Here’s a clever and good-looking example of companion planting tomatoes, tagetes, beets and onions at RHS Wisley. Find out why companion planting is so important in a stylish organic garden.

Image by Dwight Sipler Ask most vegetable growers what their worst, most dreaded plant problem is, and they snap ‘blight’ right back at you. Late tomato blight is one of those very miserable diseases that sneaks right up at you, often as your fruits are swelling on the plant, and ruins everything. This is a [...]

I love using home-spun potions in my garden. They’re cheaper than sprays from the garden centre, and they are normally far better for the ecosystem in the garden as well. This cheeky little lemon spray will send the pesky aphids in your garden running for the hills. I picked this idea up from Tom Brown, [...]

Not everything in the garden is happy with this rain. I’m sure we have had more than our fair share of Smith Periods (the humid conditions which bring dreaded tomato and potato blight), and the aubergine was looking so grumpy I brought it inside. But under the raspberry canes, a frog has set up camp, [...]

It was inevitable; it was in fact part of the deal, but still, it was hard letting go. Today I dug the billowing nasturtiums up from the front of the raised bed and tipped them onto the compost heap. All through May and June they have been rambling happily over the wooden frame and across [...]

This evening, as I poked around in the garden, admiring the smell of freshly washed soil and the sight of rows of carrot and onion seedlings pushing their way upwards, I found I had a number of little visitors. ——————————————————————————————————————————- Fennel & Fern readers can get 10% off on flower, vegetable and fruit seeds and [...]

Hostas are fantastic link plants within a garden, with lush, rubbery leaves sandwiching nicely between clumps of blooming perennials. But they also put up a splendid display themselves when planted en masse. The contrast between these sea-blue and lime-green cultivars when planted together is striking. ——————————————————————————————————————————- Fennel & Fern readers can get 10% off on [...]

Hoorah. The first carrots from the Garden from Scratch. I sowed these Autumn King II in September as an experiment to see if they would make it through the winter. Which they did. They have been growing in a deep container on the balcony, which gets the most sun in the garden, interplanted with rocket [...]

I met this slug as he journeyed across my compost heap. Unfortunately, it was his last journey, as I am one of the awful, brutal gardeners who keeps a pair of ‘slug-cutting’ scissors in their coat pocket. I’m sorry, Mr Slug, but there’s just no other way. Either you go quietly now, or endure [...]

Meet Tigger, the Garden from Scratch’s resident moggy. He’s an enormous RSPCA rescue cat who joined me on my 15th birthday, and has been jumping on to my bed at impossible hours of the morning ever since. Tigger is affectionate, demanding, huge. The last cannot be exaggerated enough. He recently scared off a door-to-door charity [...]