Earlier in the year I bought some Red Sunflower seeds from a shop called Premier Seeds Direct, off Ebay.

I planted some, along with some sunflower seeds picked from the hamster food. Both types of sunflower sprouted, but the red sunflowers grew the fastest and so far are the only ones to flower.

Both the above flowers were grown from the 'red' seeds. Some of the plants have multiple flowers, such as the one on the left where several smaller flowerheads are visible.

It looks like I picked the wrong day to turn down the central heating. The colder-than-normal winter meant we had the heating on for longer but after the recent warm weather, I decided to turn the heating down.

Almost as soon as I did, the weather turned colder and wetter. I'm sure the same thing happened the last time I tried to turn the heating down.

A couple of weeks ago I started planting some seeds in pots. I sterilised some of the home-made compost first. I filled some foil trays (the sort used for oven-ready meals) with compost, covered the trays with foil and 'cooked' them in the oven for ½-1 hour at gas mark 1. I left the compost to cool before putting it into pots. I don't want the same problem I had last year when the compost must have been contaminated with 'weed' seeds.

The pepper plants started to germinate after a week or so. Some of the salad veg which I planted on sunday have started to germinate already. Looking back at last year, by mid-march I had planted chilli, herbs and tomatoes. I must remember to sterilise more compost at the weekend and get the tomatoes started.

We have had a few days of freezing cold weather, but luckily very little snow. I went into the garden this morning to check on the quail, to make sure they have plenty of food and to make sure their water hasn't frozen.

Moving on to the veg - all of the remaining plants are looking a bit droopy and possibly dead. The parsley is very limp - we will be lucky if it recovers. The leeks have frozen solid. I was examining one pot and a leek snapped off. I have no idea what the garlic is like - all of the pots are frozen solid. I think I will have to harvest everything when the soil starts to thaw.

I planted some broad beans last month but nothing has happened. I expect it is the same story as last year when the beans rotted in the soil. I will try again in the spring.

I checked the compost heap and was surprised to observe that it hadn't frozen. In fact it was slightly warm to the touch. That is obviously a good sign, showing that everything is breaking down well. I gave it a good mix, to let extra oxygen get in and help it along.

Comet phoned this morning to let us know that they were on their way to install the oven. The shop obviously didn't bother to tell the installation department that we had cancelled the order.

We finally have an oven now. We ended up cancelling our order with Comet because they screwed up the original installation. When we went into the shop on monday to complain, they were unable to help. They couldn't bring the installation any sooner than friday. When I asked why the original installers were unable to determine the source of the leak, I was repeatedly told that 'You have to be careful with gas'. That would have been an ideal response if I'd asked why they couldn't just ignore the leak, but since I had asked why the engineers seemed incapable of doing their job properly, it really didn't answer my question.

We went next door to Currys and placed an order with them instead. They agreed to match Comets price and could deliver and install on thursday.

So this morning Comet came to collect their cooker, and Currys came to deliver and install theirs. The Currys engineer still detected a small leak, but instead of buggering off (like the Comet engineer did), he actually did a few tests to locate the leak. He checked the boiler and the gas pipe in the front room and they were ok. The 'leak' turned out to be the capped pipe in the kitchen - the man from Transco hadn't sealed the cap properly.

With the source of the leak located and fixed, the oven was installed. After demonstrating the controls, the engineer left.

The service I received from Currys and Comet couldn't have been more different. Comet did a half-arsed job and were incapable of rectifying it in a prompt manner. Currys went out of their way to make sure the problems were sorted. Currys might be slightly more expensive, but their customer service seems to be much better.

Our cooker stopped working a couple of weeks ago so we have had to manage without it. We have been limited to things we can cook using an electric wok and a George Foreman grill. We sometimes cheated and bought things like the Uncle Ben's microwaveable rice. Pasta was cooked in a pan but using water from the kettle. The boiling water was poured over the pasta, the lid was put on the pan and we waiting for it to cook. The pasta was sometimes a bit firm but at least there was little chance of it overcooking.

The oven was finally delivered this morning. The old oven was removed and the gas supply was tested for leaks. They detected a pressure drop, so the installer phoned Transco to report a leak then left, saying they couldn't do anything until the leak was fixed. It was company policy apparently.

An hour or so later, an engineer arrived and repeated the test and confirmed a leak. He said that leaks within a house weren't his responsibility but said he would do a quick test to locate the leak while he was here.

It turned out that the leak was coming from the end of the gas pipe, where the old cooker had been attached. The valve was leaking. He capped the pipe to stop the leak.

So much time could have been saved if the original installers had checked the valve when they removed the old cooker. If the valve only started leaking after the cooker was removed then the installer should have noticed this. The Transco man didn't understand why they didn't test it using a bit of soapy water.

To make matters worse, when I phoned back to say the gas leak was fixed, I was told they couldn't come back to finish the installation until friday. Another %$@&ing week without a cooker. If the original installers had tested the valve, rather than just %$@&ing off, then we'd have a working cooker by now.

I spent most of this morning working in the garden, digging up what was left of the vegetables and putting them on the compost. The compost heap seems to be working. I managed to get several tubs of dark brown well rotted compost out of it. It doesn't look as good as 'shop bought' compost but it should work ok. You can't tell it's made from kitchen scraps and waste animal bedding.

After adding the corn stalks, courgette plants and tomato plants onto the heap, I gave it a good mixing to get oxygen in, to get it started for next year.

There are still a few plants in the garden. The strawberries and still giving small quantities of fruit. One tomato plant is still going strong, displaying some large green tomatoes which I hope will eventually ripen. A squash plant at the end of the garden looks on its last legs though. There is one small squash on it, but I don't think there is time for it to ripen before the plant dies.

I have already mentioned that this year hasn't been a good one for garden veg. The tomatoes are doing reasonably well and some fruit have started to appear on the pepper plants. After a slow start the bean plants have grown quite well but we haven't had many beans from them:

A selection of beans from the garden.

The larger broad bean pod had 3 beans inside.

Most of the broad beans have been like this one - the pods looked large and fleshy but there were no beans inside.

I haven't been having much luck with the garden veg this year. None of the courgette seedlings have survived beyond a few inches tall. One reached 3 inches and formed a couple of decent sized leaves, but then hasn't grown at all for several weeks. Only one of the salad veg plants is big enough to eat. The only things doing well are the beans and tomatoes.

By this time last year the courgette plants were flowering and I had an abundance of salad leaves. I don't know what the problem is, if it is weather related or due to some other problem. I have re-sown a couple more courgette seeds so if these grow then we may enjoy some late season courgettes.

I've been quite busy during the last fortnight and hadn't had time to update the website. I've been in London (twice - once with work and then back for a weekend break) and also on a training course in Wales. I'm about to upload some of the London photos, backdated to last weekend.

This morning I did a bit of work in the garden. Some of the seedlings in the propagator had got rather tall, and were pressing against the lid. Most of these are now safely in the garden, either in 'cloches' made from fizzy drinks bottles, or with a ring of copper around them to protect them from slugs.

The copper rings were made by cutting a section from the middle of a 2 litre drinks bottle, and wrapping copper tape around it. The tape is a thin self-adhesive ribbon of copper designed for wrapping around plant pots. They make a decent portable slug defence for young plants.

I think have solved the mystery of the funny looking pepper seedlings. There are similar plants growing in the garden. The compost must have been contaminated with some other seeds.

Spring has taken a while arriving in our garden. The seeds have been slow to germinate but some green shoots have started to appear. The quails have realised it must be spring. In the last week they have gone from giving us 1 egg per day to about a dozen. The warmer weather also means we can put laundry outside to dry, which is quicker than using the clothes horse indoors. We don't have a tumble dryer, so everything takes longer to dry in the winter.

The chilli pepper seedlings, grown from seeds I bought from Woolworths, have been growing at different rates. That is fairly normal but what's slightly strange is that there seem to be two different types of plant growing from the seeds.

When I planted the seeds in the propagator, I divided the tray into 3 and planted one type of seed into each area. This was to help identify the seedlings when they started to grow.

The seedlings on the left look normal, compared to other photos I've seen.

The ones on the right grew in the area where I planted the chilli seeds. They weren't present in the other areas of the propagator, so it is unlikely that they were 'contamination' or present in the compost. They don't look like the other seedlings but I'll allow them to grow, just in case there were different types of chilli seed mixed in the pack.

Since it's more or less the start of spring now, I've been spending some time getting the garden prepared for plating vegetables. In late autumn I planted some 'green manure' to try to improve the soil. For some reason it didn't grow very well, growing fairly sparsely rather than filling the plot with green. I decided I couldn't wait any longer and dug it into the soil.

The front room is full of small pots and trays where I have planted some seeds. So far some of the herbs and salad veg have started to sprout. Over Christmas I planted some broad beans in a trough in the garden. They failed to germinate and when I checked on them today, the seeds had rotted in the soil. I have planted some more - they should have been done during february so hopefully I haven't left it too late.

Also today I planted some tomatoes and chilli pepper seeds. These were part of a kit I bought from Woolworths during their closing down sale. The kit contained a wooden trough, some compost, and 3 packets of seeds (tomato, chilli, oregano) and cost just over £1. Even if only one plant germinates, it will have been worth it.

Last year I planted some leeks but they failed to grow very large. We decided to start eating them so I pulled one out of the ground today. Despite looking like a baby leek, it was actually the largest in the garden. Some are smaller than most spring onions. I can't comment on the taste because it was completely lost amongst the other flavours in the pasta sauce.