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them well watered in dry weather.Clean straw or synthetic mulch fabricProtective nettingSeep hose (optional)April - June 20 minutesharvest from June to JulyWeed around your strawberry plants and remove any dead or dying leaves. Lift the foliage

.Serious potting has started on the farm. This is two weeks earlier than last year as the light has been so good that our wintered cuttings are already putting on new growth.Once the plants are potted they are then covered with horticultural fleece. This protects

but they're also rather gorgeous to look at. Their rich colour lifts your spirits on a chilly winter day when everything else is looking drab and dull. As with all brassicas, red cabbages need protection from pests, but as I grew mine over winter I didn

-spring, covered in white flowers which, come the autumn, turn into deep red berries, or haws. They also make spectacular trees that reach about 5m in 10 years - although if left alone they can reach 18m. They're fantastically gnarly and twisted and every wild

about on a summers day it's wonderful to feel the soil running through your fingers. But when it's freezing cold only the most deranged gardeners would lay into a berberis without some protection - a bit like those football fans (always the fattest

The recent stormy weather has played havoc with my crop protection - my elaborate constructions of cane, twine and netting are no match for the weather we've had!But we allotmenteers are made of stern stuff and have been out weathering the storm

, brought into the warm and protected environment of my greenhouse to ripen in time for Wimbledon. When I came to harvest them, bowl in hand, the fruits were gone.Now it's the blackberries, which are just starting to ripen and will hopefully provide rich

? Did he tunnel under the wire? Or did he just grit his teeth (snails have thousands of teeth so that is a lot of gritting!) and climb the copper? My favourite theory is that he climbed a lily stalk and fell off landing within the protective ring. It

. Is it really worth propagating what are relatively cheap bedding plants, and keeping these protected over winter to plant up next summer? I'm always in two minds. Pelargoniums, fuchsias and a host of others really need to be propagated now, too, if cuttings

on the surface of the compost and cover with perlite, the white granular material that can be purchased at most garden centres. Then put the seed tray or module tray in a propagator or on a heated mat at 16°C. The seeds will germinate in about 20 days, depending