My tomato plants (Gardeners' Delight) are happily forming a fifth truss. Is it worth keeping those or should I nip them out so that the plant can concentrate on the four existing trusses? I have just looked at the KG forum archive from 2006 where Johnboy (much loved and remembered - do come and join...

Excellent, Geoff. I assume the values are for your own spot? It's been amazing how things have perked up, grown and filled the last few days after the very welcome rain.
Harvested our first courgette and peas today.

I have been intrigued by the sub-headings for gardening magazines: Kitchen Garden - The UK's best-selling growing your own magazine Grow Your Own - The UK's best-selling kitchen garden magazine (in my opinion, not a patch on KG, by the way!) Gardeners' World - The UK's No.1 gardening magazine Garden...

Gary, we grow potatoes in large pots and reuse the compost for bulbs, wallflowers and stuff like that for next spring or for growing carrots in pots the following year. As long as you stick to vegetables unrelated to the potato family (tomatoes, aubergines etc), you could reuse it next year with an ...

On the root trainers: they are still perfectly usable even if the 'hinge' breaks as long as they are in their holding trays. If I only want to use few rather than a whole 32-part tray, I put them in an ex-ice cream tub which usually holds 3 x 4-part strips. I certainly would not want to be without t...

I don't have a definitive answer to your question, Primrose, but I have never seen goldfinches feeding on our lupin seeds. Teasels, lavender, dandelions, yes, but never on lupins. And are lupin seeds not used to make oil for human consumption?

We contemplated buying a Hotbin some time ago but then read that to work efficiently it needs a constant supply of green material which (now we longer have an allotment and just grow vegetables in the garden) we cannot guarantee. So we have stuck with our three bin system: three ex-rubbish bins with...

A total of almost 40mm rain yesterday and today - brilliant! The first 'proper' rain since mid-March!
We ate our first broad beans today and plenty more to come. This rain should help to fill them.

I gave up on using toilet paper or kitchen paper rolls years ago because, unless the weather was very wet, they did not disintegrate enough for the roots to penetrate, and the plants just rooted out of the bottom. We bought a number of root trainer trays, both short and tall, when they first came ou...

My dill Nano, a dwarf variety, is now large enough to harvest. It's ok but the taste is not as strong as 'normal' dill and also appears to be a bit tougher. I think I'll go back to the tall dill next year and stake it.

After your recommendation, vivienz, I ordered some seeds of Atlantis from Kings Seeds (I needed some seeds of winter-flowering pansies and of sweet williams in any case) and they came today. So they will be safely kept until next spring!

We only have two junctions in the hose, both very elderly Hozelock fittings I think and they both leak slightly. I rest these joins over a large (ex-feeder) bucket and when it's nearly full, use it to water the plants. Not a drop is lost.

We took our plot on after more than 20 years' of weed growth (the whole site had been abandoned in the 1950s) and double dug it for 12 months, removing not just nettles, couch grass but also animal bones, bits of greenhouse glass and agricultural equipment. But we then covered the lot with a thick l...

I have never had an email from anybody about who has posted, other than PMs but that is a different matter.

That sounds like human activity to me, especially if the plants are not disturbed. I would think any animal (rabbit, badger?) would make a mess of the plants as well as taking the pods. We have had rooks taking the beans in previous years but they also pulled the plants about.