I feel for those with gardens and allotments in Northern flooded areaA (A's well, of course, for those who,ve had their homes flooded which must be absolutely awful. All the work done on soil improvement and manuring will of course have been washed away and who knows what quality of ground they are ...

This is such an exciting time for you and i hope you have lot of fun. Making a garden N is always work in progress and the good thing is that if something fails there's always another year and another chance to make a fresh start. There's nothing like being a gardener for developing the art of patie...

Peter, i didn,t know that there were special varieties grown for their seed harvesting. I always wonder what happens to all the wasted flesh and seeds in these communal farm shop type pumpkin carving sessions at Halloween. i like these types of seeds mixed into muesli or sprinkled on ice cream, yogh...

Cut open the first winter squash today (Crown Prince) and it contained so many seeds I want to have a first attempt at drying and/or roasting them for eating/snacking.

Can anybody give me an Idiot's Guide please on how best to go about this. Thanks

by the time the avocado has reached the ceiling Elmigo may have saved up for a bigger house with an even bigger garden, or alternatively a holiday villa in a warmer climate where all these experimental plants will happily grow outdoors.

Welcome to the forum. I hope your experience of creating a new garden in a new build house was better than ours ! Our experience was that we were left with a earth surface which had been levelled but nothing else, and actually there was still a huge amount of rubble left in the ground under the surf...

It,s interesting that the leaves on these two photos are different, I,e one has distinctly serrated leaves, not vastly different from Mahonia leaves if I recall, and the other has smooth edged leaves. I was given a tiny cutting of a smooth edged leaf variety a couple of years ago which I have in a p...

. And it's only another two months before the days get longer again! Thank you for this positive thought Monika. I think we all need to hang onto this when we're closing the curtains at 4 p.m. !! I must have been an animal in a previous life. It always seems to me to be quite a logical and natural ...

I think pretty much all of us are similarly affected by grey damp skies OH. It takes a real psychological effort to get through winter, and some sunshine, even if it's cold, makes such a difference. I really wonder how populations cope up in the deep northern hemisphere when they only get a couple o...

Elmigo, Pepper and chilli plants can be successfully overwintered by hard pruning them back so just a few tiny low down leaf shoots are left on the main stem. I have overwintered both these plants. Brought indoors onto a light window sill they will soon start sprouting again and eventually bear more...

I once applied this treatment to a whole fence in my young early married days. It was called "lighting a bonfire" on an empty border directly beside said fence, not checking first which way the wind was blowing and then going indoors to answer the telephone. By the time I'd finished my cal...

We're getting a lot of good advice on here for when climate change has increased sufficiently to make growing them a viable crop here in the UK.

Am snow down to my last two dozen slightly wizened home grown fresh tomatoes so feel a casserole or two coming on to use them up. It will feel a penance having to buy supermarket tomatoes again after nearly 4 months of home grown.

Elmigo. I don,t think you necessarily failed as a home grower. I,m sure yiur plants is still edible You probably just didn,t have the same completely dark geowing areas that the commercial growers have where everything is set up in large dark areas, rather like the commercial mushroom growers have. ...

One thing with neighbours fences throwing shadows. If you want to try growing beans in this location, grow climbing French beans because often, although the small,plants may be in shade, once they grow up the poles Into the sunlight this will make the plants stronger and help them to thrive and frui...