Very interesting article Chris. Thanks.
Will defintely be down on the beach with my black plastic bag. My husband will probably be relieved that I've settled for something slightly less offensive than manure to be carted home in the boot of the car !

Is this variety renowned for splitting skins if watering is uneven? Mine are in the same border with various other varieties, all of whom have had received the same watering treatment, yet this variety is the only one with split skins. It has meant that this summer I've had to use many of them for c...

I understand that black raspberries are available although grown mainly in the US rather than here in the UK.
Does anybody grow them, and if so, are they in any way superior to our native red ones? I've never seen any for sale in any garden centre.

We visit the coast fairly regularly and often see seaweed washed up on the beach. Seems a shame to waste it and I'd like to collect some as manure. However, I did this once many years ago and it seemed to take for ever to rot down in my compost heap. Is there any recommended way of using it, or of s...

I guess you can compost some weeds, but I have to be very particular because our garden is terrorised with that horrible little weed, Oxalis, which looks rather like clover, but has horrible little nodules on the roots, and if you break the slightest one off, it regenerates itself again quicker than...

I guess you can compost some weed, but I have to be very particular because our garden is terrorised with that horrible little weed, Oxalis, which looks rather like clover, but has horrible little nodules on the roots, and if you break the slightest one off, it regenerates itself again quicker than ...

If you can find some seed packets, a sowing now of Swiss chard (similar to spinach) is not too late. Keep it well watered to germinate, and if you can give it the protection of some cloches over the winter, even if you don't get big chunky leaves, you will have some nice little ones which you can us...

Don't think you get a water rates reducion for using water butts as we have four of them and the "fine print" doesn't mention them. The only benefit is that rainwater from roofs isn't wasted and can be recycled onto the garden.

You're welcome. The reduction will help to pay my chiropractor's fees which I'm now having to pay as a result of lugging heavy watering cans around because of the hosepipe ban !

Many congratulations.

No vacancies for bridesmaids. Rocky is going to be the only page boy !!

As water plays a key part for gardeners, you might like to check the fine print on the back of your water rate bill and see if you're entitled to a reduction. We're supplied by Thames Water but this may apply in other areas too. Look at the back of your water rate bill and see if there's a clause wh...

Gosh Johnboy, I'm really impressed at all the loving care your parsnips get from cradle to the grave, which probably explains why you get such healthy specimens. I think we'd have to eat a lot more curry in our house to generate enough loo rolls for each individual seed but possibly you also grow yo...

Johnboy - you live and learn something new every day! I never realised that climbing & dwarf French beans were self fertile, whereas runner beans arn't. This perhaps goes a long way to explaining why I've had much better crops from them than my runners in the strange weather conditions we've had...

If you like your chillis mild, can recommend Hungarian Hot Wax, which is a large chilli, but quite mild compared with some of the hotter ones. Believe it's also sometimes called Banana chilli. They're quite large and extremely decorative to grow, turning from pale green to yellow to orange and final...

Nearly 30 years ago (Yes, long time, but I don't throw things out !) I bought some clear polythene tunnel cloches made of corrugated plastic, each about a yard long, which fitted into wire frames which look like an upside down U with a cross bar at the bottom which were used to support the polythene...