Hello All, I need advice please.This year I bought four pepper plants. I am growing these in pots in hot sunshine, no drastic drop in temperatures. They are being watered regularly and fed each week. The peppers are forming and growing to about two inches may be very slightly more (but too small to ...

Be careful what you wish for, I was moaning that the garden needed water, there were cracks in the soil around the onions that I could get a finger into. Yesterday the rain started, great joy! but the temperatures have dropped at least 10 degrees ( down to normal for the time of year I might add) an...

I am a novice gardener, and do not presume to give you advice, you will get plenty of really good help from the 'real' gardeners. I learn from them continously by browsing the site before I sow or plant anything. But soil preparation is something I have had to do on my clay soil, a vegetable garden ...

I have just brought my lemon and kaffir lime into the greenhouse, where they will stay until the Spring. I wait for the soil to dry out before watering and giving a winter feed. My greenhouse is kept frost free and I give the plants (which are now quite large) an extra covering of fleece when the te...

I am four or six weeks ahead of you in the gardening season, my kiwi's flowered during the week commencing 18th May. If you check out the rhs web site, you will find some really good advice on pruning kiwi's. Pruning must be done before January (much more detailed on the rhs site) in summer you take...

Thanks for the advice, the raspberries are summer fruiting, and I have plenty of space, though take your point of them spreading every where, so will be extra vigilant as to where I plant them. The advice on the seed bed will save me a head ache or should I say back ache! Thanks again.

Jeanne

Hi All, I need to pick your brains again, with two questions not related to each other, I need the advice for a bit for forward planning. 1. Can I use my current raspberry plants to start a new raspberry bed, if so how would I go about it? 2. I would like to start a seed bed, and need an idiots guid...

Hi CJ Last year I grew six okra, and what a dismal failure. I put them outside but had small stubby plants which each produced one or two okra. Have not tried again this year (may be just as well, as England basks in temperatures of 26º we have struggled with temps of 13º today), so will await to re...

Thanks David that sounds like good advice, I will stick to the daily watering.
Jeanne

I appreciate that this question is going into the realms of how long is a piece of string! but I have a gismo, in the shape of computer watering for when we are away from home, and wondering if we should set it to water each night, as we did last year, watering the tomatoes etc from drip valves for ...

Hi CJ,
Our tomatoes took about 48hours if I remember correctly, there are five trays, and it is a good idea, to swap them round during the drying period. The cherries also took 36 to 48hrs. You are supposed to be able to make fruit leathers etc, but I have not adventured that far.

Jeanne

I live in dept 81, France, where it seems that all the locals (mostly Farmers) seem to garden 'by the moon', my neighbour kidly gave me a photo copy of the calendar from their equivliant to the TV Times, it takes me from April to September, with each day given over to what one can plant or not as th...

Last year I was horrified, when I watched the Farmers arrive at a local Supermarket with a lorry laden with melons, and they proceeded to tip the melons out in front of the doors of the Supermarket, because the Supermarket was selling foreign melons. There was also the occasion last year when the Vi...

Thanks all, that is very useful, I will do as you suggest. I have done as the neighbours have done, in fact was given the leeks to plant by one of them, unfortunately unlike yourselves we have had miserable weather here in the Tarn, grey skies since before Easter, we had a short break of 10 days whe...