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. If you have light, free-draining soil, you can start planting potatoes outside. I have very heavy clay soil in my garden, which is still a bit too wet for potatoes, so I’m putting it off for a little longer.I’ll sow some hardy annual flower seeds outside

that managed to escape the dreaded potato blight were enthusiastically hoovered up by the family months ago ("they're so much nicer than the shop-bought potatoes").But this year, having sown surplus seed from a Gardeners' World growing trial, I'm enjoying

hand would one day grow into a whole bulb of garlic they were dumbstruck! And we're all very excited about harvesting lots of potatoes from the single seed potato we planted.For so many kids you can see a whole new story start to unravel, and the great

of these on the plants when I get there - the smaller gardeners in the family wait for them to ripen like a pair of vultures! Certainly one I'll have next year. Fingers crossed, none of the outdoor tomatoes have got blight yet, despite the fact that the potatoes went

plummets at about 6pm. So yes, the fleece is draped all over the place in the veg plots. A bit of snugly-protection for my sweet potatoes (I'm growing Bearegard and Jetfire this year, it'll be interesting to see how they fare!) and some vital, please

the chitting seed potatoes, seed trays, pots and propagators. It also forces me to throw things away. So, out go the weird, wonderful and unused gadgets. Out go the seed packets that I've kept for years on the assumption that I might one day sow the contents

individual bulbs of garlic into pots, then transplanting them later on.Everything else is starting to move too, the tomato, pepper and aubergine seedlings are responding well to the increased light levels. I planted a few potatoes earlier but had to protect

themselves. And just about every person I know loves to eat home-grown produce, too.I got my kids started with the obvious crops: potatoes (children love digging for the tubers when they're ready), raspberries (no need to pester children to eat fruit when

At this time of year it’s all too easy to stay indoors and become a couch potato. When I do venture into the garden, my fingers ache with the cold and the ground is so slippery I can barely stay upright. I can’t even warm up by working the soil

.On the basis that next summer surely can't be any shorter or cooler than the one we had in 2008, I've sent off for some sweet potato slips. I'm hoping that we'll have the right conditions for producing a successful harvest this time around (last year it seemed