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the Christmas decorations to the shed this morning - always a tinge of sadness - I stopped off at the greenhouse to harvest the last of our Christmas potatoes.We planted a variety of spuds in pots and compost sacks when we got back from holiday at the beginning

Where does the old season end and the new one begin? For allotmenteers it can feel like something of a continuum - these days you can buy excellent plug plants of winter lettuce and oriental greens that will take you right through winter, if you

before or after? Unless I've had time to establish crops for a few weeks and they are happy in the ground, I always leave sowing or planting till after my holiday: reliable watering friends who will do more than sprinkle the soil are hard to find

. But the reality is that so many artichokes sold in this country are old and tough.Artichokes do take up a lot of space - about a metre per plant. But if you love their taste, growing your own is the only thing to do.  If you don't have a vegetable patch

contains a lot of useful cultural information. There are two different kinds of garlic.Hard necks: these varieties are hardier than soft necks. They produce a flower stalk which should be chopped off so that the plant's energy goes into making a larger bulb

When I first started growing shallots I did so on the advice of Sam, on our allotment (aged 90 he was still tending his plot twice a day). He told me to plant shallots on the shortest day and harvest them on the longest. I'm a bit more haphazard