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Phew! I’ve been working hard in the garden today with my husband Spiro Spinach. Our daughter Chrissie helped too, but then she ran off to the City Farm to give Marie Marrow a hand.

It doesn’t matter what the weather’s like, there’s always something you can be planting and growing!

Hello, I’m Carla Carrot and my brother is Peter Parsnip. He’s happiest baking in the kitchen, but I am most comfortable when I’m learning new things in Miss Fenugreek’s classroom.

My Grandpa Swede is always giving me good advice, telling me to be patient and not try to know everything at once. What Will I Be? is one of the questions I ask myself most often.

If you see the Brussel Sprout Twins tell them to behave themselves! They’re always dive-bombing into the water while the other vegetables are swimming about minding their own business.

I’m Carlos Cauliflower and I run the Leafy Lane Lido. You need a loud voice to do my job you know, espe- HEY NO RUNNING BY THE POOL! Sorry, especially whe- STOP THAT SPLASHING! ‘Specially when those Brussel Sprouts are around!

Ssshh! Don’t tell Peter Parsnip you’ve found me! He’s a great chef but not very good at hide and seek. I think apart from the hens in No Hens in the Pen I’m the best hide-r I know…

Camilla Cabbage and Spiro Spinach are my Mum and Dad. We spend a lot of time together in the garden and when I grow up I want to work at City Farm with Marie Marrow.

What an amazing weekend, full of painting and scarecrows and stories and songs about vegetables! What could be better? Here are all our photos:

What’s up? You must> know me

I’m good friends with Sanghita Spring Onion and Peter Parsnip, and together we practise our instruments in Grampa Swede’s potting shed. Practise makes perfect you know!

Hi! Hi! Sanghita Spring Onion here! I’ve just been playing my tambourine in the park with Peter Parsnip, he’s one of my best friends. So’s Rudi Radish.. Have you read Bong Bong Bongity Bong? Well you should do, because it’s got me in it!

Oh hello! I’m Spiro Spinach and I spend a lot of time in my potting shed, or digging in the garden. I’m sure you’ve read No Hens In The Pen, about the time my daughter Chrissie Cress couldn’t find the hens. What a rainy day that was!

Hello there, my name is Stella Strawberry and you can find me on those Secret Seed Society Veg-Hunt sheets you may have seen. Of course strawberries are fruit not vegetables, but we grow from seed too!

Meet Tommy P. Tato, the Dirty Jackets' tuber tuba player!

Hey I’m Tommy P. and I’m a musician in The Dirty Jackets, Seed City’s hottest band. You’ve probably heard of us: we win the Battle of the Bands every year. There’s no other vegetable in Seed City that can blow their own trumpet like one of the Dirt Jackets!

You can see me in action by reading Bong Bong Bongity Bong.

An apple is a great place to meet ladybirds, Seed Agents.

At first glance it looks as if the ladybirds are eating these apples but usually they prefer to eat other insects. You might not think it, but ladybirds are carnivores, in other words they are hunters who eat meat.

Gardeners like ladybirds because they hunt down the pests who live off the plants. Ladybirds wear pretty polka dots and waddle up and down in a way that’s harmless to us, but not to the smaller vegetarian pests like greenfly or aphids (which is the name for young greenfly, before they grow wings).

These are aphids. You've probably also seen them when they're grown up, and have wings. They often land on your hand for a rest when they're tired.

So what did eat those apples? It’s likely to have been a wasp or two, who started to eat from the apple and then flew away. The ladybirds are probably just licking up the left-over juice because they’re thirsty.

Look at this sugar-loving wasp filling its belly!

If you want to know more about garden insects you can check out this website.

But don’t blame all your half-eaten fruit on the wasps! There are a lot of other creatures who might have chomped on that apple you were saving…

See? You can't blame these tooth-marks on ladybirds or wasps!

Clean out your ears and listen to this! We found out something important about carrots this month:

be careful where you put your carrots! This one took a lot of tugging before we could get it out.

The craze for veg-hats continued at Haselstock this month! Maybe we’re setting a trend…

There's nothing better than a vegetable that you can wear

Some larger-than-life vegetables were spotted strolling among the trees at Haselstock. We ran workshops growing mung-beans in jam jars and building funny scarecrows, like these ones:

The scarecrows are the ones on the left and the right of the picture. At least we think so...

Lots of Seed Agents were there to help us; they were dressed to impress – as a bear, as a butterfly, as a princess, as a knight, as a dragon… and of course as vegetables. We dress like vegetables every day.

Where do we find all these strangely-dressed children...

We spread out on the grass with all our equipment for making. But we were good and tidied up afterwards, promise… If you have a close look you can see that EVERYbody was lending a hand.

And if you look REALLY closely maybe you can do that crossword. Careful though - too much staring at a screen and you'll get square eyes!

Mission: Seek out English apples instead of far-away ones. It helps our farmers if we eat theirs. Try a new kind, and send us a new picture to prove it.

A Jonagold, one of England's favourite apples.

September is a strong month for English apples. Apples can be crunchy, soft, sweet, sharp-tasting, huge, tiny, green, red… there are LOTS of different kinds. Just look at this website, it’s bursting with apple information and pictures!

Some of them have really strange names: if you’re called Martin you’d probably like to eat a Martin’s Custard…

… but if you’re hungry for bananas, don’t be fooled by the Winter Banana!

Where’s your apple from? If you don’t know, check the sticker. Did you know: some people collect fruit-stickers, and some of these collectors have very big collections.

These are Bramley apples, one of the most popular English cooking apples.

Do you know where your nearest plum tree is?

Mission: find a plum tree. Maybe you know someone who has one, but you don’t know that’s what it is. This website might help.

Tell us where it is and what the plums taste like. If you’re lucky you might find a wriggly maggot inside.

Eat the plums, don’t eat the maggots!

And it’s probably a good idea to wash them – the plums, not the maggots – first, (because you can’t wash them afterwards as they’ll be in your tummy).

The bugs and birds love plums so hurry up or there’ll be none left.

It’s a good time for plums. They grow fat and juicy, and you can get lots of types that taste and look different:

some plums are purple,

others are bright reddish colours,

and some are even GREEN! (although these are actually 'plumcots,' which are half plum and half apricot. They're orange inside.

Good luck with your plum-tree hunt! We’re looking forward to reading your emails and seeing your pictures.

By the way, our pictures of plums come from Down On The Allotment and The Waspy Redhead – so thank you to them!

If you want to be sure of pesticide-free fruit and veg but have a bad memory, here's a Cheat Sheet that'll remind you of the so-called Dirty Dozen.

Like a lot of people we really like Heidi Kenney’s Dirty Dozen Cheat Sheet, and not only because of the cute illustrations. It also helps you to remember which fruit and veg is important to buy organic.

Some absorb more pesticides than others, which you probably don’t want to be eating. Especially if you’re a pest..

Heidi is an origami expert, by the way. Origami is the art of folding paper to make beautiful sculptures. And if you’re wondering what origami has to do with fruit and vegetables click here and see!

Meet September's Seed Agent of the Month. It's Holly Nicholson!

As well as growing gigantic chilli plants (which you can see in the picture), Holly did some brilliant colouring in for us, which we really loved.

But there’s more to Holly than skillful colouring…

Holly’s favourite veg is carrots and her mummy always makes extra for her. One day she’s going to be a terrific cook, and probably invent new kinds of pasta, which is one of her favourites. You should have come to our pasta evening the other day Holly…

Rudi Radish is probably even redder than usual, from blushing! Holly said that Rudi is her favourite Seed City character. Although we’re sure she loves the rest of you too, Seedizens…

Well done Holly! It’s a pleasure to meet you.

SECRET SEED SOCIETY have created a vegetable adventure that will have children growing, eating and talking about food in fun and healthy ways. THE VEGETABLE ADVENTURE begins with the surprise delivery of a story and seed pack and a letter welcoming them to the Seed Agent Club. Throughout the year your chosen child (Seed Agent) will receive a total of 5 story and seed packs and exclusive members kit such as – Seed Agent Certificate, height chart, nutrition games, seed bomb kit, badges & membership card – barrow loads of excitement!

Click here to download your Seed Agent Annual Delivery Order Form.

We had two very important guests the other day!

William and Sam came to Secret Seed Society H.Q.

They look just like each other because they’re twins, and they’re as mischievous as the Brussel Sprout twins in our stories.

William and Sam dressed up in our vegetable hats and looked very fashionable. Can you tell them apart? William is on the left and Sam is on the right, I think…

Here are a couple of action-shots of the twins practising their kung-fu chops, doing some top-secret research for the next Secret Seed Society storybook.

You’ll understand what it all means in September when the book is finished!

William and Same helped us to create some new Seedizens by drawing some very professional looking pictures. Here they are holding up their pictures of two new Seed City characters.

Next time you see these characters will be in one of our story-books, and it’s all be thanks to William and Sam, the two creative twins!

They helped us so much and were great fun, so we’ve made them August’s Seed Agents of the Month. Thank you very much twins!

Get your hands dirty today! Seed Agents of the Month Character Design Vegetable Hats

Click here to take survey!

Can you spot the Seed City Characters at the market, in the shops or on your plate? You get points : 1 for spotting, 2 for eating.

Print out your Veg Hunt

Hey Seed Agents!

Check out our friends over at We are What We Do. They say if we lots of us do small things to make a difference, together we make a BIG difference! Pretty obvious eh? One of the small things we can do is grow and eat our own food.

We once saw an orange for sale that was packaged in polystyrene, shrink wrapped in clingfilm, labelled Citrus Snack and sold for £1.50. Plum stir crazy.

Growing oranges might be tricky unless you live somewhere warmer than Wigan. But carrots, rocket, beans and tomatoes are easy. It’s cheap. There’s no wasteful packaging. And no supermarket queues. WARNING: may contain bugs.