Cucumber seeding,just emerging and so easy to grow. Home grown cucumbers taste really crunchy and refreshing. check out how to grow cucumbers

• The type of seed because some seeds are inherently viable for longer; parsley can be very fickle and may not be good after a year by contrast, lettuce may last up to 6 years.
• How the seed has been stored. Naturally, the better the storage conditions, the longer the seed will last, cool and dark is good. I put my left over seed in the fridge at the end of the season and it keeps well over winter despite having been kept in the greenhouse most of the summer. I keep the seeds in a dry sealed tin and transfer that to the fridge when I have finished with it.

Seed is expensive and if you are growing a small  but diverse number of vegetables and flowers there is often too many seeds to use in one season, unless by F1 hybrids when there seem to be a pitiful few in the packet. Once seed was a cheap option but now it's easy to spend £30-40 on seeds so the longer the seed can be kept, the more money saved.

Very often old seed will germinate fine and I would recommend you try it out.

Love lies bleeding on the left is an annual, easy to grow and great in hanging baskets. It prefers sun and in common with many other exotic annuals such as  Ipomoea (Morning glory)  a cool summer will not suit it,  but then it will not suit the gardeners either.

Winter is back with a vengeance. Braving the howling wind and horizontal snow, I ventured out  to see the worst winter had delivered. The water butt had disconnected itself and was half way down the path.   In a very sheltered spot under the trees, I had been experimenting with overwintering Pelargoniums protected by a mulch around the base and a cloche. Experiment over, the cloche had been upturned and blown away by the wind. The Pelargoniums were under deep snow so that's the end of them. I had put them outside because they had mealybugs, and I was loathed to throw them away, but couldn't leave the plants in the conservatory to infect the rest. Good only for the compost heap now.

Suddenly it is winter again and the tiny seedlings are struggling even under glass. If you have already started germinating for the summer, the best thing is to protect the seedlings as much as you can  Cover the seed trays with a propagator lid and tuck in with extra fleece. Only last week I was exposing the new seedlings to more air in the conservatory as they were getting overheated and in danger of getting leggy. Now the newly germinated cucumber plants are in danger of keeling over with a bad chill.

I suppose, that's the fascination and challenge of gardening with our weather. It is so changeable, one week spring is in the air and warm enough for shirt sleeves and the next week the Hellebores are up to their necks in snow the images left; looking very pretty but wintry.

Will the frog spawn survive? I assume so as March is often very variable although not sure usually as bad as this. Apparently metamorphosis  can be slowed down or speeded up, depending on environmental conditions, which is very clever and maybe helps them to survive.

Now spring and all that comes with it is officially late.... and it's all the fault of the jet stream again.  In March it is so tempting to start sowing everything.The magazines are full of free seeds, and tips on early sowings and there's all that enthusiasm to get going; but we can depend on  the English weather to spoil things. This cold spell is in until Easter and so I'll reluctantly put my trowel away for now.

The frogs have arrived back in full force, dozens of them have suddenly re appeared from nowhere, or so it seems.  They look prehistoric and clumsy, wrestling around in the water, spawning. Each year the frogs will return, if they can, to the same source of water to spawn and they arrive at around same time. The female can lay up to 4000 eggs  which take up to 30-40 days to emerge as tadpoles  14  weeks to develop into frogs when they leave the pond. Of the thousands of frog spawn which will float around in our pond for weeks, only 1-2 per thousand survive to become frogs, the rest are eaten by the many predators, mainly fish and birds.

So determined are the frogs to find the same water source, if it vanishes, the frogs may be left, literally high and dry. I have seen them sitting in small puddles of damp, where once there was water, and then they cannot spawn and are vulnerable to be picked off by predators of which Magpies  are quick to be ominously present.

When this happened near us we tried to save some frogs putting them into buckets to carry them to a safe pond, and if you are lucky, they will then return each year which is how they got in this pond in the first place. The reservoir nearby had been drained by the land owner and the frogs were confused where to go and being picked off Magpies as they struggled to find water. Frogs are really worth encouraging as they are a gardener's friend, keen on eating slugs and snails and so very welcome in the pond and to join the garden buffet of slugs.

During next week when it is cold, they will sink back down low in the pond into a state of torpor until the weather warms when they will surface again for more spawning. Frogs are shy and so not easy to photograph, they can see you near the water source and sense the vibration as you walk towards the pond, and will promptly dive to the bottom where they will stay until it seems safe to surface again. Tip toe very slowly and you might just catch them, and you will hear the low croak emitted by the males to attract a mate.