With the soaring popularity in growing your own vegetables and gardening in general, it's hardly suprising that manure is a most sought after commodity!

That's not something you'll hear every day but with more and more people picking up the gardening bug and realising how essential good soil is, coupled with the raised bed growing explosion - where you need to start from stratch - manure is top of a lot of gardener's shopping lists.

However, as our friends at Green Lane Allotments have found to their cost, even the simple task of buying manure can be fraught with difficulties! They've received a batch of contaminated muck and asked us to tell fellow gardeners to be careful when ordering their manure - which of course we're only too glad to do!

If you've any horror stories regarding problems with bought-in compost or organic matter, do let me know by contacting me at martin@harrod.uk.com and I'll tell the world!