Create a lacewing home

Do you know how to make your garden light up at night, without relying on actual lights? The answer is to create a moonlight garden. But what is a moonlight garden, and what type of plants shine at night? "Moonlight gardening relates to plants that show off their textures, colors and sometimes their silhouettes from dusk into the moonlight hours," said Irene Barber, who coordinates the Adult Horticulture Education Program for the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens in Boothbay, Maine.

Homemade compost is invaluable in the garden – it’s a great soil improver, mulch and growing medium. Compost heaps also provide homes for wildlife, for anything from bumblebees to hedgehogs, slow worms and even hibernating green shield bugs. To make good compost, you need a 50:50 mix of materials that are rich in nitrogen and carbon. Nitrogen comes from lush, green material such as grass clippings. Carbon comes from brown material, such as woody stems and cardboard. For every bucket load of gr

Brassicas form the mainstay of the vegetable plot all year round in the form of summer and winter cabbage, cauliflower, sprouting broccoli, calabrese and Brussels sprouts. Whether you’ve raised your own brassicas from seed or opted for ready-grown seedlings, spring and early summer is the time to plant them out. You Will Need

Potatoes will grow very quickly under warm and moist conditions. When they are 10cm tall, the leafy shoots can be mounded around with soil to their full height, a process known as ‘earthing up’. Earthing up potatoes will increase the length of underground stems that will bear potatoes. This mounding can be repeated once or twice more at 2 – 3 week intervals to ensure the best crop, with the added benefit of smothering any competing weeds. Growing potatoes in a bag? Monty explains how to earth th