Much of gardening is about making tiny adjustments, improving our soil or conditions, giving our plants a more favourable micro-climate or a longer growing season. Not all the things we can do are going to make the same impact. Obviously in times of drought a good watering will make much more difference to the final result than would adding more fertiliser. But all other things being reasonable then we need to consider how much improvement does one more watering, a dose of fertiliser or say, a thorough hoeing of weeds, make.

One of the reasons many of us may have for growing our own fruit and vegetables is because we wish to be sure our food is as unpolluted as possible. Whether you want to be completely Organic or not it seems fair to assume no-one actually wants to have more risky substances contaminating their soil and plants than can be avoided. After all they can be to no advantage and only pose a threat. But where do you start to reduce potential risks and which ones are worth worrying about?

Plant lives and how we alter them.In a way a garden is not so much a thing as a process, even the soil changes over years. Meanwhile the plants come and go. In our vegetable and salad beds some last but weeks while top fruit seems permanent though in reality trees are also transient. Few garden fruit trees make a hundred years despite gnarled appearance and spurious measures. Surprisingly your hedge may contain your oldest plants as the continual cutting back confers real longevity far beyond the range of most. In similar manner some crops can be effectively pruned to live a tad longer.

It is amazing how many gardeners still believe a regular dig each year is essential. Some may prefer autumn digging, others later, some do deep digging and others just surface forking over. I've been a passionate no-digger for decades and can't see the point of annually digging every vegetable plot from one end to the other. Indeed it may surprise you to learn that all of my forty vegetable beds have never been dug as such over twenty years and that most were never even dug over initially!

Whether or not we as a species are responsible for any significant change to our climate for sure we as individuals can do little to correct it and but slowly. As gardeners however we can improve the micro-climate for our plants quite significantly. Here in the colder climates of Northern Europe micro-climate improvement is almost invariably striving to give our plants more shelter, warmth and light. In sunnier climes the converse is often more important and there many of our kitchen garden crops find the intense tropical sunlight too bright to endure.