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seed sowing. My sowing list includes greenhouse tomatoes, chillies and sweet peppers, plus a few half-hardy bedding varieties – all plants that benefit from early sowing and a long growing season.My plan for the week involves something of a spring clean

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

A greenhouse or polytunnel allows you to grow a wider range of plants, and extends the growing season. Once the structure is in place you'll need to kit it out with a few essential items, listed below.You’ll have more success raising your own seeds and cuttings if you can enclose...

in half by wind and rain. In the end I had to tie each plant individually to a short cane.I'll use the same contingency plans during 2013, raising plants under cover in line with my Seed Sowing Masterplan. Do you have one? If not prepare it now, including

-prepared ground. Choose bush varieties and let them ramble over a mulch to eliminate weeding. One or two plants produce plentiful crops and stay productive for weeks (providing you keep picking).Four time-saving veg cropsCourgettes, squashes and patty pansSow seed

the leaves like spinach and eat the braised stalks with cheese sauce. Seeds are cheap and it’s a foolproof crop that’s highly productive in a small space. Sow from spring until late summer. Summer-sown plants will give a second crop the following spring

Two years, I felt the need to grow a local, native plant in my garden. I gathered rosehips from a field rose at the edge of a nearby canal, soaked them in water and sowed the seed in coarse compost.The pots sat in a corner of my patio, doing nothing

potager – a walk-through area with beds planted prettily with vegetables instead of flowers.But if you have a conventional veg patch or allotment, with crops grown at traditional wide spacings, try intercropping. The idea of this is to sow or plant quick