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!

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.

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

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...

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!

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!

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!

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!

But here's the problem; the scientists at the Research Centre have added the colour pigment by introducing genes from the flower of the snapdragon, which is naturally abundant in anthocyanins - and this technology most definitely falls into the category of genetic modification, meaning under current legislation the purple tomatoes will almost definitely fail to make it onto supermarket shelves.

Although lab tests on mice have revealved that the creatures are likely to live up to 30% longer than untreated colleagues, the Green Party - vehemently opposed to GM crops - have pointed out that existing fruits and vegetables contain the beneficial pigments (such as beetroot and both black and cranberries) and if eaten as part of the '5-a-day' recommendation, are likely to have similar effects.

However, it's still an interesting development and we can only guess as to when - or if - these manipulated vegetables actually make it onto the market, and with tomatoes proving an extremely popular grow your own crop, it's a sound business move by the scientists!

My visit was all part of an out-of-school-hours initiative set up by Alison Findlay of the RHS and part organised by Allison Copeman, the Enterprise Manager at Sir John Leman High School. The meetings are designed to help teachers who share an interest in gardening and wish to establish a productive garden or patch at their own school and this particular shin-dig was held in the very impressive school garden at John Leman.

Explained Allison; "It is really good to have these twilight sessions to meet staff from other schools who share my interest and passion for getting a garden set up in schools. Often, it gives us a chance to share ideas/problems/good practice etc."

As well as explaining how a school is likely to have an almost unlimited supply of both green (grass clippings from the grounds, fruit and vegetable waste from the kitchens for starters) and brown (paper, cardboard, pencil shavings etc) material, I explained the financial benefits to the school of producing their own compost (school purse strings are normally pulled tight anyway, but an especially pertinent point in the current economic climate) and the problems faced with lack of available landfill sites and the effect on the environment of methane - produced when organic matter is buried.

A very popular section of my talk was the 'Virtual Compost Bin', developed by Garden Organic and used in the Master Composter course. Participants have to categorize different materials which may - or shouldn't - end up in a compost heap and it's a great way of demonstrating the vast selection of ingredients suitable for composting.

So it's thanks to both the Al(l)ison's - Findlay and Copeman - and David Hawkyard (the Norfolk Master Composter Scheme Coordinator)for their help, and hopefully a few school gardens on the Norfolk/Sugffolk border will be compost self-sufficient in the very near future, and we'll all be another step closer to closing the recycling loop!

If you'd like further information on the Master Composter scheme, the 'twilight' sessions held for schools in the north Suffolk area or would like me to visit a school and give a talk, just give me a shout -martin@harrod.uk.com

That's the case at Green Lane Allotments, following the introduction of a batch of manure which appears to have traces of weedkiller present. We recently featured the furore in West Yorkshire, but as Green Lane Allotment Association Chairperson Sue Garrett explained, the story is going countrywide; "It is now basically hitting national headlines as in the Observer this Sunday. Some people visiting my web site have said that they are convinced the contamination is also affected compost and bagged dry manure type of products too. Some sources have complained that they have even bought the stuff from organic farms."

It's quite clear that gardeners around the country need to be fully aware of where any manure they beg, steal or borrow for use in their own gardens or, like Green Lane, on allotment sites and we'll keep you updated with any further developments in this intriguing story!

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!

The water industry watchdog enlisted the help of UK Non-Governmental Organisation and water efficiency experts Waterwise to compile ways of cutting water wastage in the home, in schools and also in the garden.

According to a report on the national website of Wales, the best way to keep your garden green this summer and save water is to invest in a water butt, and other tips include mulching to retain moisture and avoiding planting up thirsty hanging baskets - large containers or pots will require less watering.

We're certainly doing our part in the Kitchen Garden to save water as we've installed ground level micro-irrigation systems and soaker hoses, widely regarded as the most efficient way to get water straight to where it's needed - the soil. We've also used water-retaining liners for our potted companion plants, which should cut down the frequency of watering by 7-10 days.

Full details of the Consumer Council for Water advisory notes can be found on their website, and for further water saving ideas and products for both the garden and greenhouse - including water butts, irrigation kits and ultra-efficient automated systems are readily available from Harrod Horticultural.

Although you can look back and chuckle at your early attempts at gardening, there are hundreds of novice veg growers in exactly the same boat right now, seeking some guidance on how to produce perfect scarlet tomatoes and unblemished lettuces.

So where do you start? Some will reach for the keyboard and fire off an e-mail to a company like ours (and many do); surfing the world wide web is a must; asking green-fingered friends and relatives will be high up on the list; as will speaking to garden-loving neighbours and allotmenteers; and there's certainly no shortage of gardening based TV programmes to advise you what to do.

But what about reference books? A trusty right hand man who can accompany you up the garden and stand by in the potting shed until needed sounds ideal. And we've got a very informative literary garden aid to help you - John Harrison's Vegetable Growing Month by Month.

John's got over 30 years of organic gardening experience to fall back on and his 256 page tome certainly belongs ritght at hand in the potting shed. You'll find chapters on Where to Grow and Preparing to Grow, Planning the Gardening Year and Getting the Most from Your Land, right through to Tools, Compost and Manures and Watering; not forgetting Pests, Problems and Protection.

But don't take my word for it; multi-Gold medal winner at Chelsea, and arguably the country's most successful vegetable grower, Medwyn Williams MBE, has this to say about John's work; 'Having just received John Harrisons book On Vegetable Growing Month by Month, I have to say that it’s definitely going to be a well thumbed volume, particularly by those who want to grow vegetables for the first time.

Everyone will benefit from this book and I found the glossary at the back, which explains gardening terminology in a way that everyone will understand, to be extremely useful. It will certainly have a place on my extensive gardening book shelf.’

John's also penning a series of monthly gardening tips for us; these, coupled with our Kitchen Garden Monthly Updates and Ask the Expert section, should give you all the gardening help you need!