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A potager, or kitchen garden, has a geometric design of easily maintainable beds with hard paving around them.  I’ve had a lot of fun lately working with pattern for a potager for a very nice early Victorian villa.  Thank goodness for computer-aided design, making and remaking design options. Selecting veg varieties with ornamental value is …

I’ve just plugged in the propagator. Tomatoes and peppers originate from central America; aubergine from the Indian subcontinent. These plants need a lot of heat and light to grow and for the fruits to ripen, so an early start under cover is important. Could have been earlier, but what can you do?! After last year’s …

I’ve been at Ryton where my Garden Organic colleagues have been preparing for Potato Day – a weekend really, and a veritable stampede of variety-mad gardeners from all over England, I gather. The end of January is the time to start preparing potatoes for warmer parts like London. Whether you need to chit at all …

From summer-sown plants, turned into woody canes for some time now, I’ve been harvesting curly kale and cavolo nero. See here for my brassica manifesto, http://vivekagardens.com/cavolo-nero-and-other-brassicas/. I’m taking the tender little leaves, and where I decapitated one cavolo nero, baby leaves have sprouted which are all the tenderer. Frost sweetens kale, but we’ve maybe had …

Delivering flyers (how quaint, in these days of social media and app marketing) for our Christmas wreath initiative, there was a doorway with a range of odd sticks. Aha! a small boy lives here, came the thought, as I was reminded of my now towering son, and instructions to leave wayside garnerings outside.  But gardeners …

Use winter to plot, plan and develop your growing.  There’s a whole lot of joy to be had looking at seed catalogues online, or getting them in the post and perusing in bed, curled up on the sofa, on the commute.  However, selecting can be mind boggling, given the wonderfully wide range of varieties plant …

Cucurbits (courgette, pumpkin, squash) can be really satisfying to grow as they have big seeds that you start off indoors in May and produce nice plants pretty quickly.  The fruits are shapely and tasty, and their final curing (sitting in the sun once ripe) encourages a postive transition to autumn, I feel. I’m still getting …

This is a brilliant winter salad that you still just about sow direct into soil now outdoors here in central-ish London if it’s a sheltered spot, I reckon. The soil is still beautifully warm. I sowed these about two weeks before this picture was taken and they’ve been in the ground for ten days, doubling  …

This trug of veg, framed by beaming Frances and David, South London Master Gardeners, was transformed a couple of weeks ago. Finally I’ve labelled the jars. Some have already been dispersed;  one was opened the next day for bread and cheese, though ‘people’ should have waited! Includes the green ribbed ‘Table Queen’ squash, overgrown courgette, …

To Brogdale to see fruit trees galore.  Fields and fields of varieties with fruits gleaming in the September sun.  19 quince varieties, over 2,100 apples, 350 plums…. This was a chance to marvel the breeding skills of generations of growers down the ages, and to compare the range of selected characters such as size, shape, …