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any more spores about than absolutely necessary) I confined each plant to the bin bag.The stems had gone from sturdy bright green to fuzzy and fungal within the space of 48 hours. Tomorrow I will pick all the tomatoes, aubergines and peppers

were decorated with sparkly cobwebs. On the way back we stopped off to pick up some windfalls from beneath the apple trees, avoiding those already chewed by the fox and muntjac.At lunchtime I sat outside and ate a piece of toast (with home-made apricot

.I find myself buying cyclamen for all areas of the house, including the windowsills and bedrooms. If you shop around you can pick them up from as little as £1.99. And to add to the impact of the foliage and the flowers, many vareities now have a delicate

the bird’s exact shape and size. Occasionally it comes out onto the bark to fidget about, but most of the time it stays indoors and keeps bobbing its head in and out of the hole. What on Earth is it up to?I can only imagine that it is picking up bits

't go amiss either. Then keep picking off faded flowers to make way for new ones growing up from the base.So far the displays are looking great, but in previous years I have found sparrows start pecking away the leaves. I'm not sure if they're hungry

It's the ‘Gourmet grower’ and ‘Allotmenteer’ packs that I'm finding most useful. Early potatoes planted this week will have produced tasty new potatoes for harvest in June, while broad beans sown outside into warm soil should have their first pods for picking

as the plants start to flower.The spinach I'm growing in troughs as a salad crop, as you need to grow buckets of it for cooking and I don't have the space. Spinach is also prone to leaf miner fly, which bores holes into the leaves and lays eggs, so picking

things to chance, or pick up the pressure sprayer. Today I fall into the former category, but a devastating disease year may persuade me that preventive action would be better in future. And this means using a suitable rose fungicide regularly from early

is the Latin and they have the most divine scent. The secret is to grow the long-stemmed Spencer varieties and to keep on picking them: pretty much every day. If you stop and let them start seeding then they will flower much less vigorously.But, I don't want

to provide a bird barrier, but even these take time to put in place. They also make picking ripe fruit quite a challenge too.But it's not just birds that love my fruit. For the past two years I've grown quite a promising crop of peaches. Blossom looked