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on the cuteness scale but that is not much use if you are trying to grow vegetables. (They also, if Alvin and the Chipmunks are to be believed, have really irritating voices). In the same bracket come groundhogs - who can have about five burrows, each one

of being outside our plants have experienced wind, rain, hail and sunshine. I'm pleased to report no damage has been done - they're looking good and flowering spikes are appearing.Borage is a great herb for vegetable gardens. The flowers attract bees, which

produces quite a bag of potato and vegetable peelings, and wrapped in newspaper these can feed my compost heap.Yes, newspaper can be composted, and so can plain cardboard including corrugated boxes, tubes from toilet and kitchen paper rolls as well as egg

animals are transient, they come, they go; but wild plants ... they come, they stay, they get in the way, they interfere, and they compete with the flowers and vegetables we choose to grow. I think this attitude to 'weeds' is grossly unfair, so here

, while improving its structure and water-retaining ability.But this year there's a problem. The RHS Members' Advisory Service has received a high number of calls from gardeners reporting abnormal growth of various vegetable crops, including potatoes

in autumn are now plump, juicy and just itching to be eaten. We've already harvested and eaten some of them, which have been extremely well received. My family has been enjoying garlic butter, garlic-roasted vegetables, pasta sauce and some delicious

- similar to a pregnancy testing kit. So my next job is to go out to the vegetable patch, cut off a small sample of affected foliage and pop it in the little kit - I'm nearly as nervous about this as if it were a pregnancy testing kit! A positive result

.All this has got me thinking about a lovely system of categorising vegetables coined by Joy Larkcom in one of her books on growing salad. She gave every crop a Value For Space rating, or VSR ... but I think this is a topic for another time.I wonder which crops

I was producing a crop of water chestnuts).I'm also intending to start a small asparagus bed. Asparagus is a fascinating vegetable. Until a couple of years ago I heartily disliked it, but now I've fallen for its charms I'm going to attempt to grow

keen vegetable gardener and he grows tomatoes and cucumbers in his greenhouse. These and runner beans are his particular passions. Over tea we've compared seed companies and their service, our favourite varieties and tips on when to harvest runner beans