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Nothing beats the warmth of the sun after a long spell of cold weather. Until recently, rain or snow has kept me indoors, thinking despondently of all the garden jobs waiting to be done.Now that temperatures are rising, so are my spirits. When I

for the 'Gardeners' Delight' tomatoes from the Award-Winning Vegetables collection. I've grown these old favourites before - red cherry tomatoes with just the right balance of sweet and tangy in the super-intense flavour.I will sow five seeds per 10cm pot, and put a

have as a lawn. Our first job when we moved into our new flat was to lift the paved courtyard at the back, remove the sand and builders' rubble and buy in lots of topsoil (this used up my garden budget, so we couldn't buy any turf). We then sowed some

into the recycling bin (hopefully your local authority does collect and recycle a good range of materials), but I'm sure there are still a few gardeners out there who could benefit from doing more.For instance, all cardboard rolls, tubes or egg boxes make great

warmth for early sowings. Of course I'll be keeping heat to a minimum, and insulating the greenhouse with bubble polythene to reduce heat loss, but my environmental conscience keeps asking me the same question.Looking at things another way, I wonder if it

in the south-west. As well as feeding my young family out of our back garden, I squeeze in as many flowers as I can manage. This year I’m itching to sow the mouth-watering selection of flowers, veg, herbs and salads on offer through the Seed Club. The moment

has been the traditional day for many keen show growers to sow their onion seeds, in a heated propagator in the greenhouse (not in the garden, of course). Do onions really have to be sown on Boxing Day, or could this just be an excuse to escape from

and there are flurries of snow whipping off the roofs, and a rather disgruntled chicken is scuffling about like a well-wrapped babushka haggling in a street market in Minsk.Gardeners are obsessed with weather. It’s often too dry, too wet, too cold, too hot, not snowy

made it impossible to sow seeds directly outside in the garden. The ground was just too wet, making it difficult to prepare the surface soil to sow into. Any small seeds I did endeavour to sow got washed away, wasting time, effort and money

as they've done for millions of years without the helping hand of gardeners.Seed falls, and sows itself, and before you know it there are seedlings. Often you'll end up with too many, but any that aren't required can be forked out, or even transplanted