Ellie Philpott

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…