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of your crop being affected the following year. You then need to harvest the potatoes (big and small) before it rains, otherwise the fungus will reach them and render them inedible and rotten. Luckily, the other day I was sent a potato blight testing kit

and kills them, so weekly sprayings will usually do the trick. The good thing about using detergent is that it just washes away in the rain - even better if you use a green brand. Of course, blackfly are naturally preyed on by ladybirds, lacewings

weather. And even my trusty copper rings aren't as effective as usual, due to such huge numbers. The rain has washed away the barrier gel and grit circles I also had in place around my lettuces.I also suspect that even the marvellous nematodes

digging for me! All I tend to do is give the soil a thorough and deep forking over, breaking up any 'capping' on the surface caused by heavy rains. Mother Nature can take care of the rest of the work for me - winter frosts will kill slugs and break up

the season. Which plants you cut back depends so much on personal taste and weather - lots of rain or heavy snow tends to make everything go 'flumpf' earlier (flumpf is, of course, a well-known horticultural term describing the process of plant collapse). It

We've swapped the 'big freeze' for 'wet and windy' this week. Suddenly the temperatures seem sub-tropical, even though it's only a few degrees above zero. I'm glad of some rain — it's been dry for a couple of months, which is unusual in these parts

the lens they are strikingly coloured, metallic blue and black, whilst others are grey (cluster flies), green (green bottles) or even bronzy gold.It only stayed a few minutes before flying off. Now it's raining, and there are still no insects out there

's learned from trial and error, though she keeps The Vegetable Expert handy too! We had a good chat about generalities such as last year's rain and the prospects for this summer, then finally got on to more meaty topics like favourite varieties and Laura

the station on some evenings I found myself battling through torrential rain, only to get home and find my garden was still bone dry. And there I was wishfully thinking I'd have an evening off from my summer watering routine!But back to the clover. Perhaps

. Apricot trees (Prunus ameniaca) grow particularly well there because of the south-western aspect and because, before the invention of the gutter, they got lots of rain - apricots need lots of water to prevent the fruit from splitting.I mention this because