Grow Your Own Magazine

It was cooking that changed me from a flower, trees and shrub growing gardener into someone who wanted to grow their own fruit and vegetables.

When I see the wonderful choice of vegetables and salad crops that are available on market stalls and in greengrocers shops when I visit Italy it makes me want to weep at what we are offered in the supermarket. So I am back to trying to clear more of my plot to grow more veggies next year.

I have written down ideas for new recipes/food...

thyme

... plant anything new, but we went to Homebase yesterday and I bought some spring bulbs - a mix of miniture daffodils and iris and such like for spring. They'll go into the spare pots I have (there's no room anywhere else).
It'll be nice though to herald the new gardening year. Last year all I had were a few daffs.
Dh has planted one of the ferns at the back; I have designated that part of the garden 'his' because thats where the log pile is and we've seen two stag beetles already...

Marthaclematis

Visited the allotment for the first time in over two weeks and thought the growth of weeds may have reclaimed the plot while I was away. Lots of annual weeds had popped up but I was pleasantly surprised at how easy it was to pull out the weeds after the recent wet weather.

Picked some blackberries, plums, runner beans, yellow beans and dug up some potatoes. Found a courgette had grown into a marrow while I was away. The green manure crop that I sowed in July is growing well; I need...

thyme

With problems at home and being very busy I have not had much opportunity to get online. I have been managing the plot on my own recently as Gordon was very unwell, he is now getting better and is slowly doing some weeding!

Blight on all spuds nothing really to shout home about this year. Some cracking courgettes and pumpkins! Onions have done well, along with tomatoes and cucumbers, nothing happening with the egg plant yet. Brassicas are fantastic and had the best crop of cauliflowers...

allotmentlady

still not properly sussed how blogs are supposed to work ....

have cleared most of the long grass and tall weeds in our plot - have pulled the long grass out of most of the raspberries - the worst is done now, mostly just smallish weeds close to ground ....

will need another couple of hours on the bigger stuff and then use weedkiller on the smaller stuff ....

we picked up a couple of large plastic compost bins that were no longer required on another plot...

Farmer_Gyles