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Listen to Andrew on BBC Radio Suffolk on Saturdays between 12.00 and 2.00pm.

This week, as I still have some space on the vegetable plot, I am going to sow a few turnips. This is an easy vegetable to grow and is excellent as a cooked vegetable or eaten raw in salads. I like to grow Turnip Oasis - a variety I discovered a few years ago that has the surprising taste of a melon when eaten raw in a salad.

The greenhouses are bursting at the seams and I have moved a lot of my bedding plants out into the cold frames to harden them off. Cold frames are a great way of slowing down the growth of plants as well as acclimatising them to outdoor conditions in readiness for planting out at the end of this month. As the weather has been very warm this week it is important that these frames are given as much air as possible so the plants keep cool, avoiding any stress that can be caused through getting overheated.

It is important at this time of year to keep a close eye on peach trees in the garden, as they may show signs of Peach Leaf Curl. Peach Leaf Curl shows up as distorted leaves with ugly red blisters. If this is seen, pick off any affected leaves and burn them or put them in the dustbin immediately. Then spray the tree with a suitable fungicide such as Dithane 945. Spraying now will hopefully stop the spread of this disfiguring disease to the rest of your tree. If you do get Peach Leaf Curl, make a note in the diary for next year to remember to spray these trees just as they are breaking into leaf, as this gives the best method of control - prevention is always better than cure.

My potatoes planted on the allotment a few weeks ago are just poking through the soil. So I have been moulding (earthing) these up. This is easily done, all I do is firstly loosen the soil in between the rows with my Crome, then I pull this loose soil up over the emerging potato using a swan neck hoe gradually moulding (earthing) them up. This will help protect any emerging shoots from frost as well as creating a mound for the new potatoes to form within, protecting them from the sun and preventing them from going green.

I have been looking at my garden and other people’s as I drive around Suffolk and I have noticed that most of the spring flowering shrubs have just about finished producing flowers, so plants like Forsythia and Kerria japonica are now beginning to look untidy. To be sure of flowers next spring, now is the ideal time to prune these shrubs, which should be done quite hard after flowering. The reason for hard pruning is to encourage new young growth, which will help produce plenty of new flowers early in spring next year.

This week I pulled the first radish from the troughs sown earlier in the year (See picture). These will make a delicious addition to a salad along with my regular pickings of salad leaves. Once these have all been eaten in the next couple of weeks, I will be able to enjoy my next crop of radishes that were sown direct into the allotment a few weeks ago. To ensure a good supply of radish throughout the year I always sow a small batch of seed every two to three weeks.

This week has been very hot so I had to put some Coolglass (white glass paint) shading on the outer glass of the greenhouses. This white shading will help reflect the sun on very sunny days and generally cool down the temperatures under glass. It will also reduce the amount of watering required as well as preventing any leaf scorch that can occur when the leaves are wet on sunny days. As well as adding the shading, the greenhouses have all had their vents and doors open during the day to try to keep them as cool as possible.

One job I must continue with this weekend is planting up some of my hanging baskets and flower pouches ready for this summer's display. Once planted, the pouches are hung around the sides of the greenhouse (See picture) and the baskets are hung in the roof. On warm days when there is little or no wind they are moved outside to gradually acclimatise to cooler conditions, but moved back in if the weather changes. These won't be left outside until the end of May, when I consider it is safe, and all risk of frost has passed.