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This week in Stephanie's Kitchen Garden we will be sowing parsnip seeds in our allotment raised beds. It's a little early in the season to sow them but with the mild conditions it is worth doing. We will make a successional sowing at the end of February. We always have great success with our parsnips in a raised bed. Year after year they reward us with big fat parsnips for our Christmas dinner. We will also be sowing broad beans, peas, chard, sweet peas and spinach under cover in the greenhouse.

March has seen the Kitchen Garden emerge from the long winter into spring and the burst of growing activity that it brings. We have experienced a very dry month in Stephanie's Kitchen Garden with some lovely spells of sunshine. However the temperatures have struggled and it is only now, at the end of the month that the warmth of the sun is beginning to be felt.

August has been a month of wall to wall sunshine in Stephanie's Kitchen Garden, with lovely hot temperatures and very little rainfall; traditional harvest weather. Gardeners and crops alike have thrived in it, although both have needed regular watering, particularly on the days of blistering heatwave conditions!

A top advisor at flagship gardening organisation the Royal Horticultural Society has claimed that global warming is rendering reference books out of date.

The 2010 version of our pest control guide ran to reprints galore so we're expecting the 2011 tome - The Little Book of Least Wanted Pests - to be just as successful. The 24 pages are crammed with pest control solutions and advice from pest expert Julian Ives and you'll find the organic answers to problems from A (ants) to almost Z (whitefly), along with plenty of tips to make your plants stronger and more pest and disease resistant. It's a must-have guide to accompany you through the growing year

There is nothing better than picking - and of course eating - fresh strawberries from your own garden and with Wimbledon approaching it is strawberries and cream all round!

Having just spent an enjoyable morning in shirt sleeves digging over the potato bed, it is hard to believe the weather warnings for sub-zero temperatures and snow that are forecast for our part of the UK over the coming weekend. The sun is watery today but it's providing some warmth and combined with the birdsong is giving the day a distinctively spring-like feel.

A lot of tidying in the Kitchen Garden this week, lots of leaves thanks to the high winds, a Greenhouse to clean and lots of tools that need some cleaning.

We have veered from extreme arctic weather and deep snow to gardening in our shirtsleeves in the sunshine. Gardeners and garden have both been exposed to some interesting conditions for the time of year - and survived!

November is probably my least favourite month of the gardening year. No matter what your efforts, the garden always seems to look untidy; littered with fallen leaves and the skeletons of old crops. Spring and summer suddenly seem like a lifetime away and the short days seem to plunge us into constant darkness. It would be so easy to retire to the house and emerge again in the springtime. This, of course, never happens.

As February draws to a close, the Spring still feels as far away as ever. Despite a handful of sunny, warm days, the month has been mostly cold and grey. Storm Doris made her presence felt by taking down a tree in the surrounding gardens but left the Kitchen Garden largely unscathed apart from a few scattered fir cones and twigs.

Winter's late blast does not affect propagation and the Potato chitting debate continues

With fingers burning from icy damp and numb toes I grapple with the monthly chores in the Kitchen Garden. All sense of decorum is lost in the scrabble to stay warm

After the season's festivities I was itching to get back in the garden, breathing fresh air and away from the television and sofa, alas I was thwarted by the unrelenting cold spell we endured.

A mystery is unfolding in the Kitchen Garden during the long hot days of the summer - just who is responsible for eating the runner bean plants?

Sowing the Seeds for 2006 -It's going to be a busy year in the Kitchen Garden and I've already started sowing our Organic vegetable seeds

Seventeen degrees celcius certainly seems to indicate that Spring is finally here, and the Kitchen Garden is starting to awaken!

At last the harvest has begun in earnest in the Kitchen Garden. It feels like it's been a long time coming as we are obviously delayed this year due to the weather. This month we have been harvesting kale, sprouting broccoli, cucumbers, tomatoes, strawberries, salad leaves, spring onions, rocket, rhubarb and new potatoes. Picking lots of delicious organic produce is so satisfying and the very best part of kitchen gardening.

Setting up a store cupboard full of your own home-produced preserves is such a marvellous way to capture the full flavour of what you have grown that it far surpasses anything you can ever buy in a supermarket.

The last few days of February are at last drawing to a close and we enter my absolute favourite time of the year. The days are getting ever longer and the sun has some real warmth to it now. The promise of the growing season stretches out ahead of us as the green shoots of spring begin to emerge.

The garden has undertaken a dramatic transformation this month; from the bare brown soil of winter to the sea of green that the warm spring sunshine brings. The weather has been very mild this month and plants all around the garden are putting on lots of new growth.

The greenhouse is the central focus of our Kitchen Garden at the moment, as it is home to tray upon tray of seedlings and small plants.

Here at Stephanie?s Kitchen Garden this week we will be starting the war on slugs and snails. According to recent press reports, this year is predicted to be a bad one when it comes to our slimy enemies, so we will be taking steps to ensure they don?t get the upper hand in our garden.