1. How important is a master plan for home vegetable gardening? How does it make a home gardener's life easier?

Having a master plan for your garden is a 'nice to have' but not essential in my opinion. It can help you have an overall design for your plot if that's what you're looking for and it will help keep your vegetables in the correct rotation, but I rarely stick to my plans rigidly. It's more of a blue print than an actual garden design.

2. What are the most essential garden supplies to start growing your own vegetables?

It's not strictly a 'garden supply' but I'd say enthusiasm is the only thing you need to grow vegetables. If you have a passion to grow things then you probably will. I know some people who grow vegetables in the most unlikely places. Even I started off growing tomatoes in pots on my tiny deck. Of course it's also helpful to have a good set of sturdy tools, a cold frame or greenhouse and a garden with sunshine for at least a third of the day. A good gardening book also helps.

3. What type of work does preparing a vegetable garden involve?

If you're creating a new plot you need to dig the ground and remove all perennial weeds. This can be the biggest job in the vegetable garden but you only need to do it once so make sure you do it properly. If it's autumn time, then you can add manure and leave the ground quite rough for the frost to break up. If it's springtime, add some homemade compost to the soil to increase hummus levels. After that it really depends what type of soil you have. If it's sandy it will need bulking out a lot with either compost of manure, and if it's clay-like then it will need breaking up with either sand or compost.

4. What advice can you offer our readers on the art of growing vegetables?

There is no art to growing vegetables; you just learn how to do it over time. When I first started I didn't know what I was doing. I sowed some seeds and hoped that things would grow. Some of them did and some of them didn't. With the ones that did, I just did the same thing the year after. With the ones that didn't, I looked up in a book what I did wrong and did it differently. There are still vegetables that I have difficulty growing, like cauliflower.

5. What special manure recipes do you use to treat and help your vegetable plants grow?

I use a mixture of fertilizers on my garden - all organic. I buy rotted manure from a garden center, and I make my own compost. I also use the wood ashes from my wood burner for various things in the garden such as top-dressing my fruit trees. And I also make my own leaf mould, which can be a lengthy process but well worth it in the end.

6. From where do you purchase your vegetable seeds? How do you select the best ones?

I buy seeds from anywhere I can. I buy them from my local garden center, or if there is a particular variety I want I'll buy them online. But I really can't walk past a shop selling seeds without having a sneaky look. I once bought some tomato seeds in Venice because an old lady said they were the best. Hey, who am I to argue?

7. How do you deal with insects and pests?

My tiny plot is walled so I think that helps to keeps most of the nasties out. I still get blackfly on my broad beans, carrot-fly in my carrots and blight on my tomatoes. I just accept that a portion of my crop will be lost to pests and diseases each year and I try not to worry about it.

My garden is organic (mostly). I say mostly because some of the seeds I grow are not organic, and I might use some slug pellets in my cold frame if I'm having a particular problem. And sometimes I spray blackfly with a bit of washing up liquid and water. Hey, I'm only human.