Tips and Tricks

It is free, it works, and it is not magic. What cardboard will kill, what it will not, and the mistakes that turn a free mulch into a year of grass coming up through the gaps.

Garlic, broad beans and overwintering onions. Three crops that only work if they go in now, and a soil temperature that decides whether they will.

Autumn is the only time of year you can make a no-dig bed and have it ready to sow by spring without doing anything else to it. Here is exactly how, on grass, on weeds, or on an old dug bed.

The month most gardeners give up, and the last chance to sow anything that will feed you in the hungry gap. What still goes in, and what the empty beds are costing you.

August is the month the garden gives everything back. Courgettes are arriving faster than you can eat them, the beans are climbing over the top of their canes, tomatoes are ripening on the vine, and there is a bowl of something on the kitchen table every single day. It is the most rewarding month of the year, and it is also the month almost everybody stops sowing.

Why your seeds are not coming up, why watering every evening is making it worse, and what is actually worth doing while the ground is this hot.

A practical UK guide to what you can still sow in July, the crops that must go in now for winter and spring, and how to keep everything alive through the driest month of the year.

A practical UK guide to what you can still sow, what to plant out, and why June is the month that decides how well you eat next winter.

A practical UK guide to everything you can sow and plant in May - the month when the garden shifts from cautious to full speed.

A practical guide to everything you can sow and plant in April in the UK - what goes straight in the ground, what needs starting indoors, and what to leave until May.

A practical guide to the vegetables that cost very little to grow from seed, produce reliably in British conditions, and can be planned so that something is ready to harvest in every month of the year.