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I'm beginning to wonder whether growing old heirloom or heritage varieties of vegetables is really worthwhile. My tomato 'Snow White Cherry', sold as a heritage variety by many companies, was a real disappointment this year, and I wish I'd grown

what the mysterious scrambling plant with White trumpet like flowers was. As you have probably guessed, it was a fine specimen of convolvulus, or common bindweed.The next trauma to hit their nascent efforts was the cabbage white butterfly, which

!).We've grown the classic round summer cabbage which is moth-eaten or rather caterpillar eaten after the attentions of the cabbage white butterfly babies. Looks terrible but tastes lovely - once you've fought your way through all the ragged outer leaves! All

The first really hard frost hit this morning. The garden was so white it almost looked as if it was covered with snow. It was gorgeous to look at but pretty miserable for some of the less hardy plants. But when I went into the greenhouse to grab

at the weekend, it was plain to see that the local slugs were showing no signs of slowing down. I uncovered several large clumps of their eggs; clear or slightly off-white spheres, each about 1-2mm in diameter (pictured, above). I gathered the eggs up in a pot

show recently, and 80% of the questions people asked me were about their poorly raspberries. I only grow autumn-fruiting varieties at home, which normally avoid attentions of raspberry beetle, but the early berries have been affected. So I wasn’t too

, inedible skins.The best beans are younger, and probably slightly smaller, with a creamy white 'scar' attached to each bean. Young beans are delicious, and can be eaten skins and all - unless you have fussy kids like mine who want each bean peeled (well

that help me create a patchwork of colour is all part of the fun of ‘growing your own’. By choosing crops that provide a full eating sensation – colour, texture, sweetness, flavour – you can take your veg-growing to new heights, and enjoy home-grown produce

-trained plum. It forms quite a thicket, with stems growing 3-4m long by the end of summer, so it does need a bit of space. Tiny white flowers will form on the stems that developed into fat green pods. Picked small I throw the whole pod into stir fries, but when