All the very best to cook, OH, and I hope she gets better soon.

All the best, Pa Snip! My thoughts are with you.

One of our grandsons (in his late twenties, married, with a small child) was diagnosed with an aggressive cancer two weeks ago. He is starting radiotherapy this week. Cancer is such a nasty, nasty indiscriminate beast .....

Softneck varieties for me, especially Mersley Wight, Provence Wight and Solent Wight. Hardnecks seem to have larger cloves but I prefer the long keeping softnecks. We usually still have perfectly good garlic left when next year's harvest is just starting to mature.

Robo, are you sure it was a red squirrel? Some greys have a reddish tinge ...... There is a colony of red squirrels at Formby on the coast, not too far from you, but they tend to stay put unless you have a lot of conifers near you.

Having now greatly downsized from a full-size allotment four years ago to a half-size one and, since this autumn, no allotment at all, just a vegetable patch in the garden, I find it really difficult to decide what to grow next year. However much we like them fresh, we have decided against growing p...

OH, none of the other I. reticulata and I.danfordiae are showing anything, it's just Katherine Hodgkin, so we'll just enjoy it! I spent all morning emptying one compost bin (gorgeous black stuff!) onto the vegetable beds, then shuffled the compost in the other two from one bin to the other - hard wo...

Our miniature iris Katherine Hodgkin (pale blue with beautiful markings) is flowering! It shouldn't do so until about February/March!

Get a dog - only joking .....

Planted our garlic and shallots yesterday, all in short root trainers because the ground at home isn't ready yet, butI did that last year (for different reasons), kept the plants in the unheated greenhouse over winter and planted them in the beds outside in spring - and we had a very good crop from ...

Our front garden is actually considerably larger than the back (it's a large open plan corner plot), but we have turned that into a wildflower area, a bit Piet Oudolf-style, and don't want to disturb that. We are also directly opposite the local nature reserve with lots of birds and other wildlife w...

Westi, I am sure woodlice would not START any damage on potatoes but will most likely take advantage of any (slug?) holes.

It's our usual plot at home, OH, which is about 10' by 12'. We were contemplating extending it, but the other areas are shadier, so we will probably restrict ourselves to growing lots more things in large pots which we can move about. And we will concentrate on vegetables which are so much better fr...

It's like Mexican fleabane (Erigeron karvinskianus), isn't it? A pot of these costs at least a fiver whereas they seed themselves all over the place, especially in any paving cracks and gravel. And they are completely hardy.

I dug the whole of our vegetable plot at home today - always very satisfying.

Geoff, I think the goldcrest you were watching was so intent on getting rid of a rival which it saw in your window reflection that nothing else mattered. We have had a goldcrest doing that on the wing mirror of the car and stood next to it, in touching distance, and it has continued pecking at this ...