I called in at my local garden nursery today, I was wanting some of that  black weed fabric to cover a weedy patch.

As I walked through the doors, everywhere were bedding plants, hanging baskets and trays and pots of vegetables.

There were thousands of them, and it struck me, Bank Holiday Madness! People will be flocking in droves to Garden Centres,

DIY Stores and Garden Nurseries this Bank Holiday weekend, spending lots of money on ‘tender’ plants and vegetables.

Folks will be attracted by exotic colours of lovely bedding plants, and the thoughts of ‘growing your own’ will tempt many to

purchase tomatoes, cucumbers and chillies with very little thought to the plants needs beyond pots and compost.

While this is of course is great and wonderful, I wish more information was posted [ and easy to see ] telling customers that many

of these plants and vegetables are tender, that they cannot go outside yet and will need protection for a couple more weeks or so.

I wonder how many budding gardeners are disappointed and put off gardening because their early purchases died or failed to thrive?

Many of them not even knowing why their plants died. Most people new to gardening have not the knowledge or experience to

know if and when it is safe to plant out, unless they are informed.

The retailers have a great opportunity to help with good information, this I’m sure would be paid back with more repeat sales.

So if your planning to join the frenzy and buy lots of plants this weekend, I say go ahead and enjoy yourself, fill your trollies high,

but please remember that many of those plants and vegetables are tender will need some TLC!

Image courtesy of Ryan’s Garden

Keeping chickens at home or at the allotment is becoming increasingly popular and when you look at the positives of doing so it’s plain to see why so many people are doing it. Yesterday, the Seed Parade forums went crazy with chicken talk and so I thought it only right that we acknowledge our feathery friends.

Chickens make excellent pets and offer hours of entertainment. Any chicken keeper will know just how easy it is to simply sit and watch these creatures go about their daily lives. Watching how chickens interact and behave, depending on their place in the pecking order, is truly enthralling. Chickens are often very fond of human attention too. Three of my chickens, which I keep at my nearby allotment, battle for attention and make a racket when you leave them. They even know the sound of my engine and as I approach they all dash to one side, “back-awing” and fighting for front row seats to watch my approach.

The biggest benefit of all however, okay maybe there are two, is that they produce eggs and the provide manure. Two of the most prized commodities this gardener could ask for. The eggs, firstly, are second to none. Fresh eggs are full of flavour and what with recent changes in legislation, keeping your own chickens makes good economic sense. The manure, on the other hand, is to my mind, as valuable as any other highly prized commodity. Allowed to breakdown over the course of a year it provides oodles of nutrition for plants and soil life and everything seems to thrive with it’s inclusion. Broad beans, Runner Beans, Courgettes and Squashes, which all prize high nitrogen values, are especially grateful and they grow so well on this diet. Added to the compost heap, the fresh manure also acts as an activator and really speeds up the process. In times where money’s short this also means that you don’t have to spend money on manure pellets or other fertilizers.

Chickens are relatively easy to keep and they do require regular care and attention, much like any other pet. If you are going to invest in keeping some of your own make sure you do your research. Talk to other chicken keepers and ensure that you make your coop, run and garden as secure as possible. Many people often overlook routine health care for their chickens too but they will require a regular worming treatment and you should keep an eye out for mites and lice that can live both on the bird and in their coop. Don’t let this put you off, however, as all these problems can be minimized and prevented with the right routine.

Do you keep chickens or are you thinking of taking the plunge in to become a chicken keeper? If you answered yes to either of these questions then come and take a peek at the Seed Parade forums!

Gardeners are known to be patient, forward thinkers and as such, invariably plan ahead. Many crops mature slowly and can take many months to grow from seed to harvest but this isn’t always the case. When we look at salad crops in particular we notice that some of these really are the formula one race cars of the vegetable world.

Radishes are perfect if you seek instant vegetable fuelled gratification, as these peppery little globes are ready, in many cases, only 4-5 weeks after sowing. This speedy turn around makes them the perfect addition to any garden where children are involved or as a starter vegetable for a new gardener.

I can’t recommend growing radishes enough. As with most vegetables, when homegrown they really do have so much more flavour. This flavour is quite peppery and can be great to add heat to salad leaves. This flavour will also intensify or lessen depending on the conditions the plant is growing in. Hot weather will increase the kick of the little radish, whereas cool and wet weather will produce a more mild and rounded flavour.

Sowing seeds couldn’t be easier. The seeds are relatively big, making them easy to sow and space out and this also means that if you’re gardening with children they should find them easy enough to handle. They are not at all fussy about soil and can be grown in whatever space you have available. They make for an excellent catch-crop between rows of larger vegetables and they thrive in containers and window boxes also.

Sow your radish seeds into well-prepared soil or compost from early spring to late summer. Seeds will germinate at cool temperatures meaning that you can sow them in early spring and successively after that. Although unfussy about soil, they will grow best in well drained, moderately rich soil.

Sow seeds about 1 cm deep in drills 15-20 cm apart or broadcast sow if sowing in containers taking care to thin after germination. Seeds will germinate within one week. Thin out the seedlings as necessary to reduce overcrowding and disease. Harvesting couldn’t be easier as the long leaves make for a perfect handle with which to remove the beautiful little roots from the soil. Harvest as soon as the roots are of a reasonable size or as and when they’re needed. Avoid leaving your radishes in the soil for too long as roots can become woody and very hot. Generally, your radishes should be ready for harvest after 4-5 weeks.

Three to try:

•Radish Cherry Belle – A beautiful cherry-red radish with crisp, white flesh. Fast maturing with a good resistance to bolting.

•Radish French Breakfast – A traditional variety with a long root. This radish has scarlet skin and is mildly flavoured.

•Mooli Mino Summer Cross F1 – Japanese radish or mooli produces long roots, which have smooth white skin and white flesh.

I have several favourite perennial herbs but Chives, in all its forms, has to be the one herb that I have planted most, finding homes in at least 5 different locations – a sign that it’s well loved and well used. It’s resilient, largely maintenance free and it doesn’t need a lot, if any care.

In fact, it’s so easy to grow that once you have an established clump you can simply divide it and pot it on or add it to another area of the garden or vegetable garden. It’s a truly versatile plant and is happy in most situations as long as it gets a good bit of sun. It makes for a great container plant also and is largely drought tolerant.

The beauty of this plant, however, is that it has a dual purpose. Chives are not just delicious, having a light onion or garlic taste, but they’re also beautiful. A combination of upright, dark green, spike-like leaves combined with sumptuous lilac-purple or white lollipop or star shaped blooms (depending on which type you buy), making it perfect for decorative purposes as well as culinary.

To start your seeds, sow anytime now up until the end of July. Sow seeds in good seed compost and sow thinly, around 1-1.5 cm deep. Cover lightly with compost and water well. To avoid disease and fungal problems, thin seedlings allowing a few centimetres between plants and give good ventilation.

Chives are a year round crop if grown indoors on the windowsill. Sow seeds at regular intervals, as per the instructions above, and use them as a cut and come again crop.

Add your chopped chive leaves to salads soups and other dishes, or mixed with butter over hot fresh vegetables. Garlic chives leaves can be used in the same way but I find that they are an excellent addition to sandwiches that benefit from a light but noticeable garlic taste. The flowers of Chives are also edible and really add a splash of colour and taste to salads and other dishes.

Two to try:

•Chives – This common staple of the herb garden is traditionally grown close to the home for ease of use. A light onion taste, both leaves and flowers are edible.

•Garlic Chives – Flat leaves with rounded tips that have a light but delicious garlic taste. Decorative with white flowers.

The Easter bunny is doing its rounds as we speak and I’m sure that he\she would be delighted with my selection of more unusual and slightly exotic looking carrots.

It’s thought that when Carrots were first brought to Europe, from Afghanistan 5000 years ago, they would have been coloured purple or yellow. Over time, and during development to produce a viable and sweeter commercial crop, a preference was made for orange Carrots and we lost sight of their often more exciting relatives. With a resurgence in popularity for purple vegetables over the past couple of years a few of the purple cultivars have now come back in to production and have been improved somewhat to make them more palatable and easier to grow successfully.

Aside from the purple vegetables an interest has also emerged for the rainbow and pastel mixes, as these offer a great variety of colour and make lunchtimes rather exciting.

Carrots are very easy to grow and can be sown from March – June in most areas. Carrots grow best in deep, free-draining soil that is free from large rocks and stones. To get best results, organic matter and sand can be added in to beds in the Autumn to increase fertility and drainage, producing larger roots without forks or splits. Sow carrots in drills 1cm deep, or broadcast sow, ensuring they are covered lightly and watered well. When seedlings are big enough thin them out to avoid overcrowding and allow plants enough space to produce large enough roots.

Carrot fly can often be devastating for crops and precautions should be taken to avoid total loss. Raising beds or growing carrots in containers can prove successful as can fleecing rows of plants to avoid the carrot fly getting to the roots.

Three of the best:

• Carrot ‘Purple Haze’ – Purple haze is a very sweet purple F1 hybrid carrot. It’s bright purple exterior and orange centre helps to add interest to meals and salads.

• Carrot ‘Cosmic Purple’ – One of the more beautiful roots with smooth purple coloured skin and coreless orange flesh. This carrot has a high sugar content, which makes this variety very popular with children. As carrots mature the skin colour deepens.

• Carrot ‘Rainbow’ – This F1 hybrid is unusual as it produces amazing roots in colours ranging through orange, yellow and white. ‘Rainbow’ is strong growing with healthy and vigorous foliage.

Beetroot is a relatively new taste for me as I’ve largely avoided it for the vast majority of my life so far. Growing up pickled beetroot was ever present but it wasn’t exactly appealing to a child’s palette. Allotment gardening has put pay to this. Not only is Betroot a rather easy vegetable to grow, it’s also a very versatile and rewarding.

Beetroot is typically a great salad vegetable that lends itself very well to slicing, dicing and grating when raw or alternatively it’s fantastic boiled and, of course, it is rather nice when pickled. After pickling my own with a custom spiced vinegar those days of revering that ‘weird purple vegetable in a jar of vinegar’ was gone. In it’s place I found a beautiful tasting food that was perfect with salads, cheeses and other dishes.

To sow your beetroot you have two options: direct sowing or sowing in modules. Direct sowing is a pretty straightforward option. Simply create a small drill, sow seeds thinly and evenly spaced and cover with a little soil. Water these in well and thin any seedlings that grow too closely together. Early sowings can then be eaten as baby beets. For modular sowing sow two or three seeds per module and cover them with a light covering of soil, water well and thin the weakest seedlings. When large enough and as weather permits, plant the modular grown beets in to their final positions. Water plants well through the growing season to promote good, succulent root growth and keep an eye out for pests. A weekly feed of seaweed and comfrey fertiliser will help to add additional nutrients and promote good plant health.

Five to try:
• Beetroot ‘Boltardy’ – As it’s name suggests this cultivar is resistant to bolting and excellent for sowing early on in the season.
• Beetroot ‘Chioggia’ – A very striking beet with sweet, spherical roots. When sliced this beetroot really shows us what it’s made of with beautiful red and white concentric rings.
• Beetroot ‘Cylindra’ – Unlike your typical globe shaped beets, ‘Cylindra’ produces a long, cylindrical root. The uniform shape makes it a great choice for slicing.
• Beetroot ‘Detroit 2’ – A perfect crop for early and maincrop growing, ‘Detroit 2′ produces large, globe shaped roots.
• Beetrot ‘Bull’s Blood’ – Unlike typical beetroot that is grown for its root, ‘Bull’s Blood’ is grown for it dark and tasty leaves, which are an excellent addition to salads.

Peas for me sum up a beautiful British Summer. Imagine picking peas straight from the vine and sitting in the sun shelling and eating them pod by pod, or even better, eating sugarsnap or mangetout, pods and all. On the plot they are the perfect snack for eating on the go and I always sow extra to ensure that at least some manage to reach the plate at home.

Peas are one of the easiest crops to grow and the offer almost immediate results, germinating in no time at all, making them perfect for the impatient or younger gardeners among us. Planting to harvest should take between 12 and 15 weeks and a successional sowing approach will give best results. As climbing plants, peas will require some support to grow well. I like to use traditional pea-sticks(large and bushy twiggy branches) when growing peas, although the use of chicken wire held up with bamboo canes is just as effective.

To get growing, simply sow your pea seed in containers or in situ at around 1 inch deep and spaced well, water them in and wait for them to germinate. As soon as your peas are developing their first tendrils, small filament like grasping structures, plant them into open ground if grown in containers and push in your peasticks to form a consistent structure, which your plants can clamber over. Peas are susceptible to pests, particularly slugs and mice, and precautions should be taken to protect young shoots. Slug traps, cloches and the use of gorse or other prickly stems placed in seed drills should help to reduce losses without resorting to using chemicals. Peas are unlikely to require additional fertilizer as they are nitrogen fixing plants but on poorer soils bonemeal and a liquid comfrey or seaweed feed will aid growth.

Four favourites:

• Oregon Sugarpod – A delicious and crisp mangetout pea, which is eaten young.
• Douce Provence – An early pea, originating from France, this is the year round pea perfect for sowing between November – April.
• Kelvedon Wonder – A sweet and early to mature plant, this pea only grows to around 24 inches making it perfect for both the vegetable garden and containers.
• Waverex – A petit pois pea that produces small, bushy plants with a high yield of sweet peas perfect for salads and risottos.

When ordering dessert in a restaurant last week I was stuck when trying to make a difficult choice – honey and white chocolate cheesecake or bread and butter pudding? I ended up choosing the cheesecake and I was surprised to see it served with a beautifully decorative Cape Gooseberry (Physalis edulis). And yes, the cheesecake was very good too!

I couldn’t remember the last time that I’d had the pleasure of eating a cape gooseberry and like most things, you forget just how good they are. The gooseberry was quite tart but with some sweetness and it worked so well with the rich and sweet cheesecake. I was converted and I now need to grow a few plants for this year.

These plants, like most of the Solanum family, are quite easy to grow and are perfect for starting any time now and up until April, to ensure a good crop. As with most seeds, simply sow them on to good quality seed compost and cover with more compost or vermiculite in trays or modules under cover. Try to keep your newly sown seeds at around 20-24 degrees Celsius and they should then germinate at the optimum level.

When your seeds have germinated, generally after around 10 days, ensure that they get plenty of sun light and water them regularly to avoid the compost drying out. When seedlings are large enough to handle, prick them out and place them in to individual pots so that they can grow on unimpeded. As plants grow and develop make sure you check the base of pots for roots searching out water and nutrients and repot them as and when needed.

Plants can be grown in both greenhouses and outdoors in milder areas. Plant outside from May to June. Plants will grow quite large, very much like Tomatillos, and these may need staking with a bamboo cane or two. If you find that plants are becoming very bushy or tall you can simply pinch out any side shoots or tips. It’s very important that plants are kept well watered, especially when in flower and when fruit is setting.

To buy Cape Gooseberry seeds simply click here.

When I was young cauliflower was one of those dishes that I had serious problems with. A vegetable with a watery consistency and a typical brassica taste, the dish wasn’t for me. But then later in life, after realising the cauliflower I had eaten years before had been cooked to a point close to total annihilation, I tasted beautifully cooked al dente cauliflower and cauliflower cheese. I was converted.

If you can’t get enough of cauliflower cheese and other cauli dishes then look no further as with these two great cultivars we have no excuse not to grow it year round. In years gone by most people have tended to restrict themselves to growing Cauliflower for cropping in late Autumn or Winter but by sowing indoors now, or outside in around a month, you can harvest crops in Summer. You can then make successional sowings throughout the growing season to give you delicious crops for months to come.

Two to try:

Cauliflower ‘All the Year Round’ – A great choice of Cauliflower that can be grown for harvesting throughout Summer, Winter and Autumn. This plant has a dwarf nature but produces large dense heads making it an excellent choice for the allotment or garden. Heads freeze well and make good additions to preserves, such as piccalilli.

Cauliflower ‘Candid Charm’ F1 – Ideal for close spacing this quick maturing hybrid is an excellent choice for smaller gardens or raised beds where space is at a premium. These upright plants produce dark green leaves that cling tightly to the curd giving it extra protection. Harvest when heads are tennis ball sized or leave until larger.

Sowing:

Sow seeds in to good quality seed compost in modules or trays and water well. Place plants in a heated propagator or alternatively cover seed trays with a plastic bag and place on a warm windowsill away from direct sunlight. When plants have germinated and are large enough to handle, prick them out in to individual pots and grow them on until they have 4-6 true leaves. Harden plants off prior to planting outdoors. Once planted, ensure crops have adequate protection from pests, such as slugs, snails and pigeons.

It’s getting to that busy time of year when every seed is vying for your attention. As days lengthen and soils warm you can almost feel that things are itching to get growing. The past few days have seen blue skies and sunshine for much of Britain and you can’t ignore that cue to get going.

The hardier leafy greens, such as Spinach, Kale and Swiss Chard, are perfect for sowing under cover now as unlike the more delicate salad greens they can be planted out slightly earlier and should cope with any late frosts or cold snaps. Alternatively, wait until mid to late March in southerly areas or April for cooler climbs and sow direct. I’m quite a fan of these plants and if, like me, you have chickens then they will appreciate you growing these too. I actually grow far too much as plants like Kale will last throughout the Winter and provide an excellent source of nutrition for your hens in a time when fresh food is scarce.

Three to try:

Swiss Chard ‘Bright Lights’ – This plant is a true show stopper that can really add a blast of colour and fun to your garden or allotment. With it’s multicoloured stems and beautiful leafy tops this plant is good enough simply to look at but don’t forget it tastes great too.

Spinach ‘Reddy F1’ – Excellent in salads and used when young this Spinach cultivar adds a touch of sweetness and glamour to your plate and palette. As with most leafy greens this one is perfect for growing in containers or on the windowsill as a microgreen.

Kale ‘Nero di Toscana’ – Bring Italy to your part of the UK with this beautifully dark leaved plant that holds a statuesque presence wherever you plant it. Equally beautiful in a flower bed this Kale also tastes great and will last through the Winter.

As all of these plants have larger seeds it is easy to sow them in to modules individually or sow them thinly in seed trays and prick out at a later date. Sow your seeds in to good quality seed compost and give them a light watering with a fine rose. Place them in to a propagator or place them on a bench in a greenhouse or cold frame and allow them to germinate. Remember to pot on as these plants grow and place in to their final positions when soils have warmed sufficiently.