Spring is peak season in the garden. Soil to prepare, seeds to be sown, young plants to be tended on kitchen windowsills and in greenhouses up and down the land. Weather forecasts need to be scrutinised daily for any hint of a late frost. Oh, and the

Where did your love of horticulture come from? I come from a family of people who worked outdoors. My father's side worked on the land, in woodlands and farming, but I suppose I fell into gardening as a career when I left school. I was sent off for v

Plant out companion flowers in the veg beds to encourage beneficial insects. Nasturtiums, gem marigolds, calendula and borage help to boost harvests and are edible too. Thin direct sown veg, including parsnips and carrots. Firstly, thin to half spaci

As the temperatures creep up and the daylight hours extend almost imperceptibly, there is much uncertainty around the season ahead. Will we have a long, dry summer that will put a strain on our water butts or a wet one that makes us feel as though we

Having got the call, my friend was asked to visit the inner-city plots for a look around the site and a chat with the local representative from the council which owns the site. He wasn't sure if the meeting would take the form of an interview to see

Most UK gardeners have encountered amaranth as an ornamental, more commonly known as ‘love-lies-bleeding’. Its multicoloured leaves and unusual woolly tassel-shaped flowers are great for adding colour and texture to the garden. But most of us are mis

Get in touch by post, email or via our Facebook page: Facebook.com/kitchengardenmag For the last two years we have not been able to get a decent crop of chard because of the leaf miner damage. Terry Parker, Bicester STAR QUESTION WINS £25 VOUCHER STE

by Huw Richards and Sam Cooper In this new book two popular online authors combine to show you how a family of two to three can become self-sufficient in food from a relatively small space (equivalent to half a standard allotment plot). While Huw dea

Courgettes have a reputation for being productive to the point of excess and it's true that when conditions are right, they do seem to appear overnight. Miss one today and it's a marrow tomorrow! It's not always plain sailing however – in an early co

Barnsdale Gardens is holding a spring vegetable week from May 13-19. Visitors will be able to access the normally off-limits productive areas and chat to the team, who will be on hand to advise on growing vegetables. The team will also be conducting

As heat- and sun-loving plants, aubergines need to be grown under cover for most of the UK. It is too late to sow aubergine seeds now, but May is an ideal time to buy in a few grafted plants (and it saves you months of growing on heat from seed!). Gr

WORTH OVER £935 Backdoorshoes – whose indispensable slip-on ‘back door’ clogs have become a gardeners' staple – has launched Recovery Supersole Flip Flops: so comfortable, the company says, you won't want to take them off! Designed specifically for t

STAR LETTER WINS £25 VOUCHER Just picked up my April edition of Kitchen Garden. You mentioned an interesting squash – ‘Galeux D'Eysines’ – which you are going to try. I couldn't believe this as I grew them last year on a muck heap. OMG. Firstly, wow,

Do you have an allotment or veg patch at home and when did you start growing veg? I've had an allotment plot for almost four years now. I started witha half plot, which I thought would be too big for me. Within six months I'd run out of space and app

When it comes to a vegetable that really does need to be homegrown to appreciate its fresh taste, sweetcorn must be high on the list. Unlike the starchy, lacklustre cobs you can buy in the supermarket, home-grown sweetcorn is a revelation the first t

Are you a subscriber? Visit: www.mudketeers.co.uk “Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit; wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.” (Miles Kington, British journalist, musician and broadcaster) As you'll see in her feature starting on page 58, E

Now I like rabbits but having had them raid my plot in the past it does turn me into a Mr, or rather, Mrs McGregor determined to keep Peter Rabbit off my veggies. Surveys have shown the wild rabbit population in the UK fell by 43% between the 1990s a

Could this be our busiest time of the year? Sowing, potting on and planting out is at its peak, the weeds are up, and while we welcome warmer days, it signals the regular round of watering now begins. In my garden I need things to be as low maintenan

How long have you been growing your own and how long have you had your allotment? I've been an avid gardener now for well over 10 years, learning as I go while also trying to teach my two children, Imogen (10) and Oscar (5). Before we got the keys to

The new raised beds are now finished and full of soil, so at last I can start to sow and plant our vegetables for the season. One final thing to do before I start is to apply a light dressing of blood, fish and bone to the bed to supply nutrients thr

This is an extract from Living with the Earth, Volume 2: Food Crops and Forest Gardens by Perrine and Charles Hervé-Gruyer. Order directly from the publisher and get 20% off the RRP (£45) with discount code KGLE20. https://shop.permaculture.co.uk In

You can pretty much grow any fruit you like in a container – so if you have a hankering to grow a peach or even a pineapple, don’t let socalled experts like me try and put you off. The only limit is your imagination and, crucially, the amount of time