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Garin' is a good choice for smaller gardens. Blackcurrants grow on new wood. When I harvest the currants I also prune at the same time, cutting out a third of the plant each year.This tangy, mouth-watering recipe for blackcurrant cream is not only

of the offsets so that you have a few leaves and a bit of root at the bottom. You can either pot this on till you are ready to plant out, or, put it where it will live permanently.  At this stage plants can be a bit vulnerable, so they need watering well

, which I'll pass on to you now.In a nutshell, people who garden by the phases of the moon believe that its gravitational pull on the earth's water (i.e. tides), has a bearing on plant growth. They never plant anything when the moon is waning in the last

on the season. When you buy the dried tubers, start them off in pots with general purpose compost and water well. Keep them protected and then plant them out in May when all danger of frost has passed. You can keep dahlias in the ground over winter, providing

the garden centre, ready to plant.Plant them 10cm apart (15cm if you want bigger onions) and keep them well watered in dry weather. Onions don't like growing in recently manured ground, but they do like fairly rich soil, so if you have any home-made compost

shoots 10cm high, apply sulphate of potash at 100g per square metre.March: Continue weeding and hoeing but take care not to damage bulbs. Planting may continue though bulbs will be smaller.April: Keep up regular watering in dry weather. Use a fungicide

before or after? Unless I've had time to establish crops for a few weeks and they are happy in the ground, I always leave sowing or planting till after my holiday: reliable watering friends who will do more than sprinkle the soil are hard to find

, but our committee permits dwarfing rootstock and asks that we plant trees in the centre of the plot so that we don't shade or deplete the soil for someone else. The dwarf rootstock for plums is known as 'Pixy', but if you're planting in a back garden

and place it tip down into the ground. Give it a little water if the weather is very dry.By the end of the summer you will find that you can dig up the end, which will have rooted, and sever it from the mother plant, ready for re-planting. You can also place