JB Thanks for the info on the beans. I'll try those ones and also for your encouragement to ask questions. Will do....in abundance! Alan I can't believe you speak Welsh and have only been there 8 years! They tried to teach me Welsh in school for what seemed like an eternity and it never really stuck...

Hi Alan Only my 3rd summer at growing veg so am really still testing things out. After year 1 I decided the only way I would grow veg such as sweetcorn etc, was to have a polytunnel as the season just wasn't long enough for them to ripen and the greenhouse wasn't big enough. As it happened I came ac...

We're getting three piglets next week and can't wait. I'm so excited. I hope we have better luck with the breeding side though! Sounds like it has been very hard. The plan is to let them clear our ground and weed it for sometime, them put them to a boar and fatten the youngsters. Then, home grown ve...

We have loads of diferent birds. Sparrows, blackbirds, finches of all different sorts, Jays, we have a resident woodpecker, swifts, nesting kestrels, nesting buzzards, sparrowhawk, and over the hill from us is a pair of peregrines who often come and have a look around. It's a wonderful place for wil...

Hi Roro You are quire right about not being allowed to shoot the sparrowhawk. They are protected and you could find yourself in jail if you did. The only way you will get rid of the sparrowhawk is to shoot all the sparrows (but fortunately the same protection applies to them) because if there's an i...

Hi Alan Thank you. Pretty daft of me but it didn't occur to me that it wasn't self pollinating all female flowers! It seems to be a bit of a problem this year for me. My runner beans have produced hundreds of flowers, and only one bean. Despite shaking and tickling (as a friend of mine puts it), the...

Can anyone help? I have 1 courgette plant that he slugs did not destroy entirely. It is producing flowers and courgettes, but before they are much more than 2.5 - 3 inches long, the flower is rotting and the rot is continuing down the courgette leaving it a brown mush. They are in the polytunnel, bu...