I apologise now as a high percentage of my posts are likely to mention clay. This time, it's fruit trees and clay. Alongside all the splendid vegetables I'm hoping to grow, I also want to establish a number of fruit trees. I bought a few trees from Wilkos last year and have been nursing them along i...

I'm moving house to the other end of the county towards the end of this year but hope to get started on my kitchen garden before then. The site is heavy clay. The kind you can makes pots from. The kind they use to line canals with. The kind that water only evaporates from, because it doesn't drain a...

They're beauties, aren't they? Could you persuade them to eat carpet moth? Plenty of those in my house.

Thanks, everyone! I'm getting closer to being a real gardener and my new kitchen garden is tantalisingly close. We're moving at the end of this year (hopefully, oh, so hopefully!) and I'll have all the space I could want to make my new plot. I'm trying to see if I can advance things to earlier this ...

I've always wondered why courgette plants always produce male flowers first and I'm still none the wiser - does anyone know why this is? In the meantime, I've got some super little courgette plants coming on nicely and they are starting to form flowers. Of course, all the first ones are male but the...

Some of us (me) are long time lurkers, living in constant hope of a kitchen garden! More of a ghost kitchen gardener than a real life one, sadly.

Bournemouth council have been putting in swathes of wildflowers in public areas for a few years now and they are glorious. The locations range from roadside verges to areas in parks. They don't use turf, though. Each spring they turn over the top soil (I'm not sure what machine they use, but it will...

Diane - did the WD40 work for you? I really hate using slug pellets but I need to get some herb seedlings outside (can barely see through the kitchen window) and I fear for their survival amongst the monstrous munching molluscs that populate our garden. The little beggars mowed down my chive seedlin...

I've noticed a reasonable number of moths around in the garden so far. Not many butterflies, mind. We had a real treat on one of the hot evenings last week - sitting out in the garden and a hummingbird hawk moth was feeding for a good long time from a clump of verbena bonariensis. We've also had qui...

Unfortunately, one of our cats got a blackbird fledgling a couple of weeks ago. We've been getting the cats in before dusk and keeping them in overnight until I leave for work since, and will continue to do this for the next couple of months. We have a lot of birdboxes on our house and we really don...

Thanks both. Plants ordered.

I'm thinking about splashing out on some runners of this variety. Has anyone grown it or have any comments before I hit the 'buy now' button? I'd like the plants as it's an ever-bearer and reportedly has that intense wild strawberry flavour. I've already got some early strawbs (ciflorette) and have ...

Hydrangeas are lovely, though they may be a bit thirsty for your spot. I visited Cranborne Manor gardens in Dorset yesterday, which were absolutely beautiful, but they have a white garden too. The shrubs included white rosa rugosa, philadelphus, tree peonies, white lilac. They also had a long border...

My plantings are very limited this year, but I hope to get some salad leaf seeds sown along with some courgettes to grow on in large pots. I'm not bothering with tomatoes this year as they have to stay outside (grape vine in greenhouse) and always get done over by the dreaded blight.

OH advised me this evening that once I've got my kitchen plot planned out, he's going to put a small wildlife pond near it. The theory is that the wildlife that lives in/around the pond will contain enough slug munchers that I won't need to use slug pellets. I hope that this will be the case as I re...