Gardening: Cuttings

Robert Milne, who has 20 years of self-sufficient organic gardening behind him, is offering a kitchen garden design service. You decide what you want to grow. He sends a plan showing how it will all best fit in, and the best way to rotate the crops. He will also advise on (or undertake, if it is not too far from his base) the pruning of fruit trees. He is at 57 Foley Street, Hereford HR1 2SCQ (01432 279740).

Last week Brian Glover of London wrote in support of the rose `Agnes' which he thought I was treating unfairly. Karen Williams, of Great Bentley, Essex, feels the same way. "My `Agnes' rose is about eight years old and is a great favourite," she writes. "It is too near a deodar cedar and probably endures a poor soil, which I have done very little to improve. It also spends much of each day in shade. It seems to like these difficult conditions, although I admit it is not a very good-looking plant.

"But each year it has at least 20 beautiful flowers, and I like to cut them for the house, because the perfume is wonderful, a kind of spicy lemon, unlike the perfume of any other rose I have grown."

I began to feel I should not have dispatched my `Agnes' to the bonfire, despite having waited 15 years in vain for a flower. I went to the place where it had been in the garden, to say sorry to its ghost. There, sprouting with massive insouciance, were four fat new suckers of the recalcitrant rose. It made me laugh. I feel that, like the Tamworth pigs, the rose has earned a reprieve. But whether the shock will now make it flower remains to be seen.

Do you make sourdough bread? Are you as interested in your vinegar as you are in your olive oil? If yes, then you should get hold of the catalogue produced by Future Foods, which offers an extraordinary range of out-of- the-way things to grow. Sourdough "Tunnel Hill" comes highly recommended from California. It's a culture that makes bread rise, like yeast, but it works more slowly and breaks down carbohydrates in the flour to make bread more digestible. A starter kit costs pounds 7.50.

Future Foods can also supply the fermenting culture that turns soya bean or barley into Japanese miso. Japanese cooks make a wide range of misos by mixing spores of the fungus Aspergillus oryzae with cooked soya beans or grains of various kinds. This koji then continues with a secondary fermentation which turns it into miso, shoyu or tamari. Kits are pounds 7.50 each.

The catalogue also includes a wide range of unusual vegetables and fruit: Chinese greens, serpent garlic, yams (must be kept frost free), saffron crocus, huckleberries, wineberries and other treats. For a copy, send pounds 1 to Future Foods, PO Box 1564, Wedmore, Somerset BS28 4DP.

The English Gardening School will be running a one-day course on "down- to-earth gardening" on Monday 2 March (10.30am-3.30pm). Dr Lesley Rosser gives the lowdown on soil management, choice of plants, weed control and other practical matters. The day costs pounds 70.50. For further information on this and other courses, contact the English Gardening School at the Chelsea Physic Garden, 66 Royal Hospital Road, London SW3 4HS (0171-352 4347).