Hi there Welsh gardener! Sorry to hear of your problems with garlic. I'm a first time grower -(of all sorts of things) and I have suffered badly with rust on my garlic. So, following advice I read, I dug up the affected plants and their neighbours only to find that the majority hadn't been growing v...

Can I suggest a healthy dose of St John's Wort along with Evening Primrose Oil - both vailable in handy capsule form at Boots and other healthcare providers
Oh and most shops, village stores etc can also provide painkillers for the obvious headaches on show - and not only on this thread.

Oh Richard, does that mean I've actually got something right. The only thing is - it doesn't half eat batteries, all this planting when there's no moon and being cloudy makes it worse to see where you're going

Thanks again everyone. Yes, John, we do have a boy-hen - a great white cockerel who took over from the cornflakes cockerel at the end of last year - and he likes to look after his ladies - in all ways We did have a broody banty earlier in the year but it was only the end of January and far too cold ...

Congratulations on your retirement, Geoff. Welcome to the world of being able to garden all day if you want to - or just sitting in the sun if you don't
One idea for your consideration is a really comfortable lounger/sun seat to enable you to sit in the sun all day

For the first time this year I have been growing things normally unheard of in this household, eg. celery , fennel, cabbage, brussels, etc. etc. So how come if I can get all these new things to sprout and grow, and even be ready to crop in some cases, I can't get the standards to do anything at all....

So if they are broody, do I leave the eggs that are being laid in the hope that some will hatch

Thanks everyone I now know to make a 'floor plan' for next year's planting I shall keep an eye out for flower stems, although the only ones that seem to be about to flower are the elephant garlic. (I know that it's them as I only had four cloves to plant so they are in a row on their own)

Listening to Radio 2 this morning where the topic of conversation was the release of a new song to download ( or is that upload?) from you-tube. Apparently the groups combined age is over 3000 yrs and the lead singer is 90, so that holds out a lot of hope for me and mine - and maybe some others out ...

I hope there is someone out there who can help. I ordered a garlic kit from the garlic farm on the Isle of Wight last year and planted the cloves as per instructions. However although I used a permanent marker pen on the labels, all I have now are little pure white sticks with no writing on The inst...

I am ready to bow down to all of you out there in the ether if you can send some of your vast knowledge in my direction We have 11 hens (mixed race) and 1 little black banty - oh and then there's Lenin as well! Until the beginning of last week we were getting a regular 'lay' of around 10 - 12 eggs a...

Did it - but it took me four attempts. Well it's been persistently falling from the sky here since Saturday

I had to solve this problem this year as our mice are obviously MENSA candidates and managed to eat the bait off the traps without springing them. I just used a clear propagator cover over the tray with the pea seeds in until they had sprouted and were about an inch tall. Since then they have been i...

Thanks for that gloworm. I have already used horse muck on the currants in the cage this winter, so can I still use it through the rest of the year and if so roughly how much and when? I do wonder why the fruit and veg I pick never seems to taste of the stuff I've piled round it unlike us humans wit...

Thanks everyone. I think that this is a job for my 'handyman' - another bin just for manure, to let it rot down a bit before I use it.