Oh thee of little faith. Below is a close up of a bean vine growing happily around a sunflower stem. Truth is, I did not grow beans up all my sunflowers - just enough to prove it could be done.

How easy is it pick the beans? Not very. You need a step ladder plus a spouse to pick you up when you fall into the sunflowers. Frankly, it makes more sense to grow beans up a drainpipe in the usual way. But it wouldn't be as much fun

Essentially, the sunflowers support the beans. The trick is to sow the beans only after the sunflowers are very well up. Or else the beans stifle them. The spacings are determined by the sunflowers. I set them around one foot apart. That's very close for sunflowers but wide for beans - which will gr...

Duh, sorry. I'm a newbie. I hadn't read that before. But did I mention that another idea is to spray hair lacquer over flying ants? They turn into delightful amber beads to enhance a charm bracelet

Here's an idea to banish white fly - and many other small flying pests. It's particularly helpful to those who are lactose-intolerant. I've successfully used a small portable vacuum cleaner to hoover up white fly and aphids from plants plus flying ants from the compost heap. The method is organic an...

Sorry, JB. Put it down to too much elderflower lemonade late at night

Thanks, JB. Sorry, I always did confuse my Minuta with my Patula That's a darn good idea. If T. minuta works against couch grass, I wonder if it would also be effective against bindweed and horsetail? It sounds like something GardenOrganic should be looking at, by way of a member experiment. I got m...

The marigold variety most often recommended for pest control is the French marigold: Tagetes patula . But its reputation is based upon its control of nematodes and other soil-crawling bugs. I'm not sure if it's effective against couch grass or other weeds. No matter, it's a beautiful plant and has a...

Thanks, Geoff Here is a picture of the outer ranks of my sunflower forest a few years back, which shows the climbing beans newly planted around the sunflower roots. (In fact, I sowed the beans too early and I should have let the sunflowers grow another foot. But all was well.) I grew just over 100 g...

True, I think many of the old wives' tales about allelopathy are based on certain gardeners - not plants - being toxic to plants I have a US friend, a market grower, who has been happily raising beans alongside onions for 30 years - though both are supposed to hate the other. Mind you, he chews so m...

Good luck, Diane! Did I mention that, if you grow tomatoes under cover (a simple transparent awning will do, to keep the rain off), you're less likely to get blight. Blight develops mostly on damp leaves. Only fools, darned fools and gardeners try to grow tomatoes outdoors in northern Europe nowaday...

There's a lively discussion on allelopathy - or plant toxins - developing in a thread elsewhere in this forum: "Is this the ultimate organic remedy for perennial weeds?". It reminded me of that old wives' tale, propounded by Bob Flowerdew no less, that sunflowers are toxic to adjacent plan...

I must try that with skirret. I've always wanted to grow it. (Apparently, you have to mark the plant with a stick or - come autumn - you'll never find those spindly roots!) It's certainly a good idea to germinate the seeds, using perlite (etc), in a clear container like a cut-down cola bottle with a...

Perlite or vermiculite are certainly the most reliable base but once, as an experiment, I used pearl barley - which is dead seed. Of course, it rots after seven days but by then the seedlings you really want should have germinated. Other inert media might also work eg. crushed charcoal. A tip: don't...

I confess, I've never had a couch grass problem so I don't know if turnips would clear couch grass. But it's worth a try. You're right that the scaly 'leaves' of horsetail are resistant to most sprayed herbicides and the leaves must be broken. (Perhaps using a Chinese rice flail? ). What's more, I'v...