- Cantaloupe Melon - Cantaloupe melons, with their sweet, orange flesh, are one of the tastiest of the melon family.
- Apple - Nature's perfect ready meal, apples are ready to eat any time.
- Jersey Potatoes, the best spuds of the year - The finest potatoes in the world? Possibly?
- English Apples - Our Lost Heritage - There are thousands of varieties of apples known, but less than 20 commonly sold in supermarkets, and typically less than 5 are common English apple varieties.
- British Strawberries - where has all the taste gone? - Once one of the finest tastes in the fruit world, eagerly awaited every summer, the appeal of British Strawberries is not quite what it used to be...
- Potato - An old classic and a staple food in many potatoes, how much do you know about potatoes?
- Banana - A fruit as popular as it is versatile, how much do you really know about Bananas? You might think they're just yellow, but you can get blue and red ones too.

In the Garden in July

Now July has arrived, things slow down a little in the garden and give us a bit of a breather. There is still work to do - to keep things growing healthily and cropping, but not all that much to plant. Check out our guide on gardening in July.

TO SOW

- There's not much left to sow now - at the end of the month, sow your last batches of any hardy or half-hardy annuals, such as French beans, if you want them to continue cropping into the Autumn.
- Potatoes should be planted in July for harvesting at Christmas.
- Continue to make successional sowings of salad and root crops, such as lettuce, radishes and carrots.

TO PLANT OUT

- Pretty much everything should be planted out by now unless you live in very cold regions of the country. Not many areas will be subject to frost in July, so little protection is required.

TO HARVEST

- Salad leaves and lettuce can still be harvested, as can other salad crops such as radishes.
- Early potatoes can be harvested. Other root vegetables such as carrots should be ready by now.
- Broad beans and peas should be well into their cropping by now, and even some early other varieties of beans.
- Annual herbs like parsley, chervil, coriander and dill should be cropping now, tender herbs such as basil and oregano, mint and other perennial herbs, and evergreen herbs such as rosemary, sage, bay and thyme.
- If you are growing in a greenhouse, the first tomatoes and cucumbers should be ready now.
- Courgettes should be cropping by now. Try to harvest courgettes when they're no larger than 6 inches, otherwise they start growing into marrows and are tougher and have less flavour. Some varieties of courgettes grow so fast you can harvest every day, or every other day.

TO MAINTAIN

- Tie in any growing beans, tomatoes, or cucumbers that require support.
- Keep an eye on any plants susceptible to fungal infections, such as potatoes and tomatoes with blight, and cucurbits (cucumber, melons etc) with mildew. Take action early - or irsk losing precious plants.
- Look out for black fly on broad beans - they'll start at the tip and work their way down the plant, decimating it.