Give chillies an early start

It is best to chit seed potatoes six weeks before planting time. Early potato varieties grown for new potatoes such as ‘Rocket’ and ‘Swift’ are the first ones to chit, ready for planting in late March.

7 Plants I Always Start From Seed Learn about the plants I love growing from seed each year! Whether it's trying something unique, growing heirlooms, or saving money, I'll share how & why here. My favorite plants to start from seed every year & why!

This is another variety, italica, of Brassica oleracea. Both purple and white sprouting produce a profusion of young shoots invaluable for prolonging the supplies of winter greens. Purple sprouting is the most hardy and will safely overwinter in most open situations.

I prefer to top-dress my flower beds while my perennials are napping safely underground, but I often find myself doing this while the plants are up. That chore is made much easier with a 58-ounce cast-aluminum scoop. It’s small enough to maneuver among plants but holds enough compost, mulch, or—as shown here—composted wood chips to cover real estate quickly. Lastly, it leaves a hand free to hold plants aside while I’m applying the product.

It’s been said of Ginger Rogers — the dancer best known for her partnership with Fred Astaire — that she did everything the man did, only backwards and in high heels. As a container gardener, you will be following the same basic principles of ordinary, in-the-ground gardening, but you may face a few extra challenges along the way. This is largely because the plants are strictly confined and depend on you to be ready to notice problems and to intervene. With practice your show can be as spectacular and effortless-looking as Ginger’s performances.

If one of your New Year resolutions is to grow fruit and vegetables, take the time now to design the plot and you will reap the rewards in just a few months. I started six years ago with a blank canvas – just a patch of lawn divided into various spaces, including a vegetable garden. Separated from the rest of the garden by a hornbeam hedge and a trellis of espaliered apples, my vegetable plot is 11.3 x 5.3 metres, with an extra 3.7 metres square tagged onto the side to make it L-shaped. A greenhouse at the far end faces out over three long raised beds and a square bed to the side.

A small vegetable garden sits in front of the guest house at this elegant Georgian home in Oxfordshire

I have given up indoor seed starting completely on several occasions. The first time it happened I was a novice gardener. I had ordered seeds of just about every plant that I saw in the garden catalogs without thinking about such practical things as gallons of potting soil, hours of daily watering, and square feet of windowsill space. It also did not occur to me to determine whether or not I had room in my garden for even a fraction of my seedlings. My chaotic efforts eventually produced some wonderful plants, but the process was so exhausting that I said: “Never again.”

A giant invasive plant known as “Millennium Madness” sprouted worldwide last year. It was particularly bad in the United States and positively egregious in the New York metropolitan area. And, as if Millennium Madness was not bad enough all by itself, there were rumors that it was infested on a grand scale with the dreaded Y2K Bug. While professionals in a host of countries spent months trying to think of ways to eradicate the Y2K Bug, ordinary people were rumored to be aiding the rapid growth and spread of Millennium Madness by watering local specimens with vast quantities of bottled water that they had stored in their basements.

When and How to Start Seeds in a Greenhouse

Where has this month gone? Where has this year gone? I know the older you get the quicker times goes, but this is ridiculous.

I’ve checked the BBC weather app and it looks like we are not due anymore frost which is brilliant. This means a couple of things…..firstly Summer is very nearly here thank goodness, and secondly I can start to plant out my tender crops!! Yay!!