When should I start sowing seeds?
Working backwards from your last frost date rather than from the calendar, and why sowing early is the commonest mistake.
beginner20 min4 min read
Growing Vegetables
Food you can realistically grow at home.
110 guides in Garden
How do I grow tomatoes?
Growing tomatoes from seed or plug to harvest — sowing times, potting on, feeding, pinching out side shoots and avoiding the common diseases.
beginner7 days3 min readHow do I grow herbs?
Which herbs are easy, what each one actually wants, and how to keep a windowsill or pot going all year.
beginner3 days2 min readWhich bits do I pinch out on a tomato plant?
Telling a side shoot from a flower truss and a leaf, where the shoot actually grows, and the plants you must not do this to at all.
beginner10 min4 min readHow often should I water and feed tomatoes in a growbag?
Why a growbag is the hardest place to grow a tomato, the watering rhythm that prevents splitting and blossom end rot, and when to switch feeds.
beginner10 min5 min readWhy are my tomatoes splitting and cracking?
Splitting is caused by the change in water supply rather than the amount, plus the two crack patterns and which of them matters.
beginner15 min5 min readWhy are my runner beans flowering but not setting pods?
Runner beans need insects, moisture at the root and night temperatures below the mid-teens to set — which of the three you are missing, and what actually works.
beginner15 min4 min readHow do I tell when each vegetable is ready to pick?
Crop by crop, the physical sign that says ready — and the general principle that most vegetables are best picked earlier and more often than people think.
beginner20 min4 min readWhy are my tomato flowers falling off without setting fruit?
Tomato flowers abort at both ends of the temperature range and when pollen never moves. Which of the four causes you have, and what actually shifts it.
beginner15 min4 min readWhy do my carrots have rusty brown tunnels through them?
Carrot fly larvae, and the barrier that works because of how the adult flies — plus the thinning habits that bring it in and the timing that dodges it.
beginner20 min4 min readHow do I start a vegetable garden?
How to start growing food without over-committing — where to put it, how big to make it, and what to grow in the first year.
beginner8 hr3 min readMy potatoes have blight — should I cut the tops off, and can I still eat the potatoes?
The decision once blight is in the haulm: when to cut, how long to wait, which tubers keep and which go, and why the affected crop must not be composted.
beginner20 min5 min readShould I remove the leaves from my tomato plants?
Which leaves genuinely earn removal, which ones the fruit still needs, and why stripping a plant to help ripening does the opposite.
beginner10 min4 min readWhy did my carrot and parsnip seed not come up?
These two are the slowest, fussiest seeds most gardeners sow — the moisture and warmth window that has to be held for weeks, and the sowing method that holds it.
beginner15 min5 min readWhy have my tomatoes stopped ripening in hot weather?
Above roughly thirty degrees a tomato stops making the pigment that turns it red, so fruit sits green or blotchy orange for weeks. Cooling the plant, not feeding it, is what restarts it.
beginner12 min5 min readHow do I do crop rotation on a small plot?
The four groups and why each follows the last, what rotation genuinely prevents, and the honest version for a garden with three small beds.
intermediate25 min4 min readHow do I grow vegetables in pots?
Which vegetables actually work in containers, what size pot each needs, and why container growing needs more water and feed than ground growing.
beginner3 days3 min readWhy are my courgette leaves covered in white powder?
Powdery mildew on cucurbits is close to inevitable by late summer — how to tell it from harmless silver leaf markings, how long it costs you, and what genuinely delays it.
beginner12 min3 min readWhy are my potatoes so small?
Six causes of a disappointing potato crop, in the order worth checking — and the one that catches nearly everybody, which is water at the wrong moment.
beginner15 min4 min readHow do I build a raised bed?
Sizing, siting and filling a raised bed, including the timber choice and the depth that actually matters.
intermediate4 hr2 min readHow do I grow salad leaves?
Cut-and-come-again salad from a windowsill, pot or bed — the quickest and highest-value thing most people can grow.
beginner2 days2 min readHow do I grow tomatoes in a greenhouse on strings?
The string training system used in every commercial glasshouse, adapted to a domestic greenhouse — how to set it up, how to wind, when to strip leaves, and the layering trick for a long season.
intermediate45 min4 min readWhy are my chillies staying green and not ripening?
Chillies ripen on accumulated warmth and time, and a British season runs out of both — how to speed it up, and what to do with a plant still covered in green fruit in October.
beginner12 min3 min readWhy are my tomato leaves curling?
Separating harmless physiological leaf roll from heat stress, virus and the herbicide contamination that is far more common than people realise.
beginner20 min3 min read