I can't abide broad beans. Young or old, they all taste of soap to me!

Apart from those, I have learned to love, or at least "quite like", most veg once I've grown them myself.

There's another rat in the trap this morning!

Mr Mouse is psyching himself up to go and deal with it - if there is one thing that he has a genuine fear of, it's rats, so it's not an easy job for him.

I hate to tell you this, but those are exactly the type of holes that the moles leave in my garden! For years, based on everything I read, I thought it must be voles or something similar, but the 18 moles I caught last year and the 4 (or 5 - I'm losing track now) so far this year have well and truly...

Well, it looks like you were both right. Mr Mouse suggested that we set his (hitherto useless) rat trap. We did it a couple of hours ago, and when he checked it 15 mins ago he had caught a rat!!! Said rat has now been dispatched and trap is reset and repositioned, but fingers crossed that it was jus...

Mine seem to prefer takeaways, Alan

Hmm - not sure what I can do then, unless I can get the Americans to napalm the neighbouring 'jungle' where the rats must be hiding out! What, with mole attack from below (though I think I'm winning that war now, having got another today, no. 4 so far this year) and rat attack from above, it's a won...

Until last week, I had a beautiful row of beetroot in my garden. I had started them off in modules, then planted them out under netting until I thought they were big enough to be safe from birds. Last week I uncovered them (judging them big enough to be safe from birds and needing the netting elsewh...

Got one!!! It had dug under all the scissor traps, but my tunnel trap got it. I'm torn between a happy and a sad emoticon, because I really don't like killing things. It wasn't an adult, so its brothers and sisters might still be lurking. Update (a day later): And another - a bigger one, in a scisso...

If only they would, OH The one I got last week was as easy as all those I got last year, but there are more now and they seem to be an altogether brighter lot. They (or maybe just 'it') are digging under all my traps. I keep repositioning them, but the holes keep getting deeper and deeper! But I can...

Only a week ago I was about to post an update on here saying that this year it looks like my garden is a mole-free zone. Then a hole appeared!!! I set a couple of traps and caught the culprit and hoped I'd nipped the problem in the bud, but I've just found more holes this afternoon. It looks like it...

Thanks, everyone

My two-stroke strimmer started on exactly the same pull as usual when I took it out of hibernation on Thursday. Trouble is, my son wanted to borrow it yesterday, meaning it needed more petrol in it and I couldn't for the life of me remember if the bit of petrol in my can (which has fuel preservative...

Thank you, Alan.
I love the picture - I was feeling a bit sorry for myself this morning, being a year older, aching all over from a tiny bit of gardening I did yesterday and being full of cold too, but you have really cheered me up

Thanks for the tip, Primrose.

Actually, I've just been to our nearest Waitrose and managed to get some - though theirs were not pre-packed, and I have a feeling that some of the nearby satsumas or clementines might have got mixed in with them!

Fingers crossed now, as I am about to begin.

Hi. I'm wanting to make some Seville orange marmalade. The last - and only - time I did this was over thirty years ago. Back then, the markets at this time of year were piled high with the things, but I've just discovered that times have changed, and when a friend asked about them this morning at th...