Grow Your Own Magazine

The 4th issue of Let’s Grow Veg is going to include a spread of tips from the Grapevine on ways to make it easy to grow your own.

Please share your bright ideas for making light work of growing crops with up to 120,000 other readers!

Your tips could cover anything from using mulches of well-rotted manure or putting down weed-suppressing fabric, to growing perennial veg, choosing fail-safe varieties. In fact we want to hear about anything at all that might help to save time or make it easier for new gardeners to enjoy growing more…

Please no tips involving weed-killers or pesticides though, as we know that most of our readers on GYO and LGV are doing their best to avoid toxic chemicals.

Thompson & Morgan have kindly offered to give us vouchers again for the writers of tips we publish, and they can be spent on seeds, plants or kit from the catalogue or website.

PS If you are a voucher winner from Issue 3 of LGV or the Grow Your Own Subs’ Club, then they will be with you shortly.

Thanks in advance for your help!

My best tip - and one I've used for years - is that I plant my spuds with a bulb planter. I chip away a very shallow drill - about 2" deep - just to give me a line to follow, then 'screw' my bulb planter into the ground. This get the seed potato a good 6" down without the need to dig a trench. Just pop the potato into the hole and loosen the soil from the planted to cover it. When the whole row is done I give it the first earthing up. Very much easier on the back than the serious earth moving I've watched some people do.

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

vegheaven.blogspot.com Updated July 16th 2008

My tip sounds counter-intuitive: provide a hotel for snails.
I lay a roof tile or just a piece of flat wood on the ground on the lottie, and the molluscs congregate underneath it. I just pick up the tile and scrape the occupants off into the chicken run. Hey, it's recycling!

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

If you've got one of those cheap mini growhouses at a loose end after seedlings have been put out in the garden, lay it down flat and plant aubergines or peppers in the spaces between shelves. Add the plastic cover over the top, with a couple of clothes pegs to keep in place if necessary, and voila, an extra cloche with just enough height for your precious plants.

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

One tip that I saw on telly some dozen years ago helps enormously when re-potting.
Take a selection of plastic pots of the sizes you most use.
Fill them with cement/fine concrete and place a stick in them to act as a handle when the mixture is set.
When transplanting, use the appropriate size as a former in the new pot; compost can be firmed as required without falling down inside the former, which is then withdrawn and the transplant popped neatly into the hole that is left.
My original formers are still in use and well worth the effort in making them.

when planting squash, pumpkins or cougettes cover then ground first in cardboard then punch holes in it to plant through, then when plants are established mulch with FYM or grass clippings. this reduces the need for weeding/watering and when the plants have died off, leave the mulch in place over winter, then next year hey presto a quick dig and a lovely weed free area for that years crops.

works for me

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Kernow rag nevra

The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits
Albert Einstein

mulch, mulch & mulch some more, it preserves moisture and cuts back on weeding also encourage wild life with a shelter or pile of old logs/branches and if youve got room a small pond even an old sink sunk into the ground does the job

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

My tip is simple - if it's big enough, chit it. Peas, beans and sweetcorn can all be placed between sheets of damp paper towel and put in a warm place for a day or two until they sprout, then plant them individually, or in the case of peas in a shallow drill. It saves losses due to rots and mouse/bird theft as the plants appear much faster.

My tip reduces the number of times you need to lug the watering can.

Buy some big cheap terracotta pots and seal the hole in the bottom with waterproof adhesive and a peice of slate or some such. Sink the pot in the ground fill it with water and cover it. Plant things like lettuce or cabbage round it and the water will seep out slowly keeping the roots moist. The pots only need to be refilled about once a week. Works a treat!

But don't forget to take the pots out of the ground in the winter they won't be frost proof.

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Gardening requires a lot of water - most of it in the form of perspiration. Lou Erickson, critic and poet

*waves*

Hello - I work on Let's Grow Veg, and Jeannine has asked if I could keep an eye on this thread for her. Some fab tips already, people... but we could do with some more!

Any suggestions for easy-grow varieties? No-sweat ways to tackle weeds? *Anything* that means we get to spend more time sipping a glass of red and watching our crops grow...?

Cheers, all. Every response is much appreciated...

How about the tip to join a good on line forum so you can get expert advice when ever you need it? Now I'm sure I know of one some where.....................

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Off to China

Some types of veg are easier than others. I favour the ones you can dump in the ground and you'll know you'll get a pretty good harvest even if you can't keep on top of the weeds - things like potatoes are great, with big weed-suppressing foliage, and onion sets and garlic are good too, and generally pest-free. I like things you can leave in the ground over winter too, so if you don't have space or don't have time to dig up and store in sand etc then try parsnips, carrots and jerusalem artichokes. Fruit bushes will give you a mega harvest for very little input, and you can make jam or freeze excess for later. Make a home for wildlife too - toads and frogs will eat slugs, ground beetles will much away on loads of pests and ladybirds and lacewings are fabulous too.

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Dwell simply ~ love richly

Try to grow some fast growing or high yeilding veggies - there can be little things so encouraging to new growers than to see a speedy return for their labour. Examples would be courgettes, which give a high yeild for one plant or stump rooted carrots which will give a faster harvest than the larger, autumn varieties.

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Life may not be the party we hoped for but since we're here we might as well dance

lol - after some vouchers, perchance? I have to say, it'd be tough to top such a wise and useful tip...

Vouchers - ooh what vouchers? I didn't know anything about vouchers honest Miss.......

Seriously I do know this place has already taught me a lot about growing our own food

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Off to China

I would say that unless you've got an allotment the easiest way to start growing your own veg. is in a raised bed, that cuts out the digging & makes it easier to control weeds. If you mulch everything with homemade compost or even cover the ground with weed suppressant membrane & plant through it & cover that with a mulch it will keep down weeds. Also it pays to pull up weeds as soon as you see them as you're walking round your plot so that they don't set seed & spread.
As for easy to grow crops I would say tomatoes are very rewarding as are potatoes (unless we get a very wet summer like last & suffer from horredous outbreaks of blight!) which can be grown in containers if you don't have a lot of room. French & runner beans generally do well & don't need much work as are cut & come again salads, radishes, spring onions etc. which give quick & tasty results to encourage you to try other crops.
If you have problems with pests such as slugs, snails & vine weevils you can buy nematodes which are safe to use on edibles & will keep the populations down or you can use barrier methods such as bran, copper tape, crushed baked eggshells, grit or beer filled 'slug pubs' for slugs & snails. Garlic sprays also put some pests off eating your veg. & don't taint the crops.

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Into every life a little rain must fall.

Get some chickens!
You get eggs (and meat if you're that way inclined)
and you get lots of lovely poo.
They eat your scraps
They help dig the garden and dispose of all your nasties - they love slugs.
And they're fun!

Use newspaper or old phone directory pages as mulch. Make sure the earth is damp, spread the paper, several sheets thick and make this wet then cover with compost, grass cuttings or any other mulching material. Locks the moisture in and cuts down greatly on watering and smothers the weeds.

Grow in raised beds, much easier to look after than daunting rows of veg. Also great for anyone with a bad back as it's much easier to sit on the path and plant, water etc. You don't need to dig the ground either, just put down a thick layer of cardboard inside the raised bed framework and put down your soil/compost on top of that. You will get some weedgrowth through ie dandelions but every time you crop, give the ground a good fork over to extract the weeds and it won't take long before they're gone.

A tip I picked up from here, keep old sponges and cut up and use in pots and hanging baskets to act as a water reservoir, again cuts down on watering.

I'm a great fan of non dig gardening, this frees up tons of time, just use cardboard and mulch. For previously undug ground it can take a year and several applications of cardboard and mulch but it kills nearly everything (not bindweed, but it weakens it) and the ground becomes easy enough to work with a handfork. Let the worms do the work for you.

Cardboard is the true gardener's friend!
Sue

my tip for weeding is that you should only tackle one row at a time forget every thing elce and just cocerntrate on one row weed it very well then next time another row dont rush and you will find that it works well and then just a quick hoe around and you will have no weeds

Germinate things like beans in doors and don't plant out until approx 12" tall, this gives them a good fighting chance against the slugs which can demolish a row of newly germinated seeds overnight.

Copper tape is a useful anti slug/snail deterrent for planters, for raised beds try using old copper pipe or the core from old electrical wire.

Rememebre to water tomatoes regularly to prevent fruit splitting later on.

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My Blog is here.../

get a head start on the cold weather and get a few 10cm posts, sew 6-10 seeds of the following (1 variety per pot) Beetroot, spring onions, turnips, carrots etc, then when the soil warms up pop the lot in the ground (Minus the plant pot) and the bulbs will naturally push apart and give you a clump of veg - just allow more space than you would for an individual plant as the bulbs will take up more room underground as they push themselves apart.

Also - large padded bubble envelopes make great propogators, they need to be checked daily as theres not much air once seedling emerge. They can be re-used again and again.

tyres are a hinderence to the environment but can be used in the veg growers garden - stack up for a potato planter, tractor tyres are huge and make a great raised bed as they are! You can even use a jigsaw to cut the tread off car tyres, open into a strip, rivet them together in a long strip and make a wall for long raised beds. Great recycling if youre DIY savy

Runner beans are dead easy to grow, and the variety "Painted Lady", with its red-and-white flowers, makes a very attractive display against a fence or over an arch (they were originally grown as ornamentals, not veg!). I soak the beans overnight to get them started, then make my own root-trainers by slotting loo-roll tubes into the larger size of plastic module (24 to a tray) and filling them with seed compost. When the bean plants are three or four inches high, ease the tube out of the module and plant out the whole thing - the cardboard will just biodegrade in the soil.

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Three bantams and a 3-pole allotment - the Good Life in miniature

To stop slugs and snails, put copper pipe around the top the raised bed. Also you can drill small holes in the pipe and connect it to a water butt and you then have a watering system as well.

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