Seedheads for Display and Drying

Veg Seed Sowing Plans for May To ensure a continuous harvest throughout the summer rather than a glut successional sowing of salads, radishes, beetroots, carrots, autumn giant leeks and spring onions and peas should continue. Sow basil, particularly alongside tomato seedlings to help draw white fly away plus spinach, rocket and ornamental salad leaves. Globe Artichokes and Swiss Chard for looks as well as food. Pole, French and above all Runner Beans Purple Sprouting Broccoli, Savoy Cabbage, Kale and Calabrese

New Trees: Recent Introductions to Cultivation by John Grimshaw, Ross Bayton and illustrated by Hazel Wilks. Amazon

‘Organic Fruit and Vegetable Gardeners Year, The A Seasonal Guide to Growing What You Eat’ by Graham Clarke

Ornamental Japanese Maples are widely available for planting in your garden. The autumn colouring makes these trees spectacular when planted en mass in a woodland or Japanese garden setting.

Understanding the soil and natural conditions in your garden can help you organise and plan the type of garden that will be successful. I am going too offer tips on gardens with a sandy soil and in particular where there is a heat trap. To make a colourful impact in a tricky situation chose plants that grow naturally in those conditions.

Slugs and Snails

Decorative gardens can benefit from growing seedheads for their own sake. Flowers With Seedheads

The best trees for chalk soil conditions tend to be locally grown and not be Dutch imports. In fact they resemble shrubs more than trees but there are the odd exception that are tree like.

For the answers hover over the photograph. The variety shouldn’t affect how the seed looks but there may be differences in the seedhead itself.

This is one of the many books in my collection but the only one to focus on growing big, bigger and biggest vegetables. If you want to grow giant vegetable for exhibition or to get large crops then there are many pointers in ‘How to Grow Giant Vegetables’ by Bernard Lavery and below.

You can’t throw lilies away if Lily is still wearing them (Lonnie Donegan)

My perennial Phlox have been a good stalwart flower for cutting and filling a vase this last few weeks. I found the pink colours had more scent but all the Phlox seemed to drink copious amounts of water (I wondered if water and scent were related). The Penstemon in the same vase as the Phlox was not as successful as they had a far shorter life. Another successful long lasting cut flower is the Alstromeria. The Reds performed better than the yellows but both lasted over a week.