigantic, sweet, succulent blackberries. They're delicious, and if I have time in the morning before dashing off to catch my train to the Gardeners' World office in London, I rush down to the bottom of my

knife to loosen the roots of each rosette, and as I did, I noticed how lush the leaves were.During my childhood, my Dad used to pick fresh, crisp dandelion leaves to add to salads. They had a strong, slightly bitter flavour – rich in iron if I remember

’m not usually an impatient gardener. I know that some things are worth waiting for. But some of the salad varieties in the new catalogues are said to be ready for picking within four weeks, and this is certainly an appealing idea. But which varieties

for food at this time of year, but robins really do get up close, and don't appear to be scared.You feel as if they would feed out of your hand, but perhaps that is hoping too much. Instead, any worms turned over during digging are picked out and thrown a

it hard to determine when fruits are actually ripe to pick. Many turned soft and fell before I realised they were fully ripe, while others split badly later in the season, and weren't as tolerant of irregular watering patterns (is that my fault

the garden. It's a bit 'pot luck', but then that's the fun of gardening. If I really wanted to maximise my returns I could collect seed by hand, picking off the pods at the moment they split, but before they've dropped their cargo. Kept on a sheet

pickings over the next month or so. If my eyes aren't deceiving me the ripe ones have gone. Is that blackberry juice dribbling down the beak of that bird up there?What I need is some netting ... a barrier to keep them away. I've covered fruit with netting