with “Gardening”
I can remember feeling a bit embarrassed when I first got into gardening. You’d be forgiven from the reaction I got from some friends for thinking I’d decided to become a stamp collector, yodeller or Tory MP…
Yet, knowing you can grow at least some of your own food just by sticking a seed in some soil is one of the most empowering and life-affirming experiences out there. It’s also an incredibly easy, cheap (and fun) thing to do when you garden the badly behaved way…
How you can be in good company with a more free spirited approach to planting on your plot… Most gardening books will tell you about the importance of crop rotation ‘blah, blah, brassicas after legumes”… “waffle, waffle, potatoes first…” It’s a planting system that is undoubtedly sensible if a) you’re a market gardener and will be growing produce en masse or …
I had an interest in the great outdoors from a very young age. I can remember as a child being mesmerised, watching as hundreds of baby spiders emerged and spread themselves bravely across a web. I wanted to grow veg but my parents didn’t know how, so I threw carrot seeds in the ground recklessly, hoping for the best. Trying …
If you want to feel better in this increasingly worrying world in which we reside then go and stick your hands in some good honest soil. Forget about gloves, and everything else you have going on in your life, and get stuck in. Pick some up, run it through your fingers and get connected because the healthier the soil, the …
Having closed the door firmly on an absolute scoundrel of a year (2016, you know I’m referring to you), it’s time to stick my hands in some good honest compost and get ready to delight once again in the restorative magic of watching as new shoots emerge bravely from the darkness and into the light. Yes the world is in …
In her latest blog on seasonal food, Alicia Miller explains how they bring a taste of summer to their plates in late January… As we packed our Christmas vegetable boxes a few weeks back, it was apparent that the rootiest time of year was upon us – potatoes, carrots, parsnips, beets, swedes and celeriac are the staples of holiday meals. …
Let’s face it – January isn’t a popular month. In fact it’s widely considered to be the most depressing month of the year. We’ve also just had so-called ‘Blue Monday’ as it’s referred to throughout the media, although arguably this year that could have been changed to ‘Black Friday’ , certainly for all liberal-minded folk around the world. Dastardly politics …
It was the posh shabby-chic Christmas catalogue that came through the post a few years back that provided an incentive for me to start making my own festive decorations from items gathered from the garden. I balked at what they were charging for what (appeared to me) to be simply bits of tree with silver spray-painted on them…. Instead, with …
A lot of people still follow so-called traditional advice of ‘bedding the garden’ down for winter. This normally entails meticulously pulling out dead or spent crops and digging the ground over to expose it to the elements which is recommended as being ‘good ‘for the soil. It’s actually a terrible, I repeat terrible thing to do on so many levels. …
First – a bit about Sam Sam Gray works a five acre plot in the heart of Shropshire where she keeps British Lop pigs, rare breed chickens, Soay sheep and grows a lot of her own fruit and veg. A published writer and author of ‘Doing it in Wellies’ about her first years on the farm, she is becoming well …
There are many fantastic (and free) materials that can be used to great effect around the smallholding and woodchip has to be one of the best. It’s also one of the easiest to get hold of as most tree surgeons or tree maintenance companies will jump at the opportunity of somewhere to dump their leftovers. So you’ll be doing them …