Archives for August 2009

Tomatoes on the Go

Sara Cox|17:19 UK time, Friday, 28 August 2009

So hello and welcome to my penultimate blog! What better way to begin than with the well known saying: "Tomatoes ripening are like buses, you wait ages for one, and then four all ripen at once."

Sara's green tomatoes (wih blight) just over one week ago Picture the scene: rubbish gardener (me), hovers nervously over her veg patch, watching terrified as evil blight slowly but surely takes hold of her beloved tomato plants. The stems are darkening, but the tomatoes are all bright green, and as yet untouched by the wicked claw of disease that will render then black and yucksome.

Aforementioned rubbish gardener can bear the pain no longer, so skedaddle off to centre parks for a week with the kids.

That's the story so far. Fast forward one week. Having struggled through the door after a long motorway journey with fractious children, I popped down to the patch, hoping to see some progress. There had indeed been some ripening. In fact three toms had ripened a little too enthusiastically, and had fallen red, then blighted to the floor.

Sara's ripened tomatoes Several other tomatoes hung brown and diseased. Rubbish! But ahoy, what's that shining red and lush on the stalk? Hurrah! Four perfect tomatoes!

I'm very pleased and, considering the onslaught of blight has been pretty relentless, I consider myself lucky to have any toms at all.

That's not all, either. The remaining green tomatoes look fine. Just praying for sunshine and hopefully we should have more. I'll be checking them daily this time, and definitely not disappearing off to a holiday park.

I'll be Havering around this weekend

Ann Kelly|16:40 UK time, Friday, 28 August 2009

Comments

Just a quick heads-up about an event I'm doing this weekend - it's not a BBC or Dig In event, but it is gardening based. I'll be encouraging people to grow their own as part of Planet Havering, at the Havering Town Show at Harrow Lodge Park in Hornchurch, Essex. Basically I'll be making paper pots, picking the seeds out of lettuce heads and demonstrating just how smelly comfrey tea is.

If you're based in the East London/Essex area and find yourself at a loose end this Sunday or Monday and, come and say hallo! There's a funfair and stuff as well, it's not just me.

Have a great Bank Holiday everyone.

Seedy savings

Post categories: beetroot, carrot, lettuce, squash, tomato

Ann Kelly|09:29 UK time, Wednesday, 26 August 2009

Comments

Salad of Dig In veggies I'm still staying one step ahead of the blight, thanks partly to the lovely weather we had last week. Two whole trusses have now ripened.

I celebrated by knocking up a Dig In salad - sliced beetroot, tomatoes, the last of my lollo rosso and grated carrots (preparing that was a bit tricky, as my carrots have been a bit wee this year). Plus cucumber - also home grown.

At risk of sounding disloyal to Dig In, I'm actually more excited by the ripening of another tomato variety on the allotment - my 'Scotland Yellow'. I got the seed for this from Garden Organic's Heritage Seed Library, and like all the veg they have, it's a rare, old-fashioned variety, no longer available to buy anywhere.

A ripe Scotland Yellow tomato Garden Organic look after hundreds of these heritage varieties, growing some at their headquarters, and relying on people like me to grow others and then send saved seed back. So, I'm made up that I'll be able to save at least one tomato's-worth of Scotland Yellow seed, and do my bit towards keeping this rare breed going.

But you don't need a rare plant to make seed saving worthwhile. Seed saving gets you seeds for free, and it's environmentally sound. Plus, if you grow seed saved from plants that did well in your garden, allotment or balcony pot, it should do well too. Keep using saved seeds for a few years, and you may breed yourself a micro-variety that's specially adapted for your plot.

One word of warning - if you grew any plants from seeds described as "F1s" on the packet, any seed saved from these won't grow into the same variety. F1s are special hybrids, which usually grow fast and strongly, but don't "come true" - the plant that grows from the seed won't look like it's parent.

Here's my guide to the easy and not-so-easy candidates for seed saving:

A doddle
Squashes, marrows, tomatoes, chillis - just scrape out the seeds and leave them somewhere cool to dry. Tomato seeds are coated in a sticky goop that stops them germinating, so you need to remove that by fermenting it off first.
Peas & Beans - leave on the plant until they go dry and the pods go crispy, then store in a dry cool place
Spinach - just wait for it to go to seed, then pull up once it's covered in small seed pods and leave somewhere to dry. Give it a good beating onto newspaper to remove the seeds.

Medium

Onions and leeks - leave in the ground until a flower (left) grows. Eventually (the whole process can take over a year), small seed pods will form all around the flower, and you can shake the seed out - it looks like tiny flakes of black grit. The bees will enjoy it in the meantime.
Broccoli, kale, pak choi - let the plant flower, then wait until many small pods form where they were. Check the seeds inside the pods every now and then, and once they turn brown, cut the stems off and leave them somewhere to dry. Break open the pods to get the seeds.
Lettuce - leave to flower, then collect pods once they've dried. Put in a paper bag and shake to get the seeds out.

Tricky
Carrots, beetroots and parsnips - these take two years before they flower and go to seed, but usually they don't get the chance because we scoff them too quickly. Carrots will often need a bit of protection to survive the winter. In the second year, they'll grow large sprays of flowers and then seeds.

If you've got more than you can use of a particular seed, a nice way of exchanging it for something you do want, and socialising at the same time, is going along to a seed swap. In the south-east, Seedy Sundays runs a yearly swap, but there are many local events - keep an eye out in local newspapers and noticeboards, or even set one up yourself. You can also swap online - try the forums below for a start. And there's absolutely loads of seed saving advice on the Garden Organic site.

Grow Fruit and Veg Magazine forum

Self-sufficientish.com forums

Vegetable Gardening Forum

East London meets Tuscany

Post categories: squash, tomato

Chris Howard|17:55 UK time, Monday, 24 August 2009

Comments

Hi everyone, I'm back and feeling very proud. A week in Italy, with their love of everything "tomato" had left me nervous about my return, and how my poor little grow-bag fed friends would fare in comparison.

Chris's ripened tomatoes I shouldn't have worried. Yes, they might be slightly small (I didn't realise until now that they are actually cherry tomatoes!), they might be on an East London balcony rather than swaying in a Tuscan breeze, but they have done me proud. Compared to most of their brash, showy cousins (typically Italian then!) they are simply delicious.

However, I have no time to be smug. To be honest, my squash have been a grave disappointment. The hours I have spent serenading them on that balcony, wining and dining them with the purest water and feeding them only the finest of fertilisers... For what reward? None whatsoever - they have not been fertilised.

Of course, it might not be entirely their fault, being, as they are, plants which require insects to do the deed for them. So I'm willing to concede that perhaps my attentions were misdirected (more Flight of the Bumblebee and less Barry White next time?). However, I decided to take Ann's advice (marvellous as ever), and, quite literally, take matters into my own hands.

Chris's squash flower I will save the intimate details (and your blushes, dear reader), but suffice to say I noticed last night what appeared to be a distinct swelling at the base of the female flower. I have been warned by expectant mothers not to get my hopes up straight away, but I have a good feeling about this one. Surely, surely, I finally have a baby squash developing...?

Showing off the patch

Post categories: Sara's garden, tomato

Sara Cox|12:35 UK time, Saturday, 22 August 2009

Comments

So, V-day came and went. V-day of course being veg day, when the Gardeners' World team came to film the patch.

The bottom of the garden was a hive of activity on the weekend before their Monday visit. I was furiously weeding and titivating the patch to make it a bit more presentable.

I could sense the carrots watching me fascinated, thinking, "Hmm... she looks familiar but we've not seen her for a LONG time."

I removed the sagging string that probably should've gone months ago and tried to wedge back together a bit of wonky fence. I just stopped short of polishing the tomatoes.

Sara's tomato plants, with lots of tomatoes, but also lots of blight. Speaking of which, despite the blight on the thick stems, the toms are coming along beautifully. It's a bit like a Hollywood action movie (albeit a slightly dull one) because its such a race against time. "Will the tomatoes ripen on the vine before the eeeviiiil blight monster catches them?" So far, so good - Ann from the blog came to the filming day bearing organic blight buster and we gave the plants a thorough drenching in the stuff.

After my initial panic the filming went well and you can see the finished results (and my patch) in a couple of weeks on the show. It was nice to talk about the patch and kind of sum up what's been successful (carrots) and what's not (the lettuce incident).

The end of the experiment is nigh, and I only have a couple of blogs left to do, but I'm already thinking about winter planting possibilities (suggestions, anyone?) So, although I've not got fully green fingers, the tips are definitely tinged!

Holiday plant fears

Post categories: tomato

Ann Kelly|11:38 UK time, Wednesday, 19 August 2009

Comments

Red tomatoes on my Gardener's Delight plant I have beaten the blight! I have red tomatoes! All that time cutting away every speck of blight and ever so carefully watering at the base to stop evil blight spores splashing around has paid off. Yesterday I got my reward - a delicious Gardener's Delight tomato, sun-warmed from the vine - yum yum.

I've only slowed the disease though - it'll be back to full speed the moment I take my eyes off it. Knowing that, and reading the horror stories some of you have related in your comments, makes me a bit nervy of leaving my plants to go on holiday.

Spraying may be my only answer - probably with traditional copper-based Bordeaux mixture, because it's OK for organic gardening. Anyone got any experience of how well it works? Do leave comments.

Tomatoes aside, the big worry during holidays is the watering. I'm very lucky with the neighbours on my allotment who'll step in when I'm not around. In fact, I suspect that sometimes they water when I am around, obviously they think I mistreat my plants!

But if you haven't got nice neighbours, there's still a lot of tricks you can use.

First off, give everything a really good soak.

Drench the ground. Then, to get even more water onto your plants, cover the soil around them with a thick mulch, and drench that too. A mulch - basically just a layer of something on the soil - will not only soak up and hold water itself, but it also stops water in the soil evaporating away. Good mulch materials are woodchips, compost, hay, or even shedded cardboard. Use on pots too.

Keep the water coming.

If you're really into your gardening, and don't mind spending a few bob, there's several automatic watering systems on the market. The ones that use "trickle irrigation", where the water seeps out of holes in pipes on the ground, are most efficient, because the water goes to where it's needed. Some systems need mains water - you just connect them to a house or outdoor tap, others can use water stored in waterbutts. You can't mix or swap the two, so it's the main thing to be aware of when you're choosing one.
Or, you can save money by rigging something up out of junk. An empty pop bottle can be turned into a waterer by piercing a couple of very small holes in the cap (left), then filling it up and screwing the cap back on.
Stick it into the earth or compost next to your plant (below), and the water will slowly dribble out (try a few experiments with different size holes for different speeds of dribble). Perfect for pots!
Another good trick with pots is the "wick" method. Put a container full of water next to a potted plant, and run an old teatowel or other strip of cloth between them. It'll act like the wick of a candle, soaking water up itself and into the plant pot. Works best if you put a tray under both of them to catch any drips.

Don't let the water get away.

Hot sun will soon evaporate away all the water you've painstakingly put on your plants, then wilt them, especially if they're under glass. So moving them into the shade, just while you're away, will help conserve moisture. Greenhouses can be dimmed with shades, or just by taping paper to the inside of the windows.
Mulch, as mentioned earlier, will help to keep hold of water, and you can also stop it dribbling uselessly away out of plant pots by bunging a folded newspaper beneath.
Finally, a lot of the water the plant uses is just lost from the leaves by evaporation - the plant uses it to carry nutrients from its roots to the leaves, then just abandons it. You can stop that water escaping by putting a clear plastic bag over the plant - you'll see condensation form on the inside, which is the water the plant would otherwise "transpiring" away. Using this method, water will run down the bag back onto the soil, and the plant can use it again.

By the way, a great site to get ideas and step by step instructions of how to make watering systems, as well as composters, planters and all sorts of other outdoor items is instructables.com.

Nature Chris: Off to veg-out

Ann Kelly|13:31 UK time, Tuesday, 18 August 2009

Comments

Just letting you all know that Chris is off on holidays, so the wise words and fab veg pics that we enjoy on his behalf, will be on hold until next week. It's great Chris is getting a chance to unwind from his veg-craving days in North America, but what will become of his delightful tomatoes and, more intriguingly, his struggling squash, whilst he is away? We shall find out next week...

Judgement day looms

Post categories: Sara's garden, beetroot, carrot, tomato

Sara Cox|10:19 UK time, Friday, 14 August 2009

Comments

Aaargh!! OK. OK. Breathe... In.. Out.. And relax. Ok. Let's calm down and take a moment to just let the news sink in. This Monday, as in three days time, roughly 76 hours from now, the Gardeners' World crew will descend on the clump of wild enchanted goblin forest, that started out life as a neat vegetable patch. Hmm. Great.

To be fair, I have known for a while that a catch-up visit was inevitable, but I'd been in denial, wondering if I could offer them a charcoal sketch of the patch as substitute for actually filming it. But no. The filming is booked. The call sheet is typed out, and I've stocked up on biscuits for the crew. So alas, there's no going back.

The reason why I'm slightly worried is the patch is in a little disarray; the beetroot have been thinned out to allow them to plump up, and I haven't dared pull one up yet, in case I'm too premature, the leaves are pretty straggly and have definitely been nibbled. The carrots are my favourites, but even they've got slightly out of control and I need to dig up every other one to give the remainders a chance to grow.

The broccoli is huge but looks like the leaves have been attacked with pinking shears by some insect seamstress making ball gowns for her hundred insect daughters. The tomatoes are wildly overgrown and may be coming down with blight, and my butternut squash peacefully passed away sometime last month.

Apart from that, it's all ticketyboo! I'll will fill you in next week on how it went. Finally, I took some carrots into Radio 1 to give to my team live on air. Despite mocking their diminutive size (I really have bred the Kylies of the carrot world) they were impressed by the sweetness.

I rather grandly called it "Carrot Wednesday" and hope it becomes a regular feature. Or maybe not.

Blight, beetroot and being a bee

Post categories: squash

Ann Kelly|11:21 UK time, Tuesday, 11 August 2009

Comments

The first slightly orange tomato on my plants. Blightwatch latest!

I've been religiously cutting off any suspect bits of my plants, and it seems to have held the blight sort of at bay for the moment. I've got one orange tomato, so it looks like I'll get at least a taster from my plants, little though that is.

I've been recommended to spray my plants with semi-skimmed milk against the blight. Never heard of this before, anyone out there tried it? Any advice or comments would be great.

The bloody baron beetroot On a lighter note, may I present the embodiment of evil in a root vegetable - the Bloody Baron Beetroot. He vants to suck your sap. This is my contribution to Dig In's veggie doll gallery - please send us more, because they're really making me laugh. The triple potato wedding picture sent in by Pauline is a work of sheer genius.

Then onto bees. Illy, who also works on Dig In, asked me a question which set me thinking about a delicate subject - plant sex. So far, she's had plenty of flowers, but no fruit on her squash plants, suggesting they're not, ahem, getting enough.

I think it's because her squash flowers aren't getting pollinated, perhaps because the bees don't visit her urban balcony as much as they do my smalltown allotment. It could be that some of you reading this are having a similar problem.

Unlike tomatoes, which have flowers with both male and female parts, squash flowers are strictly one or the other.If pollen from the male flowers doesn't get to the "ovules" (a fancy term for eggs, really) of the female ones, they won't be fertilised and no fruit will grow.Normally bees do the job of carrying the pollen from one to the other, but their numbers have been dropping for the past few years, causing problems with pollination.

A male squash flower A female squash flower So, if the bees won't do it, you have to do the job yourself by hand pollinating your plants. First thing is to identify which flower is which.It's not too tricky - males (left) have a straight, thin stem, while females (right) have a bulge, which turns into the fruit if they are pollinated. This one may have already been pollinated and started growing, but is still only a bit larger than when the flower first appears.

Female squash flower opened to show the stigma Next get a small paintbrush and swirl it round in the depths of the male flower until you can see specks of yellow pollen on it - pull the petals off if it makes it easier.Then use the brush to dust the pollen onto the middle of the female flower (shown in the pic to the right - this bit is called the stigma).Or you can just pull the male flower off, remove the petals, and rub it across the stigma. Lots of male flowers to one female will give the best result, they're saucy types, these squash.

If you're planning on saving seeds, you've really got to do it this way.Bees can carry pollen a fair distance, and butternut squash can cross with all other types of squash, as well as pumpkins.It won't affect the taste of the fruit that grows this year, but any saved seeds may well grow into strange hybrid of butternut squash and whatever your neighbours were growing.Hand pollinating lets you know exactly what you'll be getting, though to be really sure you have to stop inseacts doing any sneaky pollinating when you're not looking, by clipping flowers shut or putting a bag over them.

It all goes to show how important bees are to keep our veg growing.I don't mind pollinating the odd plant here and there, but I'd never manage all of them. I'm definitely going to add bee homes to my garden and allotment, and I can't think of a better reason to bung in a few more pots of plants they like, such as lavender, thyme and catnip in.

Carrot capers

Post categories: carrot, squash, tomato

Chris Howard|17:47 UK time, Monday, 10 August 2009

Comments

So I am back, and I returned to good and bad news. Let's start with the good news...

The tomatoes are going from strength to strength - all six plants are now showing good signs of fruit, and after a nice water and feed, I should have my first tomato salad this week! They were a bit bushy when I got back so I've stripped out some of the side shoots, which should give plenty of energy for the fruit to grow and ripen. In fact, it sounds like Sara might want to do the same - take a look at Ann's advice and get harsh with them, Sara!

I also decided to uproot a few of my carrots for Sunday lunch yesterday, with delicious results. Sara's description of them as lovers seems quite apt for my carrots, entwined in an, ahem, 'embrace' as they were, when I pulled them from the ground (if you've any funny veg photos send them to the gallery. Better yet, if you feel like having a laugh and dressing them up, send a pic to the veg doll section). (Ed. I don't know what Chris is talking about. Clearly, that is a nice carrot giving another, very tired carrot, a piggyback home.)

I did feel a little bit cruel, ripping them asunder and tossing them into boiling water. But that only lasted for a second, and their demise was worth it. Take a look:

I agree with the comment on Sara's blog - don't peel them when they're like that, or you will not only lose half the carrot - but also half of the flavour. You know what you have put on that soil, so a brushing off should be plenty!

As Susie said to me last night - 'they actually taste of carrots', and I think the earthy taste is part and parcel of that. And then we have bad news. Firstly, those carrots really should have been a little bit longer, but a lack of watering can do that to a carrot. But I don't mind that too much if they amuse me.

Secondly, and more seriously, my squash are in dire straights. A big gulp of water when I got home has revived them slightly, but I think that Ann certainly has my number on this one. It really doesn't look good - and such is their plight one even appears to be trying to take refuge next door...

Neglected and dry as a bone it has reached around the fence to see if anyone cares over there. It really doesn't get much worse than having a plant try to leave home, does it?

10 green tomatoes sitting on the vine

Post categories: Sara's garden, beetroot, carrot, tomato

Sara Cox|12:31 UK time, Friday, 7 August 2009

Comments

Hello all. I've had a count up of my tomatoes and so far there are... drum roll please. ten tomatoes! Ten, very small, green tomatoes on three large plants. The plants themselves are huge. So big in fact that a small tribe of settlers could've set up home in the depths of the undergrowth and I'd be none the wiser.

Is it normal for such a large tomato jungle to produce so few fruit? Admittedly there are lots of lovely little yellow flowers too, so hopefully they will turn tomatoey.

Elsewhere in the patch, some of the carrots are huddled together and others, like lovers in a floundering relationship, are being given some space. I'm hoping this space will give them the chance to plump up. It will be interesting to see what happens. The small skinny ones are delicious, but dangerous to prepare; don't want St John's ambulance on standby every time I reach for the peeler.

The broccoli is huge and, I believe, should be ready sometime at the turn of the century. Ok I exaggerate, but it does take a while according to Ann's blog. Hopefully, it will survive long enough to blossom - at the moment something has been holding delightful dinner parties on the plants and munching great whacking chunks out of the leaves. These pests always scarper before I get down to the patch so I don't know who's responsible... The beetroot is being left alone to grow big and fat so hopefully I can get pickling soon and turn my green(ish) fingers pink.

Vegetable verse

Ann Kelly|16:13 UK time, Wednesday, 5 August 2009

Comments

On an entirely different note, if feeling really excited about your (nearly harvested) veg, why not write about it - in verse! The One Show are asking for people to tell them about their favourite vegetable, and to do so with poetry. The best veggie verses will be read out on tonight's show (7pm BBC One). If you want to read other contributions or submit your own, you can do so here.

Tomatoes 0, Squashes 2

Post categories: squash, tomato

Ann Kelly|12:40 UK time, Wednesday, 5 August 2009

Comments

Thanks for all the comments, especially about carrot fly and havesting carrots - keep them coming. Now, to start with, here's a message to everybody with a fine crop of green tomatoes - if you haven't done it already, PINCH OUT THE GROWING TIPS to stop your plant getting any bigger. Otherwise you're likely to get the makings of a lot of green tomato chutney,

but not many ripe, red fruits. If you've been pinching out sideshoots, there'll just be one growing tip - if you haven't, there'll be loads, but they all need to go. Snip the last little bit off with your fingernails, a pair of scissors or secateurs - take a look at the pic for help.

It may seem cruel, but you've got to force your plant to put its effort into ripening up the tomatoes its got rather than growing more and more that won't make it before the end of the summer.

My hopes for my own tomatoes are fading - unlike lucky old Chris

, I can't see any signs of ripening, and the blight is spreading fast. Thanks to everyone who commiserated with me in comments and emails, by the way.

But I am beating Chris in one department - I've got two teeny squashes growing! Look - aren't they nice? I shall treat them to a nice rotted comfrey tea feed today, to plump them up. I'm especially pleased with this because I've got a confession to make - I wasn't even sure I had a squash.

Ann's first squashes! All my cucumbers and courgettes and squash plants got mixed together, and until they fruit there's no telling them apart, so I didn't know what I had. I did know that quite a few hadn't made it, between the slugs and the hot weather, so I've been crossing my fingers that this one wasn't going to suddenly sprout a gherkin.

Tomatoes aside, my other top tip at the moment is: go shopping. You know those people who buy all their Christmas stuff in the January sales? Well, this time of year is the seed equivalent.

Garden centres everywhere will be selling off their left over seeds cheap to make room for the next lot. Apart from saving or swapping your own seeds, about which more soon, it's one of the best ways to get a bargain - and it's a great chance to take a punt on a few unusual things too. I'm trying a Brussel Sprout called "Revenge" - just hoping that revenge isn't the traditional, gaseous one

associated with sprouts!

Wee Green Balls

Post categories: squash, tomato

Chris Howard|22:12 UK time, Tuesday, 4 August 2009

Comments

Chris's "little green balls" It seems like only a couple of days since I wrote my last post here, but apparently a week has passed. Though having spent at least two days of that traveling from California to Indonesia, it feels as if someone is playing a cruel trick on me.

Being cut off from the veg for this long means that I truly don't have any idea what has happened, and having not seen any rain for over two weeks, I can't quite understand what you lot are banging on about with the weather either. But Ann's plight and pictures have reawakened my paranoid streak.

Chris's disheveled squash So, I've been in touch with Susie for a proper update, and it has done a little to calm my trembling soul. I am reliably told that the squash is looking a little disheveled, and the picture proves that that indeed might be the case. Some TLC needed when I get back on Friday I think, although there do appear to be plenty of flowers, so I don't think it is all bad.

The tomatoes also have 'more wee green balls' on them, which I can only take as good news - and that despite the fact that they haven't had any food from when I have been away until yesterday.

The first red tomato? Apparently, it was my fault for leaving the plantfood in the old bin on the balcony which is also a favourite haunt for our eight-legged friends. Hence it's taken Susie three weeks to pluck up the courage to put her hand in! This pic also appears to show a bit of colour creeping in one of of the 'balls', which is very exciting, I can't wait to catch up with them!

On the spider front - after banging on about bugs and all things minibeast since the start of this blog it is great to see Sara starting to love them too (or at least supress the hatred!). They really are magical things (even ants!), and most of them are actually pretty good for the garden so it can pay to love them. Embrace the bugs!

Having said that, I have spent most of this evening being bitten by mosquitos, and my 'embraces' for those little blighters were probably a little tighter than they would have wished...

« July 2009 | | September 2009 »

About this blog

The Dig In campaign has finished now. Thanks to everyone who took part in the campaign throughout 2009 and 2010. We hope you enjoyed growing the Dig In seeds, especially those of you who are new to growing vegetables. This site is no longer being updated, but it is still packed full of useful information about growing veg.

Subscribe to Dig In Blog

You can stay up to date with Dig In Blog via these feeds.

Dig In Blog Feed(RSS)

Dig In Blog Feed(ATOM)

If you aren't sure what RSS is you'll find our beginner's guide to RSS useful.

Expert authors

Our video expert is Blue Peter gardener Chris Collins. He's a qualified horticulturalist and award-winning gardener, who's presented shows on everything from allotments to Chelsea - check out his website for details. He loves sharing his experience with growers old and new!

Gareth Austin is resident gardening expert with BBC Radio Foyle and lectures in horticulture in Northern Ireland. Gareth has made it a prority to encourage gardeners throughout Northern Ireland to 'reclaim the space' and start growing vegetables in any area they can find.

Maria del Carmen Casarrubios is a tutor and practical instructor at Capel Manor College, Regent's Park. She trained at Capel Manor and Writtle College in Amenity Horticulture and has 20 years' experience of working with plants. Sally Smith

Sally Smith is a freelance gardening researcher and lecturer. She headed the advisory team at Garden Organic for many years. Pest and disease control by organic means is her speciality, Sally says: "Managing your soil is key to solving nearly all gardening problems, look after your compost heap, it's your most important asset." Sally Smith

Brendan Little trained at National Botanic Gardens, Glasnevin and Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Brendan runs organic gardening courses, works as a garden designer and is in the BBC Radio Ulster Gardeners' Corner team." Sally Smith

Karen Kenny is the Eastern Region Rep for the National Society of Allotment & Leisure Gardeners as well as on the management team of Suffolk and Ipswich allotments where she runs a site. Karen is also an accomplished lecturer on most gardening subjects, including allotments.

Peter Horrocks has an allotment in Newcastle. He's the regional rep for the National Society of Allotment & Leisure Gardeners in the North of England & Scotland, the secretary of the Newcastle Allotments Working Group. Plus, Peter is secretary of a ten-acre allotments site in Newcastle, considered by many to be one of the best in the city.

Ben Raskin is an advisor with the Soil Association, as well as helping to run 22 acres of organic vegetables. With over 16 years of horticultural experience, including running market gardens and working at the Welsh College of Horticulture, he's an expert on organic matters.

Beechgrove Potting Shed is Radio Scotland's top gardening show, giving tips and advice to Scottish gardeners - and the odd Dig In grower - every Sunday.

Zoe tends the Dig In website. When she's not in the office you'll find her gardening on Hampstead Heath and in Regents Park.

Ann "Dig In" Kelly looked after the blog from day to day until May 2010. Bitten by the gardening bug a few years ago, she has progressed from a few growbags to a great big polytunnel. She hates slugs.

Archives for August 2009

Tomatoes on the Go

I'll be Havering around this weekend

Seedy savings

East London meets Tuscany

Showing off the patch

Holiday plant fears

Nature Chris: Off to veg-out

Judgement day looms

Blight, beetroot and being a bee

Carrot capers

10 green tomatoes sitting on the vine

Vegetable verse

Tomatoes 0, Squashes 2