I have always believed that you should only write or talk about what you know
I would love to have a stream running through the garden, to bring movement and sound as well as wildlife, but few of us are blessed with natural water. Most of us have to be content with an artificial pond, usually lined with a butyl liner. My ‘new’ garden, being created from a field, is…
With frosts behind us (I hope) it is time to plant out tender bedding plants and plant up pots on the patio. If these pots were filled with flowers for spring, these plants need to be removed. Daffodils should be dying down and tulips can be carefully lifted, taking care not to break the stems…
Calabrese is surely the most popular veg we buy. It is available all year round and is easy to prepare and cook. Not only that but it is insanely healthy to eat. No wonder we buy it so much. But we usually call it broccoli. So why am I calling it calabrese? There is a…
Sweetcorn is one of the best treats of late summer. Nothing is quite as delicious as freshly picked cobs, eaten raw, still warm from the sun. Sweetcorn has a reputation for being a risky crop to grow and older kinds did not do well in our short, erratic summers. But look for F1 hybrids, which…
Beans are well worth growing and are generally quite easy. There are three main types of bean that we can grow at home: broad beans, runner beans and French beans. These are completely different species and need different treatment but all grow best in moist, rich soil, ideally that is slightly alkaline and not too…
It is May and summer is coming! Think of summer meals and we think of salads. And salads mean lettuce. Although a wide variety of leaves are used in other countries, and we are getting more adventurous, lettuce is still the mainstay of the average salad. And lettuce is not difficult to grow. The great…
Beetroot is an ideal veg to grow if you are a beginner. There are lots of reasons. The seeds are large and easy to handle and they do not need special conditions to germinate. Because they are large they are easy to space so that reduces the need to thin them. Beetroot has few pests,…
Happy Easter. With warm weather forecast we should be enjoying the best of daffodils and no flowers are quite as lovely at Easter. By choosing different varieties you can have daffodils in flower from January to May. I have planted almost 100 kinds in my garden but I can never decide which I like best….
Although the weather is not always springlike at the moment, just a few days can bring a huge difference and spring is upon us even if we can’t quite believe it at the moment. Many of us want to grow some fresh vegetables and many are easy to grow to supplement our meals so, over…
When you need summer colour you can rely on, there is no better choice than marigolds. They have been garden favourites for centuries, ever since many of them were introduced from Central America. No respectable garden was complete without them in the 1960s and 70s but then they fell from favour as tastes became more…