Search - Articles

It's so hot I'm having to water my vegetable crops up to twice a day at the moment. Everyone on the allotment is desperately trying to keep the plants productive and, more to the point, alive.We're lucky to have taps dotted around the site, which

This has been a very productive year on my veg plot. Most of my favourite crops have performed extremely well, with good yields of delicious, fat vegetables. But, I have to admit, the leeks have been very disappointing.  I’ve never known such a

and winter roasts when there's been nothing else available.But now the mornings are getting lighter and brighter, the raspberries are starting to leaf up on the plot. I must confess I'm getting a tad bored of my usual selection of vegetables.So you might

friend who has a plot in the heart of the city centre.Like lots of allotmenteers, she lives in a flat with no garden, so her plot is always a riot of colour, with spring plantings of tulips, daffodils and wallflowers, followed by cottage garden

The weather has been pretty grotty lately, and I've had to grab every possible opportunity to get out in the garden. I don't think I've ever been so far behind with sowing and planting fruit and vegetable crops. This time last year my courgettes

Nothing beats the taste of freshly-picked sweetcorn in late summer and growing your own couldn't be easier. Sow your own seeds or buy young seedlings to plant now and grow them in a block on the veg plot. Or use them decoratively, planting them

I have a confession to make: I haven't been up to the plot for a week or so and, what's more I can't see me getting up there for the next week or two either... I know it's the right time of year to get on top of digging, manuring and tidying

that perhaps we can bring our two skills together.The idea of forest gardening is to get away from the traditional vegetable plot (neat rows of annual vegetables that need to be sown every year) towards a more perennial way of growing edible plants. Perennial

feed on pollen from the open flowers, and hopefully breed and lay eggs. Developing larvae then feed on aphids, acting as a form of natural pest control.When I experimented with the 'square foot vegetable plot' planting technique a couple of years ago, I

vegetable plot and my newly planted squash plants were eaten over night. Now all I'm left with is a selection of decidedly miserable-looking stumps with a few scraps of leaf clinging on for dear life. Of course, the slugs are happy as can be. They're full