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Blustery crisp days and cold nights, north winds, sleet, hail, snow and cold rain. It's amazing with this mixture of weather that plants manage to plod their way into spring.I was very excited this week to notice that one of my favourite herbs

vegetable plot and my newly planted squash plants were eaten over night. Now all I'm left with is a selection of decidedly miserable-looking stumps with a few scraps of leaf clinging on for dear life. Of course, the slugs are happy as can be. They're full

and buddleja.The caterpillars can destroy plants' foliage in a matter of days and can literally be seen to swell in the process. Luckily, my one cultivated verbascum has so far escaped their attentions, but a buddleja and several of the wild mulleins growing

and the leaves of the plants. With my perverse interest in pests and pathogens, I find blight quite interesting. And this year has been especially interesting, as both the crop and the disease thrived. Next year, Suttons Seeds is launching a new tomato called

Being a caring fellow, I will ease you gently into a new year of gardening by telling you the story of my pyracantha.Pyracantha - or firethorn - is a much undervalued plant. It's a big spiny shrub, originally from China, and is most usually seen

The final build up to the Chelsea Flower Show has started. It's become something of a tradition to open the herb farm to the public the weekend before Chelsea. Visitors who aren't going to the show can see the display plants and it's a great boost

have quite heavy infestations. The tips of affected plants are usually covered with the little blighters, which are carefully tended to by a handful of busy ants. The ants 'farm' the aphids for their sweet, sugary secretions, called honeydew. They push

Sometimes plants do the strangest things, and some of these could make you a small fortune. One of the first dahlia blooms to open in my garden has put on more of a show than expected by producing a flower head with two faces! It looks as if two

of all.Other than a bit of slug damage (you didn't think I'd get off that easily did you?) the plants look very good. The fledgling sprouts are forming nicely and each top knot of leaves is lush and sturdy. It all bodes rather well for Christmas dinner

eye at a local plant centre, its spoon-shaped petals infused with steely blue crying out for closer inspection. Three plants were soon at home in a large terracotta pot, positioned in a hot spot on my patio. Since June they've bloomed non