Guardian: After 20 years of trying to keep a vegetable garden, I have given up.
The lettuce always gets bitter and eaten out by slugs, the coriander shoots to seed within weeks and the tomatoes spread and end up sitting on the ground, a big red target for insects and worms. Never, in my horrible history, have I delivered a fully-formed corn cob to the pot. And the melons? Well they never even make it to fertilisation.
I have failed Earth Mother 101. Were I to rely on my own brown-fingered resources,...