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Last year I sowed all my seeds in the first week of January, eager to get my brand new garden off to a flying start. Everything was sown at once - from Eryngium leavenworthii to tomato 'Gardener's Delight' and my front room looked like a badly run

My first job when I moved into my flat last August was to remove the paving stones in the back yard. Now, after five months of having a building site for a garden, I have bought myself some Christmas topsoil, and I'm itching to get seed sowing

grass seed - one mix for shady areas, one regular blend and one with wildflower seeds - and watched the pigeons eat it all up. We made a scarecrow with a mop, a garden fork, an old shirt and some plastic bags and sowed some more. The pigeons didn't like

magnet for bumblebees.There are a few green manures to sow now, suitable for a range of soil types:1. Grazing rye (Secale cereale) improves soil structure. Sow from August to November and dig in the following spring.2. Winter field bean (Vicia faba

's cornflower, field poppy and bird's foot trefoil will have self-seeded in my lawn, but if not, I'll be sowing seed in the lawn's margins. The lone foxglove produced plenty of offspring, but I'll have to wait until 2012 to see those flower.I'm still not pleased

to pests and diseases, and (most importantly) much quicker to crop.This is where they become exciting: aubergines are normally quite tricky to grow. They're best raised in a warm greenhouse, and if you sow seed later than March, you’re in danger of losing

, so I'll go back for them another time.)I can't wait to get sowing on the weekend. I'll remove the seeds from their (now swollen) hips and sow them in a pot of fresh compost. As the seeds require a good dose of cold, followed by a warm spell

. My mini balcony compost heap, however, was perfect.The following year I got my first allotment. I made mistakes there too. I sowed radish seeds in trays to transplant (and got laughed at by my new allotment friends), I planted potatoes in frosty

The April 2011 issue of Gardeners' World magazine comes with two packets of free seeds: sweet peas and sunflowers. The sunflower variety, 'Russian Giant' promises to reach a height of around 2m, but we think it can do a little better than that

As container-grown fruit and veg start to crop, it's important keep your eye on the ball to ensure they stay productive. I've just harvested a small batch of French beans from my late container sowing as part of the Grow Yourself Healthy campaign