Fruit Cages are proving to be very popular additions to the garden as grow your fruit and vegetable enthusiasts come round to the idea that you can actually harvest some of the crops you grow if you protect them from birds and other pests with a taste for something sweet in the garden.

We've got a great viewpoint on this increase in popularity as we both design and manufacture fruit and vegetable cages; from the smallest ground-hugging strawberry cage right up to the most ornate decorative walk-in fruit cage, as used at the RHS gardens in Wisley, no less.

But it's not only the framework we supply; oh no, we can provide and offer advice on a huge range of netting with which to cover your cage - from the finest grade insect mesh netting which excludes even the smallest of beetles, right up to an 8cm (3") square anti-pigeon mesh for airborne winter raids.

Which brings me nicely onto winter, and the relationship between fruit cages and snowfall. These two have never been the best of friends and the recent heavy snow which blanketed the country (with the exception of the coast of Norfolk and Suffolk, to the disappointment of many children!) has brought home just how much of a problem snow can be.

Below, you'll find a couple of pictures which aptly illustrate the varying strength of our cages. We've featured a walk-in decorative cage - designed to withstand snowfall and doing just that - and a vegetable cage, which really should be taken down and stored for the winter but at the very least have the netting replaced with something larger.

We're always offering winter advice along the lines of remove your roof netting from your cage and leave it open if you've nothing going on inside, but replace the roof net with the aforementioned anti-pigeon netting if there's a few greens, such as cabbages, spending the winter outside. There's normally a glint in the eye of every hungry pigeon once they clock the green lushness of winter veg in an otherwise grey landscape.

But onto those images we promised. Firstly, a decorative steel fruit cage of the walk-in variety - courtesy of Clare Bevan - located in deepest Surrey. These cages are designed to withstand snowfall due in the main to their sweeping rooflines and incredibly strong steel framework, as you can see...

And then, thanks to Molly Stewart, the Build-a-Ball vegetable cage - covered with 7mm butterfly netting, which should really be tucked up in a shed somewhere and not braving the winter wastelands of Gloucestershire - again, as you can see...

I'm sure you'll agree these dramatic images certainly demonstrate the difference between the durability of fruit cages and we're indebted to both Clare and Molly for providing us with these pictures.

We're also sure that he recent cold snap gave rise to plenty of other wintery photographic opportunities in the garden and we'd love to see your images; mail them to me and I'll set up a gallery!

The popularity of growing your own vegetables is soaring, with waiting lists as long as your arm for allotments and community groups establishing new vegetable plots asnd gardens all over the country.

It's a positive to come from the global economic downturn, as more and more people look at ways to trim their family budgets and gain a new hobby at the same time, and particularly heartening is the story of a group of residents in East London who, with the help of their housing trust Circle 33, have created a new Kitchen Garden.

Astonishingly, the garden was built by 40 residents and the project partners in just a single day and the fact that one of these organisations - Organic Lea, a Lea Valley food growing cooperative - is based in the Lea Valley is quite ironic.

Why? Well, the area around Broxbourne and Cheshunt in Hertfordshire, known as the Lea Valley, used to be 'London's kitchen' where fruit and vegetables were grown under glass and sold at the famous London markets, including Convent Garden. This was no small concern as the area covered by this industry measured 10 miles long by 8 miles wide and during its heyday in the 1920's was the biggest area under glass in the world - making the Guinness Book of Records!

It's good to see a link with this now mainly forgotten industry has been maintained and hopefully the residents of Priory Court Community Centre, just a few miles south of the Lea Valley, will continue to enjoy fresh fruit and vegetables for years to come.

Obtaining heirloom vegetable seed varieties is much easier now thanks to Garden Organic's Heritage Seed Library and if you're really into growing veg and have an interest in preserving the seed types of yesteryear, you'll jump at the chance of being a Seed Guardian!

According to Garden Organic, the role of a Seed Guardian for the heritage library involves raising crops from seed, ensuring the saved seed remains true to type and completing a report into the performance of the crop.

Some guardians become more involved and research the history of the vegetable and variety, along with keeping a photographic record of its progress.

Garden Organic also provide Seed Guardians with full instructions and guidelines - especially useful when crops need isolating to prevent cross-pollination - and insist that potential guardians are not put off by crop failures; there's usually more than one guardian per variety and the seed you'll be supplied with is not the last remaining!

If becoming a Seed Guardian sounds right up your street, you can contact Garden Organic by e-mail or write to them at;

Heritage Seed Library
Garden Organic Ryton
Coventry
Warks
CV8 3LG

It seems that the biggest pest in the garden at this time of year are ants; that's if the letters, e-mails and phone calls pouring into Harrod Horticultural HQ are an accurate indicator!

We've been inundated with requests on how to deter, move on and eradicate these obviously unloved creatures, and it would appear that nests in the lawn rank very highly on your lists of current dislikes.

Although ants nesting in the lawn are unlikely to cause any long term damage, the mounds of spoil they produce when excavating their labyrinth of tunnels are an obstacle to mowers which often smear the excess soil across the grass; ants are a cosmetic pest and, quite understandably, if you've worked hard to create a lush green lawn, you don't want anything to ruin it.

That's why the news that nematode specialist Becker Underwood - responsible for the Nemasys range of products along with Nemaslug, the scurge of all garden slugs - have developed a nematode-based ant product will be extremely well received in gardens throughout the country. The new treatment is known as 'No Ants' and does exactly what it says on the tin. It's specifically designed for use in the lawn environment and, like all Becker Underwood's nematode treatments, is both perfectly natural and completely safe to use around children and pets.

And before ant lovers throw up their hands in horror, it's worth noting that 'No Ants' nematodes don't actually kill the insects but simply irritate them to such a degree they abandon their nest and set up a new home a considerable distance away - hopefully not in your lawn!

If you'd like to know more about ants in the garden environment and discover some other methods of controlling them, visit our extremely helpful 'Ask the Expert' section of our website. You'll find common and more specific gardening questions accompanied by detailed and informative replies - you might even find the answer to a horticultural query that's been baffling you for a while! In the meantime, I'm off to evict some ants from my lawn...

It's the horticultural event of the year - and next week sees the gates of the Royal Hospital in Chelsea swing open once again as the 87th RHS Chelsea Flower Show takes place.

The show, generally acknowledged as the world's leading horticultural event, is expected to attract 157,000 visitors between May 19th and 23rd and will feature over 600 exhibitors and 50 show gardens.

And although the visitors to the show will spend their time admiring the displays and picking up bargins, how many of them will give a thought to the incredible amount of preparation and planning required to produce a successful show? Of course, it's not only on-site that frenzied activity takes place - all over the country growers and exhibitors are working round the clock to ensure their plant specimens and displays are in the best possible condition.

Here at Harrod Horticultural, we know exactly what's involved with planning a successful Chelsea Show and the daily care required to get plants looking their best. Don't get me wrong - we're not trying to produce gold medal winning specimens by any stretch of the imagination, but it still takes some effort to get tomatoes and courgettes, for example, to produce fruit for a certain 5 days in May!

It's not too late to purchase tickets for the show - the RHS can help you with that - and you can come and see for yourself just how successful we've been, as we're at 39 Pavilion Way all week!

The majority of grow your own vegetables grown on allotments and vegetable plots are raised from seed - but if you've ever tried to locate a long forgotten, traditional variety you'll know how difficult it can be!

That's why seed collections, just like Garden Organic's Heritage Seed Library, are so important. The library has been established to conserve and - more importantly - make available heirloom vegetable varieties which have fallen out of the gardening spotlight - giving access to those long forgotten types your parents used to grow!

Garden Organic - the UK's leading charitable gardening organisation - claim to have around "800 open-pollinated varieties" at present, 200 of which are featured in their Seed Catalogue which members of the organisation receive for free. Members can currently choose up to 6 varieties at present although an informal, member-run Seed Swap set-up allows the procurement of further seed types.

Garden Organic carry further details of the Heritage Seed Library on their website - and with a year's membership of the library priced at only £20 (£15 if you take out a full year's membership of Garden Organic), there's no better way to delve back into your seed sowing past!

In my capacity as Harrod Horticultural's 'Ask the Expert' - and that's not a self-proclaimed moniker, it's been bestowed upon me - I receive a plethora of enquiries and queries covering the whole spectrum of fruit and vegetable growing.

One such recent enquiry was from Jo Newton, who asked for advice on her fig tree. You can read Jo's question - and of course my answer in our 'Ask the Expert' section of the website but in the meantime, I thought but might be interested in Jo's own site - especially with Christmas approaching at break-neck speed and your mind bereft of unusual ideas for presents!

Home composting is one of the real growth areas in grow your own gardening, and as a result there's an absolute myriad of composting products on the market - more than enough to baffle any would-be composter!

So which composter should I choose? I can help with that decision up to a point, as I've road-tested quite a few models at our own Kitchen Garden and have knowledge of other versions through my Master Composter activities. But there's one I haven't managed to lay my compost hands on just yet, and that's the wonderfully named Green Johanna.

Dubbed as a 'hot composter' and apparently capable of decomposing usual composting no-no's such as meat, fish and dairy products, the Swedish-made Green Johanna has aroused interest from fellow Master Composters. Just how does it cope with cooked food and bones; are there problems with rodents and how long does it take to produce usable compost are just a few of the questions being aired around the country.

So what I'm really appealing for is for a composter out there with experience of the Green Johanna to tell the rest of us what it's really like? To inform us of any rodent interest; to enlighten us if it does actually digest bones, meat and fish, and to avail us of the quality of compost it produces.

Simply contact me and I'll let the world - ok, anyone who tunes into this blog - know if the Green Johanna deserves a place in the composting Olympics!