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The first of the snowdrops are up, my daffodils are romping away - I can almost believe that spring will actually arrive. But it's the seed potatoes that are really firing me up.I can't resist buying seed potatoes, and have bought three batches

Here we are in early July and I have a horrible feeling that potato blight is just around the corner. The weather has been perfect for this horrible fungal infection to wreak havoc on everyone's home-grown spuds. By the look of the weather right now

I'm a big fan of home-grown potatoes. They're top for taste, texture and our carbon footprint. So they're a crop I'd recommend anyone to grow, and if you're going to do it, you may as well get as early a crop as possible.When I did my MSc in 'Crop

then the air was positively dripping. So, I'm amazed at just how little blight I've seen on tomatoes or potatoes.There was some blight on a few of the potato varieties I've been growing this year, but even then the brown patches on the leaves remained as tight

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

Growing to eat is one of the greatest of gardening pleasures. It sort of fulfills a fundamental need. Even better is growing vegetables with children. Recently I've been volunteering at my children's school, helping to teach youngsters how to grow

This is the time of year when I go tomato crazy. Suddenly I've gone from eating relatively few tomatoes to buying punnet loads from the shops. There is no doubt that if you go for the British Grown logo on the front of the pack they taste 100

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-grow

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