My vegetable growing year often seems to go like this:

Early Spring: Sow seeds into pots with great optimism in my heart, remembering last year’s harvest of organic goodies.

Mid Spring: Plant out my seedlings, carefully surrounded with an arsenal of defences to protect them from slugs (more about beating off the slugs in my next post).

Late Spring: Admire and enjoy the first fruits of my Herculean labours: mange tout, spinach, lettuce. And think about the harvest to come: tomatoes, beans, peppers, aubergines, spring onions, strawberries….

Early Summer: Watch the airborne pests descend on my lovely young veg and leave them looking tattered, weak and in some cases, dying.

The good news is that there are some very effective ways of repelling these critters. I’m going to explore some natural, eco-friendly pest deterrents in the next few posts, and I have to say, garlic spray is one of my favourites. It really does act as a natural repellent for a number of insects including aphids, ants, whiteflies, caterpillars, reds spider mites and beetles. It also helps combat slugs and snails.

You will need:

• Spray bottle
• 2 cloves garlic
• 1 litre water
• Blender / food processor (optional)
• Cheese cloth or very fine sieve

There’s no one set way of making garlic spray, so you can experiment to see what suits you best. I use a couple of garlic cloves and either chop them up finely or puree in a food blender with about 300ml water. Pour the mixture into a pyrex jug or bowl and top the mixture up with boiling water – you want about 1 litre in total. Then cover and leave overnight to make sure the garlic has thoroughly infused the water. The next morning, strain the liquid through a piece of muslin or a superfine sieve (I use a really, really fine tea strainer) into a spray bottle. Do make sure you strain the mixture carefully as you don’t want any bits of garlic to clog up the spray nozzle.

The best time to spray your plants is when the weather is dry, in the early evening. Give the affected leaves a good even spray all over, paying particular attention to the underside and folds where insects might congregate. You may want to do a further spray at weekly intervals if necessary, but be aware that the spray also deters garden friends such as ladybirds, so only treat leaves with pests on.

Before I tell you how you can plant trees for free, I thought I’d take a look at just how useful trees are for our ecosystem. They combat climate change by absorbing CO2 emissions while releasing oxygen back into the air. They help prevent soil erosion on hillsides, provide shade in cities and in our back gardens, provide a vital habitat for wildlife, give us wood, filter pollutants out of the air, supply us with food – and they do many other vital things for us and for the planet.

The Committee on Climate Change has recommended the UK begin planting 30,000 hectares (115.8 sq miles) of trees to help meet its goal of cutting all greenhouse gas emissions. You can read more here in this really useful article from the BBC website about the current tree planting efforts in the UK.

So, what can we do to help? The good news is, there are plenty of ways you can get involved in tree planting in the UK and abroad. I’m highlighting two fabulous organisations in this post:

The Woodland Trust protects and campaigns on behalf of the UK’s woods, plants trees, and restores ancient woodland for the benefit of wildlife and people. Established in 1972, they now have over 500,000 members and supporters and more than 1,000 sites, covering over 26,000 hectares, all over the UK. Alongside their work of managing their woodland and campaigning on environmental issues, over the next 10 years, they are aiming to plant 64 million trees.

There are so many ways of getting involved with their work – as a volunteer, you can join a working group, monitor wildlife and record tree health for their research. Why not get involved with their campaigns too? You can also buy native UK saplings from them to plant in your garden, local school, place of work and so on. The Woodland Trust also have a page outlining all the ways you can dedicate trees and wooden benches – as a Christmas present, in memory of a loved one, to mark a significant event in your life, or simply to support their work. Here’s the link.

Another fabulous way of helping plant trees worldwide (and this won’t cost a bean, so if you’re on a low income, there are ways to help out without having to struggle financially), is to use the Ecosia search engine. You can download this search engine and use it in place of Google (or whatever search method you use). Ecosia use the profits from their online advertising (all search engines do this to fund themselves) to plant trees where they are most needed in the world. They have calculated that it takes approximately 45 searches to finance the planting of one tree – that’s not a huge amount! There’s plenty of information on how they work and the different projects they support here.

Sorry if I’ve mentioned the ‘C’ word in August, but it takes a little planning if you want to have an environmentally friendly Christmas. I’m all for enjoying the festive season, and we can do it in a way which isn’t harmful for our planet.

Think of all the plastic involved in Christmas – cracker inserts, wrapping paper (there’s a lot of plastic in Christmas wrapping), presents, Christmas cards, glitter… Here are some great ideas to green up your Christmas and have fun at the same time.

I’m quite into crafts, so I enjoy making eco-friendly Christmas presents. In the picture I have some lip balm (using beeswax from our lovely honeybees), lavender hearts (we have plenty of lavender), beeswax tealights, a gift label made by my very talented stepdaughter and a hand knitted cotton washcloth. I also found some recycled kraft cards to make my own Christmas cards with – I printed them with a lino cut I made, so they didn’t take long to do and they cost 10p each including the envelope. There are so many ideas on the internet for fabulous things you can make that are also environmentally friendly. You could even combine some of them in a lovely gift box.

If you don’t like making things yourself, there are plenty of great crafters out there. Why not support a small, eco-friendly business? I’ve had some fabulous Christmas presents from small businesses, including some beautiful hand thrown teapots and mugs. Charity shops are fantastic for one-off presents. Often the quality of goods you can find in them is brilliant. That’s where this fabulous Christmas stocking came from.

My stepmum came up with one of the best ideas ever – a Secret Santa. We have a big family, and we were spending huge amounts of time and money on gifts for each other that, to be honest, often weren’t really wanted. So now, my stepmum co-ordinates our Secret Santa – we each choose a gift around £50 (set whatever price you want) and she sends the gift idea to another member of the family. We only receive one gift (the children get more) and we know it is something we will really use. My husband and I have used our Secret Santas to buy things like yoghurt makers, sourdough bread equipment, dehydrator for preserving fruit and so on.

There are plenty more ideas for a green Christmas – you can buy plastic free crackers (or make your own – there are kits out there too), recycle wrapping paper or buy eco-friendly paper, wooden toys for young children (rather than plastic). And if you think you’ve got enough ‘things’ – some of our family ask for a donation to their favourite eco-charity rather than a gift.

A few weeks ago, the wheat fields near us were this beautiful shade of greeny blue. Now they’re golden and almost ready to harvest. The seasons come and go so quickly don’t they.

This spring, two of my friends died. One of them had been struggling with motor neurone disease for a couple of years and the other contracted an aggressive form of cancer that took her life in four short months. Both of them were in their early 50s.

Time is running out for all of us. None of us knows how long we will spend in this beautiful world. And it feels as if the clock is ticking on our planet too.

I’ve made a resolution. To make every day count. To be thankful for the beauty and joy in my life, and to use the difficult times for good. If anything, I’m more committed than ever to doing what I can to preserve our planet for the generations after me.

I will follow my dreams with a passion. I’m a writer, and my goal is to finish a novel a year – so far so good with this year’s book. I will make time and space to try new things (basket weaving, making butter, visiting the west coast of Ireland and Lindisfarne are all on my list). Above all, I have vowed to spend time with those around my – my good friends, my family and my lonely elderly neighbours who are sometimes hard work, but who knows, I may be in their position one day. How about you? What are your dreams and goals?

A brilliant way of helping the environment (and you) is to grow fruit trees in your garden. We’ve been planting some over the last few years and we’re now reaping the rewards. We also have fruit bushes we’ve grown from cuttings and strawberry plants that we have been propagating every year. It’s been a bit of a fight though, as the birds love our cherries – and the chickens are very keen on raiding the strawberries.

Last year, I was fed up with looking at empty cherry tree branches, so I made some ‘sleeves’ from some old netting to protect them from pesky predators. Hey presto – fabulous cherries for us, and I did leave a few for the birds too.

The beauty of fruit trees is that they come in all shapes and sizes, so even if you have a small garden, you can still grow some. Look out for dwarf rootstock plants if you need small trees. They will survive perfectly well in pots if you make sure you feed them well, so even if just have a patio, you’re good to go. And, if you have a sheltered garden with a wall that gets plenty of sunshine, you’ll also be able to get away with growing more ‘exotic’ fruit like apricots and peaches in front of it.

Taking cuttings from blackcurrants and redcurrants couldn’t be simpler – just wait until the bushes have lost all their leaves in the winter (so you know the plants are dormant) and then remove stems from the base of the bush – choose the strong healthy ones. I just plant them into a spare space in the garden or into a pot full of earth. For blueberries, take a 6 inch cutting from the end of a stem when the plant is actively growing and place in a pot of compost. You can easily grow blueberries in this country, but you’re better off using ericaceous compost as they need acidic soil. They will need protection from the birds too!

We don’t use any pesticides on our trees. One of our good friends is an apple farmer and we asked him for the best advice for growing our fruit organically. He told us that if we didn’t use pesticides, the young trees would probably get diseases in the first couple of years, but then they would become resistant. That’s exactly what happened, and our trees are now healthy and bear fantastic crops of fruit.

My tomatoes are a wee bit late this year, as I grew them all from seed, and I was slow getting off the mark. They’re looking good, but at this stage they need a good feed to really get them going.

There are plenty of liquid tomato feeds available at garden centres and DIY stores but…many of them come in plastic containers and they have quite a few road miles under their belt.

If you’ve got room, it’s incredibly easy to make your own liquid comfrey feed – cheaper and greener, and due to its high nitrogen content, it’s a highly nutritious plant & vegetable feed – perfect for tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers.

Comfrey is a real wonder herb – it is used in healing salves, to restore lustre and shine to hair. Our chickens loved pecking at the comfrey plants – it’s high in protein, so very good for them. And…our honeybees feed on the flowers in early spring.

A word of warning – comfrey spreads like mad, so you might want to keep it isolated. We’ve grown it in a round flower bed and also on a steep bank at the front of our house, where its long root system has been brilliant for stabilising the earth in the bank. It has beautiful mauve flowers – an added bonus.

To make liquid comfrey feed, just pick the comfrey leaves from the base of the plant (you might want to use gloves as the hairy leaves can irritate). Chop them up and pack them into a bucket or better still, a tub with a lid (we used an old fat ball tub) – it does smell so the lid keeps the aroma contained and stops mosquitoes from laying eggs in the water. Cover the leaves with water – weigh them down with a large stone or old brick – and leave for a few weeks until you can see a brown smelly liquid.

Pour the liquid into a container and store in a cool, dark place (you can top up the leaves with more water for another batch if you like). Dilute the comfrey feed in a ratio of roughly 1 part comfrey liquid to 10 parts water and hey presto! Use as soon as your tomato flowers have set fruit.

You can also use comfrey leaves as a plant mulch and it’s great on the compost heap too. Alternatively, lay comfrey leaves at the bottom of your potato and runner bean trenches for a fantastic boost.