I tried a different way of growing my leeks this year. It’s not exactly textbook, but it’s given me the best harvests I’ve ever had.

I’ve always been a bit poncey about my leek-growing. This is mainly because I’ve become totally addicted to the steely-blue and utterly gorgeous ‘Bleu de Solaise’, which I’ve got into the habit of dotting among the flowers and shrubs in my ornamental borders as a kind of vertical accent (you see? It brings out my inner Garden Designer. I’m sure my colleague James would be most proud of me, but it don’t put food on the table, mate).

So enough of the lightweight: this year I put in some genuine, bona fide, belt-and-braces allotment leeks to see if I could grow them properly, like you’re meant to, and in enough quantities to feed us through the winter.

I went for one of the really hardy varieties – there are a few, like ‘Giant Winter’ and ‘Musselburgh’, said to put up with whatever a British winter can throw at them (and lately, that’s been a lot).

Except that I kind of ran out of time, so I bypassed my usual method, which involves sowing in trays, potting on until around pencil thickness (which they never, for some reason, seem to reach in containers, unless you use unusually thin pencils) and then planting them out lovingly into deep, wide holes made with the end of a dibber.

You’re supposed to puddle them in, which is a lovely way of describing simply plonking the seedlings into the bottom of the hole and filling up said hole with water, without backfilling, so they’re sitting in their own little bath.

There are very sensible reasons why you should do this: because your leeks effectively start a good two or three inches below ground level, their shanks (that’s the bit below the topknot of leaves) grow up pale, sweet and tender. So if you puddle in your leeks, you get exceptionally long, white shanks, so more leek for your money, so to speak.

Except I didn’t do that, because I couldn’t be bothered.

Instead, I simply sowed direct, into shallow drills in the usual way, covered them lightly with more soil and then forgot about them.

Leeks lend themselves to being forgotten about, as they’re wonderfully trouble-free plants. Even the seedlings are pretty much unbothered by pests, as mice hate anything related to onions and even the slugs don’t seem to enjoy them. So you don’t even have to protect them: as long as they don’t get smothered by weeds, they’ll come up and grow on without your help.

Having said that, in my favour was that I happened to sow them in a damp spell: the one thing that will really set back your leeks is if they go short of water, so if it’s dry when you’re sowing, do make sure you water and keep watering until it starts raining again.

The other rule I broke shamelessly was that I didn’t bother to thin them out. I did sow them sparingly, as I don’t like to see too much waste, but other than that I let them do their thing. I found they grew in clusters, with two or three larger leeks out-competing smaller leeks, effectively thinning themselves as they went along.

There are some disadvantages to this approach. The clusters were hard to harvest if all you wanted was a single leek: sometimes there were two or three hefty leeks in there, all their roots entangled, so the only answer was to lift the lot and pull them apart. Luckily leeks are also very forgiving and you can just heel the remaining leeks back in until you need them.

I also found that earlier in the season, the smaller leeks at the edges of the clumps made excellent substitutes for spring onions: they’re about the same size, and unlikely to get much bigger, so I snipped the youthful top leaves into salads. The slender white shanks can be eaten raw at this age too, or cooked whole into a stir-fry.

The size was perfectly acceptable – several of my bigger leeks hit a diameter of 5cm or so, which is as big as I want a leek to be for the kitchen. And the shanks, though they wouldn’t win prizes at the local shows, were long enough and white enough to make plenty of good eating. And more to the point, we’ve been enjoying them all winter and still have enough left for a few more meals – and it’s mid-February.

I had hoped this particular variety would get the chance to show off how well it lived up to its name: but as luck would have it, we’ve had one of our mildest-ever winters this year with the first proper frost on 13 January, so the jury is still out on how low Below Zero it can go. But it’s a good performer, trouble-free, slow to bolt and with a good, rich flavour: I’d grow it again, and you can’t say better than that.

Every year, though, I learn a little more. In 2011, I learned that choosing varieties for their disease resistance over and above everything else results in a boring set of potatoes.

It was the first year I’d grown on chalk, and knowing that alkaline soils make potatoes very prone to scab, I chose all my new varieties to trial based on the fact that they were naturally scab resistant (that, and that they weren’t purple: the main results of my 2010 trials being that purple potatoes are good for entertaining the kids with novelty mash, but not something you’d want to look at on your plate every day).

But when  you make your sole criteria the fact that a potato resists scab, I found, you end up with lots of scab-free but very tasteless, bland potatoes. So this year, I have decided to put up with the scab and grow for the reasons most important to me. So in my never-ending search for that holy grail of the potato that tastes wonderful, holds its texture well on cooking and looks utterly gorgeous – here are my potato choices for 2012:

Duke of York: I have succumbed. This has for years been the first early the others had to beat: in fact I grew nothing else until a couple of years ago (thanks to some crazy idea I had to trial dozens of different potato varieties). ‘Kestrel’ (a second early) came close in 2010, and last year ‘Accent’ nudged at its crown, but for me it’s still the undisputed best, so I’m reminding myself just how good it is (biased? moi?)

Charlotte: this year’s second early is another one I’ve wanted to grow for ages. Through these trials I’ve learned that though we love floury spuds for baking and roasting, we mostly eat our spuds steamed or boiled: and the best boiling potatoes are those with a waxy flesh. French-bred ‘Charlotte’ is described as salad potatoes – and that’s about as waxy as it gets – and what’s more, everyone raves about their flavour.

Pink Fir Apple: Another one everyone talks about – a lot. This was one of the first heritage varieties to appear on the scene: bred in 1850, it’s only been widely grown again for the last five or ten years. Since its return it’s set the bar high in taste, texture and of course knobbliness. They say it’s a pain to process but if it’s as good a flavour as they say, I’ll give it a go.

Mr Little’s Yetholm Gypsy: Sometimes you just want to grow a potato for its name alone: and they don’t come much more evocative than this variety, believed to date back to 1899. There’s a story, too: the shepherd Mr Little, who lived in Yetholm on the Scottish Borders, bought it at a horse fair in the 1940s and kept it going, more or less single-handedly, ever since. Oh yes, and it’s tricoloured burgundy red, white and possibly purple, too.

King Edward: I grew this one year on my allotment and though the yields were relatively small, they were among the best in flavour of any maincrop I’ve ever tried. That memory has stayed with me so I thought I’d give them another go: the ultimate floury-textured roaster, the only one my roast-dinner-maestro husband asks for by name, this could be a hard one to beat.

Majestic: This big, hefty maincrop has proved its worth again and again, the outright winner of my trials in both 2010 and 2011. I thought its flavour was slightly better in the clay soils of my allotment back in Surrey: but it did pretty damn well in the light chalk of Somerset last year, too. Let’s see how it measures up against this year’s crop.

Picasso: My wildcard for this year, I picked this one out after shamelessly eavesdropping on a conversation at the Potato Day where I picked up my tubers this year. The ladies in question wouldn’t go home without any ‘Picasso’ and swore by its flavour and reliability: it’s a modern variety, with good disease resistance and pretty, pink-eyed tubers.

Sarpo Mira: Every year I plant what I think of as my insurance crop: a selection from the incredibly reliable Sarvari Research Trust range, bred for their blight resistance. The foliage- and tuber-resistant varieties have the prefix Sarpo (pronounced Sharpo, affectionately known as Sharpies): last time I grew Mira it was next to a row of ‘Desiree‘, reduced to brown mush while its Sharpie neighbour still stood tall.

So the Garden Press Event in central London, staged just before the start of the growing season each year and a shop window for gardening-related companies to showcase what’s new, is a magnet for us muddy-fingered types.

As usual, there were plenty of things to pique my curiosity this year: here are just a few of them.

The cloche that’s not a cloche: First: a declaration of interest. This is one of this year’s new range of products from Crocus, owners of this very blog: the rest can be found on the Outdoor Living page. That’s it: plug over.

But even if I weren’t writing for this august blog I would covet a wire cloche.

If you want to grow veg among your flowers, either because you’re short on space or because, like me, you can’t help thinking how damn gorgeous vegetables are, you have a dilemma.

Plant protections – fleece or netting – look hideous. Here’s the solution: pop them over your vulnerable kales or cabbages and it’s a garden ornament in its own right.

Raised beds made of Lego: Well, not literally, obviously. But that’s what WoodBlockX made me think of.

Each component is like a big wooden brick with holes in it. Just stack them up and pin them with the plastic dowels provided and… well, that’s it really.

Once you’re liberated from the diktat that raised beds absolutely have to be rectangles on a flat slope, you realise the possibilities of this ingeniously simple system.

Got steep slopes? These will terrace it for you. Want an L-shape, or a double-walled structure with a central space? Done. Base for a greenhouse? Yup. I’m fairly sure you could even manage circles and triangles if you really wanted to. It makes building raised beds… well… child’s play.

Solar-powered watering: Those with no mains water at the veg garden and therefore condemned to struggling back and forth with two fully-loaded watering cans, crave automatic watering systems that work.

Note the qualification. I’ve tried several of those bag-and-dripper systems: they do work, as long as you fill up the little bag around three times a day.

Add some solar powered panels and a pump, though, and now you’re talking.

It’s obvious, when you think about it. Irrigatia‘s solar-powered automatic systems (arriving on the Crocus website soon, we hope) work at their best when the sun is out: which, coincidentally, is when your plants most need watering. The pump goes into the water butt, and the panels fuel the motor: cue plenty of water, when your plants need it, at regular intervals. Job done.

Fancy basket hangers: Vertical gardening is still a great solution for space-strapped gardeners: when you run out of room on the floor, just go up.

Edible hanging baskets are a great way of using walls to best advantage: chillies do well in them, especially against a sunny house wall, or there’s always tumbling tomatoes with a little basil for flavouring.

This chic bracket hanging system, held in place with a suave little frog clinging to the wall, handles several baskets at once – multitask by adding bird feeders if you want. Perfect for putting the smallest of wall spaces to work.

Newspaper pots: Loo roll inners have one major drawback. There’s only so much loo roll a family (even one with three girls in it) can use: so you’re always running short.

Instead, make your own out of newspaper. They work in just the same way, as you just plant your seedling, paper pot and all, into the ground.

Paper rots, roots grow away, plant settles in without so much as a second’s check to growth.

The only thing is, you need something sturdy to wrap the newspaper round and you can never find just the right thing for the job. Well: here’s just the gadget you need. Wrap newspaper round, tuck in the ends, fill with compost and plant. Couldn’t be simpler.

Five star insect accommodation: Oh look, all right, I know you’re supposed to make your own on a long creative afternoon with the kids and some sticky-back plastic and attractive odds and ends you’re supposed to magically find lying around the house.

But oh I did think this insect hotel was a particularly pretty one. It provides shelter for all sorts of pollinating and pest-eating friendly bugs for the garden: ladybirds, butterflies, lacewings and bees (though I did notice also earwigs, which are perhaps less welcome: but you can’t be picky when you’re being wildlife-friendly, I suppose).

If it helps salve your parenting conscience, get the kids to watch it and count how many bugs they find crawling in and out. That should be good for an hour’s babysitting: now, where’s that G&T?

Dense, sturdy and evergreen: a rosemary bush is the backbone of any herb garden

Was there ever a herb that gave so much and asked so little in return as rosemary?

I wouldn’t be without it. I’ve grown it every which way: in my last garden, I trimmed three rosemary bushes into little hedges wrapped round the foot of some trellis. In this garden, I’ve inherited a big blowsy bush from the previous owner and I’m hunting for a prostrate rosemary to drape becomingly over the edges of my rocky herb garden.

A single imposing bush – they reach 2m high left to their own devices - grown in a sunny, free-draining spot gives you armfuls of fragrant stems: far more than you could ever use. We make great cushions of it in roasting trays and cook the Sunday joint of lamb on top so the meat becomes infused with its spicy essence. If you burn it on barbecues - laid on top of the charcoal – you’ll do the same thing to kebabs and chops and scent the air, too.

Rosmarinus officinalis, to give it its proper name, is one of the Mediterranean herbs, dense, wiry, robust and self-sufficient. It’s related to mints, though its needle-like silvery-green leaves look more like they should belong to a conifer.

It’s been around since at least Mediaeval times: in the late 1340s Philippa of Hainault, wife of Edward III, snapped it up for her herbery of unusual flowering plants, collected from all over the world. She found her rosemary in Antwerp, or rather her mother spotted it and brought her home some cuttings.

Elegant prostrate rosemary is at its best tumbling over walls in a waterfall of blue

Since then it’s been woven through the history of British gardening: it was one of the herbs used to form elaborate knot gardens, woven over and under hyssop and box and thyme, and Henry VIII grew them in great long beds alongside lavender. In fact in the 16th century a visitor to Hampton Court described rosemary ‘nailed to the walls so as to cover them entirely’ – a way of growing the herb that surely deserves to be rediscovered.

The name comes from the Latin ros, meaning dew, and marinus – sea; thought to refer to the fact that it often needs no more than the water carried on the air to survive, although there are stories of Aphrodite having rosemary draped around her shoulders as she emerged from the sea.

It’s also known as Rose of Mary, as the flowers were meant to have been turned blue by the Virgin Mary spreading her (blue) cloak over a previously white-flowered bush. It has connotations of friendship and faithfulness, love (it’s often presented to guests at weddings) and youth: washing your face with rosemary water is said to keep your skin young and supple.

The essential oil carried in those rigid leaves is a powerful thing. Just a little flavours a stew or a soup: don’t forget to remove the sprig after cooking, though, as it keeps that fearsome rigidity right to the end. You can use it to flavour vinegars and oils, biscuits and stuffings.

Rosemary flowers are pretty, adored by bees - and edible, looking lovely in salads

It’s also a powerful medicinal herb: a mug of rosemary tea (take a sprig and steep in a mug of boiling water for five minutes) is said to improve your memory and may even stave off Alzheimers, for a while at least. It’s also said to help soothe depression and anxiety, tiredness, headaches and aching muscles: ‘Hungary water’ – a distilled water of rosemary – was invented to restore the paralysed limbs of a Queen of Hungary.

It is a little wayward and wild in its habits; in a way, it’s at its best untamed and exultant, eventually forming ancient gnarled and twisted trunks as beautiful as any sculpture. But, if you must, it can be trimmed, straight after flowering: my hedge was made of ‘Miss Jessop’s Upright’, which as the name suggests grows almost fastigiate in its determination to hit the vertical, and very easy to trim to shape.

Look out for ‘Benenden Blue’, with the most intense of blue flowers, and the broader-leafed ‘Tuscan Blue’. There’s also a white-flowered form, R. officinalis var. albiflorus, and several pink ones. R. officinalis Prostratus Group, rising to around 30cm before falling in a graceful cascade, is the one for draping over walls: it’s said to be more tender than most (rosemary is not 100% at the best of times and will turn up its toes in very harsh winters) so choose a sheltered spot.

January salads: fennel, sorrel, onion leaves, daylily leaves and a snippet of parsley root

When I took up the challenge set by Michelle at Veg Plotting to find salads to eat from my garden every week of this year, it took a little while for the penny to drop that she was starting the challenge at the beginning of the year. Logical, you might think, until it occurs to you that it is January.

This most difficult of months in the veg garden means my salad pickings have been – let’s face it – a bit thin. If you’re efficient you’ve got greenhouses and coldframes packed to the gunwhales with winter salad mixes you sowed in September last year, growing, perhaps more slowly, but enough for you to pick a goodly meal.

In an emergency, of course, you can always try sprouting seeds: microgreens, grown on a windowsill, make deliciously different salad ingredients (I tried this last year: radish sprouts and pea shoots were my firm favourites).

But for now, caught on the hop, I have to fall back on what I can find in my garden that’s already there.

Feathery, airy bronze fennel leaves are exquisite to eat right through the year

Normally salads are the ultimate in grow-your-own fast food: sown every couple of weeks, up within days, pickable (just) within a fortnight.  They last all of a month or two, then they’re gone – eaten, bolted or just a bit too mature for enjoying raw.

Wouldn’t it be great, I started thinking, if you had plants which produced salads for a bit longer. Even better: over winter. And certainly into next year.

And the more I looked, the more I discovered that there are more perennial salad ingredients out there than you’d think. In fact, I’ve amazed myself: with literally no effort, I’ve been able to pick something for salads every week of this month.

If you widen the net to include things like corn salad (so plentiful and prolific you’re never without it even though it’s strictly speaking an annual) and young leaves picked from winter veg, you can add kale, beetroot tops and the very tiniest chard leaves, too. Colourful, as well as delicious!

Ten of the best Perennial Salads:

Sorrel: to be used in moderation, as they have a really powerful flavour. French sorrel is big, beefy and green; red-veined sorrel is altogether more refined, with burgundy veins. Both carry young leaves right through winter and taste sharply lemony and tangy.

Fennel: this deliciously aniseedy herb carries a frothy tuft of young growth right through winter: bronze fennel in particular looks gorgeous sprinkled sparingly in with larger leaves

Garlic: instead of pulling all your garlic in August, leave a few in at the end of the row to overwinter. Then at this time of year you can be snipping the slenderest shoots like chives to sprinkle on salads. This works well with overwintering onion shoots, too.

Salad burnet: evergreen Sanguisorba minor is generously productive and so low-growing you can tuck it in around other things; pick the smallest, youngest leaves as older ones are too tough. The flavour is fresh and subtle, a little like a nutty cucumber.

Garlic cress: hard to get hold of but worth tracking down, Peltaria alliacea is another evergreen herb with a spicy, garlicky, almost mustardy taste.

Mint: as we all know, mint grows like billy-o through most of the season and it’s all you can do to keep it in check. At this time of year, though, it dies down to a little basal foliage of tiny, tender leaves: sprinkled on salads, these are just delicious.

Wild rocket: stronger (even stronger?) than the related and more familiar salad rocket, this is a robust little herb that comes back year after year. It dies down in winter, but you’ll keep it going later (and start it growing earlier) by covering with a cloche.

Horseradish: another salad ingredient to use sparingly, and only the very youngest of leaves as they get poisonous as they mature.  A peppery flavour, with quite a kick.

Scorzonera: This useful perennial vegetable produces long black roots that taste of artichokes, but you can also pick the leaves when young: a little bland in flavour, but pleasant with other spicier ingredients to pep them up (the flowers later in the year are edible, too).

Daylily leaves: every veg garden should have a daylily (Hemerocallis) or two: the flower buds are crunchy and sweet, like a cross between peas and lettuce. Most varieties keep some leaves through winter: pick them young and fresh but don’t overdo it, as they’re laxative.

(Potato and Root Parsley soup-stew)

Deciding what you do with your root parsley once you’ve grown it is easy: you just plump for one of its multiple identities and use it just like you would parsnips, or carrots (or parsley, if you’re using the tops). We had ours roasted alongside the Sunday joint, and very delicious it was too.

But to pay true homage to this most Slavic of vegetables, you need to cook it Eastern European style. It’s jolly cold east of, say, Austria, so it’s no surprise that the local cooking involves a lot of hearty stews and warming soups: inner insulation, you might say.

This one is about as hearty and warming as it gets: it also makes the most of the many virtues of parsley root, using both its underground roots and its topknot of fresh green parsley. I can’t make up my mind whether it’s a soup or a stew (you can make it with the emphasis on either) but whatever, it’s a filling, nourishing and delicious lunch that’ll set you trudging out onto the snow-lashed plains with a glow in your cheeks.

2 parsley roots (or if you happen not to be growing parsley root this year, just use smallish parsnips - and you’ll also need to get yourself a bunch of fresh parsley)
1 onion
1 carrot
1kg (about 2 1/2 lbs) potatoes
1.2 l (2 pts) chicken stock
225g (8oz) bacon
salt and freshly-ground black pepper

Start by preparing all your veg.

Trim the parsley roots, removing the tops, then peeling and dicing them. Top and tail the carrot and dice that too (peel if it’s old-ish, otherwise leave the skin on) and scrub your potatoes before dicing them skin and all. Finally peel and chop the onion.

Put the whole lot into a big pan along with the chicken stock, then bring to the boil. Turn the heat down to a simmer, and cook gently for about 20 minutes until the veg are tender.

While they’re cooking, chop the root parsley tops (or fresh parsley if you’re using parsnips) finely. Also cut the bacon into small pieces (if you can find lardons in your local shop, these save you a bit of work) and dry-fry them in a frying pan for about 10 minutes until they’re lightly browned. Remove from the heat and set aside.

At this point, you can decide whether you want it to be a soup or a stew. If you want a soup, put the cooked vegetables through a blender and whizz for a minute or so till they’re nicely creamy. Then return to the pan. If you want a stew – just leave them as they are.

Add the bacon to the vegetables, then sprinkle in the parsley and season to taste with salt and pepper. Give the whole thing a good stir, and simmer again for another five minutes or so before ladling into a big generous bowl.

Above ground it's parsley...

If there was ever a vegetable which couldn’t make up its mind, this is it.

It might be a parsley: and then again, maybe it’s a parsnip. On a good day, it could be a carrot.

The identity crisis even affects its common name: take your pick from root parsley, rock selinen, Hamburg parsley, Dutch parsley (good grief, it can’t even decide which country it comes from. Actually, it turns out to be Czechoslovakia) parsley root or just ‘that bloody thing that doesn’t know what it is’.

But all this general confusion plays beautifully into the hands of us veg gardeners. Because a veg that’s trying its hand at being several different things can be everything at once – and you get the best of all worlds.

Root parsley is definitely parsley (it’s Petroselinum crispum, but with a var tuberosum on the end betraying those swollen parsnip-like roots). But it’s a parsley that – like a parsnip – stays in the ground through most of the winter.

The luxury of having plenty of parsley to go and snip from the garden even in December and January can’t be overstated. I always have a bit of trouble keeping conventional parsley happy indoors: I think it’s too warm for it, so it grows more leggy than leafy, and besides I have a habit of forgetting to water it.

But this winter I’ve been able to pop into the veg garden and snip myself a few sprigs from each plant whenever I feel like it (don’t fleece them or they won’t have enough left to keep themselves going).

It’s a little coarser than your Italian flat-leaved summer parsley, with a slightly stronger flavour, but as long as you use a little less than you would normally it makes a very respectable substitute.

Then when you feel like it, you simply dig up the roots and use them just like you would parsnips, or carrots, or turnips for that matter.

...and below ground, it's a parsnip (and I'm about as successful in growing it straight)

They are much more delicate, whiter and smaller than parsnips – about 15cm long, and nowhere near as fat – but to my mind that’s a distinct advantage. I find a lot of my parsnips are hard, inedible core which needs removing before you can enjoy the root at its best: no such problem with root parsley.

The flavour is where this vegetable stops being like a parsnip and starts being more like a carrot. It’s sweet, tender, without any of the earthiness of a parsnip - rather like a carrot that’s been cooked with parsley for flavouring. It’s intriguingly, deliciously different.

I sowed mine in modules in spring, then potted them on a bit before planting them outside. I would imagine it wouldn’t be too troublesome to sow direct outdoors if you prefer. It doesn’t seem to have inherited the problems with germination for which parsley (and parsnips) are notorious, either.

After that it grows like a parsnip: in other words, it needs a good long spell in the ground to form those lovely little white roots.

Unlike parsnips (though like parsley) it’s happy to grow in the shade and are almost ridiculously trouble-free: mine spent most of their summer overshadowed by the rampant seeding radishes next door which I hadn’t realised would grow so big (I like their peppery, crunchy green seedpods). The root parsley didn’t mind a bit - they were just as good when I uncovered them as if they’d had the place to themselves.

If you’re strapped for space, and wondering whether you have room for parsley and parsnips and carrots this year, this may just be the answer. And even if you have all the room in the world, it’s worth growing for that intriguingly unusual flavour and easy-going nature. All in all, for a schizophrenic vegetable, it’s pretty nice to have around.

My future berry patch: it may not look very promising at the moment, but you wait.

No kitchen garden is complete, I’d argue, without a very large quantity of fruit as well as vegetables.

I’m not sure what puts people off growing fruit - it’s ridiculously easy, especially if you compare it to, say, preventing spinach from bolting - yet it’s usually an afterthought, with the possible exception of strawberries. But just growing veg is like living life in black and white: you’re missing a whole other dimension to your gardening life.

Berries dripping with blood-red juice, apples still warm from the sun, pears so juicy you have to eat them over the sink: fruit in the garden is the definition of luxury. You can be as poor as a church mouse and still live like a king if you grow fruit. It brings out your romantic, indulgent side, making you generous to yourself and those closest to you with sumptuous treats and illicit excesses of crumbles and pies and tarts and icecream.

I’m gradually repopulating my garden with fruit, and so far things are going well: we have the annual treat of three trees’ worth of apples, and my previously ailing ‘Conference’ pear produced a bumper crop last year. I’ve begun work (slowly) on planting what I’m optimistically calling the orchard on top of the hill: so far, so pathetic, with just one medlar and one quince, but I’m adding more each year.

But the most exciting bit is starting this year. I have a little spit of land, about 5m by 7.5m (that’s 16 x 25ft to you oldies) between my greenhouse and the wall of the garage which doubles up as my garden shed. And it’s just the right size for a berry patch.

It’s roughly rectangular, so I fancied something a bit more formal this time. I knew I didn’t want the usual fruit cage; there’s nothing wrong with them, it’s just that I suffer from delusions of grandeur and I’m after a fruit cage that doesn’t look like a fruit cage. I’m thinking tall slender posts with copper pipes between them, and swags of rope from a central point to hold the netting up.

Inside, I had in mind a geometric design, rather like a potager. These are very easy to draw up, given a little graph paper and a pencil: I did mine on the kitchen table.

Yes, of course I could have just done the traditional thing and made beds either side of a central path. I’d probably have given myself a lot less hassle that way.

But though it may seem odd to be ‘designing’ a kitchen garden layout, actually it makes the whole space so much more inviting, interesting and just downright beautiful. And that means you want to be in it: which means your garden is loved and cherished in a way a practical but visually dull space is not.

There’s absolutely no reason why a kitchen garden can’t be just as well laid out as an ornamental one, and once you’ve taken that on board, the possibilities for growing fruit and veg become downright exciting.

There is just one rule for designing a garden, and that stays more or less the same whatever you’re doing: keep it simple, stupid. I began by drawing some complicated fiddly thing with a diamond in the middle but that left me with lots of funny triangular corner beds. Then I tried a rather grand design with a sweeping semi-circle at the back: nope, not enough width, and besides, it would have been a nightmare to build and obscured the garage window, which is kind of attractive.

Given that the entrance is over towards one corner, I had to have diagonal paths: I also wanted growing space all round the edges, as I’m planning espaliered cherry trees (perfect for growing under netting: the birds get the lot otherwise).

I also needed a central space for a raised bed, or maybe a pot, so I can grow blueberries: my soil is unrelentingly alkaline, and my favourite fruit is stubbornly acid-loving. So my only option is to put some in containers of ericaceous compost. Luckily they adapt well to container life.

My central higher posts (the ones the swags of ropes will hang from) also had to go in the middle: so that more or less set me off on the design.

Here (with apologies for the lousy quality of the drawing) is what I came up with.

(click on the image for a larger version)

Designing your garden – working through the practicalities of what must go where, how you’re going to get from A to B (and back again), how you will reach your plants and – most importantly of all – where you can fit in your favourites – is the first step to creating a successful outdoor space. Even if all you want are rows of rectangular beds, a drawing will help you work out how wide your paths will be, where the shed will go and what you’re going to put in the shady spot where nothing much will grow.

It’s so much better to think through all these things well before you start chopping your ground up and laying paths all over the place: mistakes, or just the realisation you’re going about it all the wrong way, are so much more easier to put right on paper. Take the time now, write it all down, and you’ve got a blueprint from which everything else follows – and you can watch your dream turn into reality.

Next month: time to get to work. I’ll be stripping back what’s there now and starting to put in the bones of the garden.

I don’t know about you, but I’m getting itchy. It’s one of those turning points in the gardening year: like in March when you start sowing seeds in earnest, or September when you clear your beds and the new season really begins. Now, the end of the old year and the unveiling of the new, is when I start getting twitchy, with all that untapped promise ahead and, no doubt, unforeseen trials.

It’s a time to think, hard, about how last season went, and see if you can’t do things better this time around. I try to avoid New Year’s Resolutions if at all possible, since I almost always forget what they are by the 10th anyway and even if I write them down I generally realise by March that I will never keep the garden free of the kids’ toys or get round to hoeing the veg beds every week without fail or resist sowing too much seed yet again this year.

However that’s not quite the same as resolving to learn a little from the discoveries, experiments and outright mistakes of 2011. So I’ve taken a little look back at what went right last year, so I can have a little inner smug-fest and also try to remember to do it again like that this year; and though it’s not quite as likely to give me a warm tingly feeling, I also take stock of all the things that went wrong. Apart from anything else it helps if I think there’s a point to all my little catastrophes, if only to make sure nothing like that ever happens again.

An awful lot of my post-2011 conclusions seem to be about tomatoes, which probably means everything else got along more or less OK. Though that might be just because I’ve forgotten; that’s the worst thing about mistakes. You only remember you meant not to do that again when you’re actually doing it again. And it’s going horribly wrong. Just like it did last year.

Things I have learned this year:

French shallots are the only ones worth growing. I have now tried ’Echalote Grise’ and ‘Hative de Niort’ and they were both a revelation. Big, fat, deliciously-flavoured, and one of those veg you kind of want to show off to your friends (but don’t dare for fear of losing them all – the friends, that is, not the veg). I’ve also tried Pikant, Red Sun and Golden Gourmet: perfectly respectable and perfectly reliable (Red Sun is the best of the three); but not a patch on the wow-factor of their Gallic cousins.

Cherry tomatoes need protection from birds if you grow them outdoors. My heirloom variety ‘Sweet Pea Currant’ was stripped of every single bright red bead this year. Lovely plants though.

Sprouts really do need staking. My plants were giants this year - the best ones I’ve ever produced – but ended up at a 45° angle because I didn’t realise they got quite that tall, never having grown very good ones before, and failed to stake them properly. Lesson learned.

Things I won’t be doing again:

Growing anything in grow bags. The whole thing was hugely unsatisfactory. For anyone interested in the result of my grow bag trials earlier this year: the best support was string wrapped round the roots (though they did have an irritating habit of snapping later in the year, so I think nylon string rather than jute). The single growbags cut in half and containing two plants were the only ones which produced passable results: even doubled-up growbags still didn’t do the biz, though with ring culture pots they were better. And if you really have to grow in these benighted systems – and you have my deepest sympathy – then water, water, water, or it just isn’t worth even starting.

Overcrowding the greenhouse. I always get overenthusiastic and plant far too many tomato plants in my greenhouse. This is Not a Good Idea. It’s fine while they’re little, but when they grow up they crowd each other out, it’s hellish trying to get into the back row to water and you can never get enough food into them to keep them happy. So from now on, it’s no more than 7-8 plants to a 6x8ft greenhouse. I still have no idea how I’m going to force myself to stick to this one.

Growing runner beans. I’m sorry; I know they’re an allotment staple and a Great British Vegetable. But I have tried dozens of varieties now, and picked them at all stages of development, and I still haven’t found one that doesn’t knot itself between your teeth when you’re trying to eat it. And when you’ve got something as string-free and delicious as a climbing French bean instead, you’ve got to ask yourself why?

Things I want to do for the first time this year:

Try some new tomatoes: actually I’m thinking about doing tomato trials a bit like my annual potato experiments (now a bit of a family institution, though rather hit-and-miss in 2011. Better varieties planned for 2012). There are so many wonderful tomatoes out there, and I’ve tried only a handful: and here, as with potatoes. taste is all. So watch this space: I will report back.

Get to grips with achocha: Mine was a bit of a disaster this year, mainly because I totally forgot to plant them out in time and they got too rootbound to do well after that. However they started like rockets and were lovely healthy little plants so I’m sure they’re worth another try.

Produce some salad for every day of the year: there is a challenge being hatched by my good friend over at Veg Plotting in which several of us fanatical growers will be trying to produce year-round salad. I don’t do too badly most years and have something to pick from March to around late October; but I want to navigate the doldrums which inexplicably hit in mid-August each year, and get my timings right for winter too (usually I sow too late – so nothing gets going till spring – or too early, so everything’s over by November). I’m hoping that with a little help from my friends, this will be the year I finally crack this particular nut.

So here’s to 2012: may all your carrots grow straight, may frost kiss the shoulders of your parsnips and may sun shine on your gardening from dawn to dusk (but not so much that you need to do extra watering ). Happy New Year!

A POINSETTIA! Are you mad?

Right. Just for the record: I use only Felco no. 9 ‘clippers’ (secateurs to you, mate), and I’ve already got three trowels and two forks, if you don’t count the one I lost the other week (I have a feeling it may turn up next time I flip the compost heap). All are beautifully worn to fit my hands and my hands only. I have absolutely no need of poinsettias.

You see the problem?

OK then, let’s try something more specific. What about a plant for that fruit garden you know (because I’ve been banging on about it for so long) I’m planning to build this winter?

Another minefield. If you turn up on my doorstep with a nice healthy blackcurrant ‘Ben Sarek’, for example, while outwardly I shall be delighted and very, very polite, inwardly I shall be wailing in distress, as now I shall have to find garden room for a dwarf-ish little blackcurrant suitable for small gardens when I want big, beefy ‘Ben Gairn’ or perhaps ’Ben Lomond’. And I haven’t even broken ground yet so what am I going to do with the damn thing while I get around to the heavy-labour digging I was hoping to put off till February?

And don’t even try to buy me the cooking apple trees I’ve wanted to plant in the top orchard without being prepared to run through the conclusions from my weeks and weeks of research weighing up heritage varieties against yield, the fairly exposed position and peculiar soil conditions I have, and comparing the relative merits of different pollinating groups.

You see, we gardeners are a very, very pernickety bunch.

However: there are some presents which are safe: gifts to gladden any veg gardener in the land, however eccentric, over-researched or just downright eclectic their requirements for that particular growing year may be. So if, with a week to go, you’re still dithering over the perfect Christmas present for the gardener in your life, try one of these.

Proper terracotta rhubarb forcers

You don’t even need to force rhubarb on a regular basis to want one of these gracing your garden. We all covet them: very few of us have them.

Proper glass cloches

Ditto.

Heritage seeds

Don’t whatever you do choose them yourself: you’ll pick the wrong ones for sure. No: simply sign them up to the Heritage Seed Library, part of the charity Garden Organic, and you’ll be giving them access to possibly the most exclusive seed catalogue there is, full of varieties you can’t buy anywhere else. You can even adopt a veg on their behalf, too, helping preserve varieties that might otherwise be lost.

A garden planner

No, no, no: not one of those diary thingies that are full of sections devoted to stuff you don’t do and don’t leave nearly enough room when it’s something you really need to make a note of. I mean an online garden planner. I’ve used GrowVeg.com for years: for a modest subscription you can draw up a plan of your veg garden, fill it in with whatever veg you fancy and it’ll even help you sort out your crop rotation the next year too.

Warm feet

There’s nothing more dispiriting than trudging around the veg garden in the depths of winter feeling your toes slowly lose feeling and wondering if you’ll be able to bear the pain of them defrosting without screaming. You have three options:

• welly warmers (faux fur - you have a choice between leopardskin and chinchilla – for ultimate snuggle value)
• wheat bags – heat in the microwave before setting out and they release their heat gradually for ages
• and if funds stretch to it… a posh pair of very good-quality lined wellie boots.

Something to listen to

I don’t know about you but when I’m doing a long sesh in the garden I like to do it with a radio on in the background somewhere. Nothing that’s going to disturb the peace: just the soothing strains of Desert Island Discs or a little ’80s New Romantic (that’s probably more than I want to give away about my musical tastes, so we’ll move on). Top of my list for this year is a solar-powered radio to follow me around the garden and keep me company as I weed.

Something to read:

There are so many books out there and many of them tell you what you already know: but on my wish-list for this year has to be ‘Our Plot’, designer Cleve West’s homage to his West London allotment, ‘A Taste of the Unexpected’ by Mark Diacono – guaranteeing a few new arrivals on the veg plot next year; and a timely tome from salad grower extraordinaire Charles Dowding, ‘How to Grow Winter Vegetables’. Or for something completely different: the hugely enjoyable and fascinating ‘A New Orchard and Garden’ and ’The Country Housewife’s Garden’,  from 17th-century gardener and author William Lawson.

Some après-gardening

Oh my… when you’ve overdone it in the garden again, you really know about it. Time to put things right. A mug of fresh coffee;  a long soak in a deep, hot bath (candles optional); hands repaired with rich, nourishing cream and feet made toasty warm in lavender-scented socks.  Now that would make my best Christmas ever.