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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

is the better, as far as I'm concerned. I love playing Christmas games and having a proper tree and proper food - preferably from the plot. We're still working our way through the sacks of potatoes in the garage so it's going to be roasted 'Picasso' and boiled

.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

harvested potatoes, and sorting them into bags. But my approach to ornamental crops is much more random and haphazard: I just notice what has done well and what has been disappointing.This year, the pelargoniums growing in containers near our front steps

I'm sure there has been research done on how the colour of food affects our attitude to it. If it looks good then it hopefully tastes good too, but who wants to eat blue potatoes, purple carrots or orange cauliflowers?When it comes to salads I want

well as potatoes). To guarantee a crop then I have to apply a preventive spray using a fungicide like Dithane 945 (containing mancozeb).I know this is disappointing if you're trying to grow crops organically, and want to avoid spraying, but I don't know

for eating in salads, some for using in sauces and some for roasting. My aubergines will be so plentiful, I won’t need to buy any again (no matter how many aubergine parmigianas I make). I’ll grow enough garlic to hang in plaits around my kitchen and my