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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

worthwhile. A short row of raspberries just 1.2m long has produced several pickings, used to add tasty home-grown vitamins to my morning bowl of cereal. Blackberries are now taking over, and I'd thoroughly recommend thornless varieties to give regular

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

’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

of the chilli.This year a new chilli variety caught my eye. It's called 'Bhut Jolokia Fiery Furnace', and claims to be the world's hottest chilli.The heat of chillies is measured on the Scoville scale, and this variety comes in at an impressive 1,000,000

August's plum time in my garden, with 'Victoria' a firm family favourite. Everyone loves them, especially my daughter Danielle, who strips my single fan-trained plum before even the wasps get a taste!This has led me to extend my plum picking season