What's new, what's growing, what we're learning. Updates, guides and stories for people who take their garden seriously.
The sweet potato is botanically a bindweed, not a potato. How to raise your own cuttings, plant them warm, and why only curing makes them properly sweet.
Why the heads stay small, why you fold the leaves over the cauliflower, and how broccoli keeps delivering side shoots for weeks after the main head.
Maggoty roots and crooked carrots need not happen. Why only the net reliably keeps out the carrot fly, what companion planting really does, and how carrots grow straight.
Why several plants come up from one seed, why you should eat the leaves, and how to store beetroot in damp sand until spring.
The long white shaft makes a good leek. How to plant leeks deep, earth them up right, and protect them from leek moth and onion fly with a net.
Twenty heads at once and then nothing? How small batches and loose-leaf lettuce give you an even harvest from spring into autumn, and why lettuce will not germinate in high summer.
Five bean types, five roles in the garden and the kitchen. Which bean goes in when, which one climbs, why they feed the soil and why you must never eat one raw.
Fresh from the bed, sweetcorn is a revelation. Why wind pollination means planting in a block not a row, how to harvest full cobs and what the milk stage tells you.
Three botanical species, four kitchen types, and why you must never eat a bitter squash. Which squash is good for what, how to grow it and harvest it ripe.
