Grow Your Own Magazine

Due to the popularity of our Subs Club pages, we're putting together another page of top tips for the next issue.

There's a 10 T&M voucher for the writers of our favourite tips!

We'd love to know what your favourite plant to grow is and why. For example, I'm a huge fan of heritage varieties of peas - they taste sweeter and they often grow 2 metres tall so you get bumper crops from the same space. And, as if that wasn't enough, they often have a longer harvesting period.

This is your chance to see your expertise in print. Have you found a slug-proof potato or a radish that stands without going woody? Do you know any exotic or unsual veg that deserve to be more widely grown?

Thanks from all of us at Grow Your Own in advance for your help!!!

I've only had my allotment since last july, prior to that I was growing what I could in my flower borders and in pots etc.
Despite the fact that this year I have my lottie, I'll still be growing all my cut and come again salad leaves in window boxes, it's so easy just fill the boxes with compost sprinkle on the seed, water and hey presto within a few weeks you have loads of lovely salad leaves that taste nothing like the ones bought in bags at the supermarket. As they are on my kitchen windows I can harvest them right at the last minute so they are still fresh and crisp. There are loads of different varieties to try so each meal can be different, yum!

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Imagination is everything, it is a preview of what is to become.

I wouldn't be without French Climbing beans. For a small area of ground you can get a very large crop. Choosing your varieties well, you can get fresh 'snap' beans, shelling beans and dried beans. I have several wigwams each year, with a different variety on each. There's a fantastic array of colour to be had - green, purple, yellow and some are even splashed with red. Best of all, because they tend not to cross and are self fertile, you can save your seeds from year to year. I've grown the Yin-yang bean (sometimes called the Pea-bean) for about 7 years from one handfull of seed from a friend. This year's new (to me) varieties are the Cherokee Trail of Tears (a black bean for drying) and Bird's Egg - one of the red splashed type.

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Some days you're the statue, some days you're the pigeon!

vegheaven.blogspot.com Updated July 16th 2008

We grow huge amounts of beans for eating as french beans or shelled as haricots. They eaither freeze or dry well and are a great protien fix especially if your a veggie. Climbing varieties give bigger yields over a longer period of time.

Also try Tomatillos, they make a great authentic Mexican style salsa. Another fruit from the same family, cape gooseberries stay fresh for ages when picked and add something special to any dish you cook.

We love morrello cherries, they make fantastic sour sauces thay compliment and bbq meat and the trees just love the more shaded areas of a garden.

Melons are always worth a go, keep them in a sheltered warm spot and you will get a crop, even if its just 1 or 2 fruits, you wont believe how sweet they are.

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Kindest regards, David.

http://pigletsplots.blogspot.com/
updated Monday 28th April at 11.50hrs

Beans, both runner and climbing french. Usually reliable and give a good crop for little ground space. Courgettes (which I love) - when they do well they do really well. Potatoes for first earlies you don't have to scrape, just dig - wash the mud off - and cook - superb. For fruit, my favourite is raspberries. Most of them don't even make it home we eat them straight from the canes.

Well, French beans are my favourite crop, but everyone else has voted for them.

I'll go for Rainbow Chard - use as spinach, but easier to grow. I've had leaves available for picking for 9 months of the year. They are a beautiful plant with yellow, pink, white or red stems.
They make superb guinea pig/chicken/rabbit fodder too.

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~ What do I think of Western civilisation? I think it would be a very good idea ~ Gandhi

My favorite will be the squash (both summer and winter). They are so easy to grow, got lots different shape/size/colour/taste. I can choose either bush or trailing habit to fit in my small back garden. There are so many varieties to choose from and I certainly like the heirloom/OP type for seeds saving purpose, the early maturing will be ready to harvest from mid spring (if started early) all the way to late autumn and winter (the winter squash). They are so versatile, can be use in most cooking (in soup, baked ,in pie, in bread, mashed,in desert, etc). Just love them.

My second favorite will be the tomato as they too got so much choice to choose. Though I don't have green house to grow them but it is still possible to grow outdoor toms and I would usually choose the early type (to mid season) that comes with interesting form,nice colour, tasty, compact plant (both bush and vine type), withstand cool summer and disease resistant (if possible). If they ever produce loads, there are always way to preserved them for later use such as drying, sauce making, freezing, chutney, pickling,etc.

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I grow, I pick, I eat ...

beetroot, theres no comparison to the stuff you buy in shops, its easy to grow, has a long growing season, & you can eat the young leaves, & the beets raw, boiled, roasted,steamed, in cakes, fantastic stuff

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The love of gardening is a seed once sown never dies ...

My favourite thing to grow is spuds in containers. I use 10litre florist buckets which I drill holes in the bottom of. I put one seed spud in each bucket, snuggled into a couple inches of general purpose compost and some fertiliser (well rotted manure, chicken poo pellets, or specialist potato fertiliser). Cover with a few inches more compost and then wait for the shaws to appear. Add more compost as the stems grow, until reaching the bucket top. Keep them out of the frost and you can get a really early crop. Keep the soil moist and water well when they flower as this is when the tubers are developing. When the flowers die off or the shaws start to flop and turn yellow, turn out the bucket and enjoy the treasure hidden in the soil.

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Happy Gardening,
Shirley

http://www.honeyjukes.co.uk

You can't beat an early greenhouse crop of French Breakfast radishes, ready in just a few weeks, and tasting fresh as a daisy!

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All at once I hear your voice
And time just slips away
Bonnie Rait

If you are looking to get maximum fruit and save most money, grow raspberries. They cost a fortune in the shops and of course are not freshly picked.
Growing your own is very easy: they can be grown against a fence in any sunny spot, they need minimum maintenance and they produce lovely fruit. 10 canes will yield up to 7-10kg..Lovely eaten freshly picked with cream

Careful choice will give a range of fruiting times from July to October. And of course they freeze easily and raspberry jam is very easy to make and takes 30 minutes. (even I - a mere man - can make raspberry jam:-).

I love cucumbers, last year I grew passandra I had a great crop picking nearly every day once they started ripening I even took to eating them straight from the vine.

Of course I was too lazy to dig a hole in the soil in the pollytunnel so I made a ridge with compost along one side of the tunnel and just planted them into the ridge.

They grew great but then we had that bad weather in the summer and my allotment flooded and most of the plants on my allotment were killed apart from the cucumbers that I had planted in the ridge, in the polytunnel they were the only things that survived.

This was the path and we had a couple more days of rain after this picture was taken.

I am getting several tons of topsoil next week.

Cheers Chris

Asparagus: lots of initial effort to really clean the bed, a little waiting... but then years of easy reward. You'll be feasting during the hungry gap, its expensive in the shops and it tastes so much better freshly picked. Top tip: Apply salt (approx 30 grams per sq metre) in early March. It kills the weeds and slugs but not the sparrow's grass.

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Advertising is the rattling of a stick in a swill bucket. George Orwell
Paul

Although I love my veg it's the fruit that's been my biggest pleasure. Grow your own and you can eat fresh fruit everyday in season. Strawberries are easy to grow and reward you with pounds of fruit.
Blackcurrants once they start producing give a heavy crop and you can grow red and white currants -hard to find and very expensive.
If I'd had to pay shop prices for the amount of fruit I ate last year I'd be bankrupt!
Sue

These tips are all absolute corkers!!!!!

Keep 'em coming and thanks everyone, it's a joy to read them.

Another tip when growing seeds with hard casings (especially okra I have found) is put the seeds in a cup of water for a couple of days until you see a little shoot, then plant in what ever pot you are using.

I tried last year without doing this and the okra seedling all died as the seed caps wouldnt come off, this year I soaked them for a couple of days and the seedlings emerged from the compost without the seedcaps.

Cheers Chris

Blueberries. The foliage goes a sensational fiery red in autumn, the stems are very decorative in winter and in spring you find the whole thing has been worth growing simply for the scent of the flowers alone.....Oh and in summer they produce berries which are good for you, but cost a fortune in the shops.

Crikey my OH bit my head off when he bought this mag for me, 7.99! I had all the seeds anyway and I didnt find anything in the mag that I couldnt find in GROW YOUR OWN, sorry but that will be the first and last time. I really dont see the need for it.

Same here as well, no point buying both when you get the same info in both and already have the same pretty common veg seeds as most of us do.
It would be nice if they gave some uncommen veg instead of the usual stuff,

For me my favourite, tastiest and most easiest veg has to be Early Purple Sprouting Broccoli.
It has always had 100% germination. I start it in pots in an unheated greenhouse between Late March and May. When it's big enough not to be hassled by mice, I lift off some turf in a neglected but sunny part of the garden and pop straight in, no feeding no digging and that's it....it looks after itself (apart from watering in dry weather.)
I put supports around the whole area (a roll of green garden fencing or chicken wire) as they are large heavy plants and I cover them with netting in winter to stop the Pigeons.

Then from about March I get wonderful sweet PS Broccoli.....absolutely the best thing steamed, (you don't need a steamer!..... just a saucepan with an inch of water then sit the Broccoli across at an angle, so heads are out of the water, pop the lid on and in about 4mins delicious soft spears!) served simply with butter!!! and all for the cost of a packet of seeds which last years!!!!

For fruit it has to be Raspberries, again very expensive in the shops but so abundant when home grown.....oh and the taste is so much better!!!

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Always aim for the best result possible not the best possible result

Peanut aka Joanna

If you are short on space try a tumbling tomato in a hanging basket. Just get a big basket, some water retaining gel crystals, bit of compost, plant and enjoy superb tasting toms straight from the plant.

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My Blog is here.../

I think my favourites are peas. I'm trying a variety this year that is supposed to be good for mangetout when early, fresh sweet garden peas when more mature, and for drying for soup peas when mature. It really has it all! Added to that, it's a heritage variety, with decorative yellow leaves and purple pods. With peas, you can eat the tendrils in salads and if you have any spare seed at the end of the season you can sprout it to grow pea tops, very very trendy at the moment. What versatility!!

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Dwell simply ~ love richly