What's new, what's growing, what we're learning. Updates, guides and stories for people who take their garden seriously.
Three routes lead to your own onion: the fast set, the cheap seed onion and the early overwintering onion. Here they stand side by side, plus the trick against bolting and the classic bed duo with the carrot.
The potato is the perfect starter vegetable, entirely without raising plants indoors. Two simple actions decide yield and head start: chitting before planting and earthing up during growth. Here is how to get both right, from mid April to harvest.
The aubergine is the most heat-loving of the fruiting vegetables and succeeds here best in a pot or greenhouse. Here is how to raise it from February, harvest it at the right moment and find the right one between dark purple, striped and mini varieties.
Peppers and chillies are almost the same plant, the difference is the heat. Both need lots of warmth and a very early start. Here is how the raising succeeds from February, and how to find the right variety between the mild sweet pepper and the fiery habanero.
Thousands of tomato varieties, and you have to choose? Two simple axes bring order: the growth habit (cordon or bush) and the use (cocktail, salad, beefsteak, paste, wild). That way you find the right variety for your space and your kitchen.
Countless charts list good and bad neighbours, often without reason. Which four mechanisms of mixed cropping are really proven, why the Three Sisters work so well, and the one rule you should never break when combining.
Why the same cabbage grows poorly in its third year and how to prevent it: the two simple rules of crop rotation, the role of legumes as nitrogen gatherers, and the four-field plan that moves each bed one stage on year by year.
Peppery, quick and harvested many times over: how to grow rocket and Asian salad greens cut-and-come-again, why they bolt in summer, and how to keep the flea beetle off.
The sweet potato is botanically a bindweed, not a potato. How to raise your own cuttings, plant them warm, and why only curing makes them properly sweet.
