What's new, what's growing, what we're learning. Updates, guides and stories for people who take their garden seriously.
Hardy into the bed, Mediterranean into the container: why the variety name decides frost hardiness, how the fig forms two harvests, and when it is truly ripe.
Sown direct, child-simple and a feast for bees and birds. Which sunflower suits the bed, the vase or the kitchen, how to support it, and when the seeds are ripe.
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.
Why the heads stay small, why you fold the leaves over the cauliflower, and how broccoli keeps delivering side shoots for weeks after the main head.
Maggoty roots and crooked carrots need not happen. Why only the net reliably keeps out the carrot fly, what companion planting really does, and how carrots grow straight.
Why several plants come up from one seed, why you should eat the leaves, and how to store beetroot in damp sand until spring.
The long white shaft makes a good leek. How to plant leeks deep, earth them up right, and protect them from leek moth and onion fly with a net.
Twenty heads at once and then nothing? How small batches and loose-leaf lettuce give you an even harvest from spring into autumn, and why lettuce will not germinate in high summer.
