We have been discussing where we get our best gardening wisdom from.  A very important source is friends and I have included a note from my friend Cynthia to show you what I mean.

“Spring is in the air, it is veg and salad crop sowing time.   This is also a good time to sow sweet peppers if you have somewhere warm to start them off.  They take a long time to fruit and ripen so an early sowing is an advantage.

I start my broad beans now in modules, as that gives them a head start as well.  It is far to early to sown runner and French beans at the moment, they are best sown in April. Don’t forget to chit your first early potatoes”

In our house we have a few books that we refer to as “Golden Oldies” and we use these all the time.

The first is a book of my father-in-law’s, ‘The Fruit Garden Displayed’ it was first printed in 1951 and it cost 8s 6d, or 45p. We have used the information in the book to prune our plum trees last year and luckily, they are budding.

We still like the DG Hessayon books and his Tree and Shrub Expert is a fave.  I am not so keen on his Greenhouse book though.

My husband loves roses and his best book is ‘Classic Roses’ by Peter Beale.

Finally, our big main reference work is ‘The RHS A-Z encyclopaedia of Garden Plants’, everything you want to know.

I know that nowadays we ‘google’ everything but it is very comforting to go indoors to make a cup of tea, pick up your best gardening book and sit outside in the sun to decide where to place your most recently purchased specimen.