Growing more veg!

Are you doing it as a joint project, Alie, sharing the produce? If so, I think it's a brilliant idea.

Depending on how much room you have you could start getting some ground ready for early potatoes. Onions can also be planted in March.

Once the ground warms up you can concentrate on the things you like to eat the most like carrots and cabbages. Hispi cabbges (the pointy ones) are ready early summer and usually escape the ravages of caterpillars. I also grow broad beans as an early crop.

There are lots of inexpensive books on veg growing and YouTube has some great videos.

Sounds like you're going to have a busy summer.

Sugar snap peas, runner beans, courgettes.
Soft fruit bushes - you don't need many to give a good crop if you like blackcurrants, red currants, gooseberries etc.

However, our sprouts are only as big as marbles so we should have used more manure!

When the weeds start to grow is generally considered when the soil is warm enough to grow.

When choosing what to grow consider brassicas etc that will stand all winter and give you veg (cover if plagued by pigeons) such as black and green kale, leeks and sprouts. We always overwinter chard. In spring pull off any leaves that are damaged and it will come back and provide leaves when you have nothing else growing. We have never had much luck with sprouts but if you try them get a low growing variety as their roots are shallow and they often fall in windy conditions.

If there are shortages, and we can find the energy, I want to dig up our tiny back garden and just grow potatoes and onions.
We have a conservatory - it's not heated, but perhaps could plant salads in growbags.
I'll be interested to hear how you all get on. Good idea AlieOxon.

We used to have an allotment but had to reluctantly give it up.

Our garden isn't huge but I grow dwarf french beans in pots, strawberries, rosemary, mint, chives etc. Tomatoes grow outdoors in a sunny spot.

They are all so much tastier when picked and used straight away.

We've had success with potatoes in raised beds, fruit bushes in pots and tomatoes, courgettes and aubergines in the greenhouse. DH also tried broccoli last summer, but I'm afraid that the caterpillars ate that!

Are you not keen on squidging, MiniMoon?

I find it weirdly therapeutic - a bit like popping bubble-wrap and it saves the crop!

I've just planted marrow fat peas in a pot, not for the peas themselves, but for the shoots.
The pot is on an indoors windowsill until its milder out.

I'm just using up the last of the butternut squash, potatoes and onions from last year's crop and have still got plenty of fruit and veg in the freezer too. Our favourite vegetables are beetroot and French beans as they can be pickled/frozen respectively and keep us going until the next batch is ready to be harvested, so I would definitely recommend growing them. Last year's salad crop was brilliant; we had salad leaves, tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers and pea shoots in abundance.

I can't even touch a caterpillar (leave it to the DGD!)

AlieOxen, Jalima there is an offer on the Martin Lewes site (I have his regular monthly newsletter) for several soft fruit bushes, strawberries, seeds and some fertilizer for £17.94 delivered.
I ordered mine yesterday.
It seemed good value as full price would be £56.95.

Would have to be quick as I think the offer ends 3rd Feb.
Thompson & Morgan.
Discount code TM_TAF283W
Bundle includes
12 strawberry bare root runners
6 raspberry root canes
3 gooseberry bare root bushes
2 blueberry potted bushes
£10ish worth of veg seeds in at least 3 different varieties.
200g incredicrop fertilizer.

Martin Lewis.

My OH has made wooden farmed cages to grow the purple sprouting in, fine netting stops the cabbage white butterflies. I used to squash the caterpillar eggs whenever I was in the garden, then he came up with this idea.

Salad crops are always good to have, runner beans/broad beans. We grow a few early potatoes but for the space they take we don't grow main crop. Onions and shallots for pickling. Beetroot. Carrots are hit and miss, one year good crop next year not but he keeps trying (this year was good). Going to plant some peas this year for a change. Also going to try outdoor tomatoes, usually only do greenhouse ones.
Herbs in garden and I also plant up a trough and have it sheltered so keeps going most of the year. We have kept chilli plants going through the winter in the greenhouse.

We also have soft fruits strawberries, raspberries, gooseberry, blackcurrants.

wooden framed - not farmed!

Cherrytree I've had a look, but would probably rather have vegetable plug plants later.... I have pear, plum (irregular!) and raspberries ..... no room for more bushes really, but thanks, and others may like this.

I also (actually at the point where I need raised beds) plan to use old green deep boxes as originally for rubbish collection here, to grow some things apart from the allotment idea.
And, to put more plants up on the fences, as my sister has provided some leftover fairly rigid netting!

A thought - let's not wait until there are shortages.
Food fresh from the garden is always better!

Has anyone tried growing apple pips or a walnut tree from a walnut, just curious.

Raised beds are great for keeping carrot fly away and to prevent sore backs
Potatoes, onions and leeks for me are the easiest and most productive veg with least work
I love watching beans grow, but unless you can freeze them or make chutney a few beans go a long way.
Raspberries and blackcurrant are our best fruit here in Scotland. Strawberries get eaten by slugs or turn to mush in the rain.
Tomatoes need more warmth than we get or a lot of attention
Do I sound like a lazy gardener

travelsafar I have an oak tree 40yrs old grown from an acorn but although I've tried apple pips the resulting trees only grew to a few feet and then got diseased.
Lemon and orange pips grow but I've never tried a walnut. Avocado stones grow into quite attractive houseplants having sprouted by themselves on the compost heap.

My Dad once grew a fir tree from a seed harvested from a pine cone. Not any old fir tree though, but a Turkish pine. He planted it in his back garden, and it lived there for many years. It had to go eventually though, as it grew too big.

Cherry tree, brilliant offer. Have ordered it for my allotment. Many thanks.

DH does all the work in the allotment, but I like to play supervisor. I've persuaded him to concentrate on things that actually cost a bit more in the shops, rather than potatoes, carrots, parsnips, onions, though he does still grow some of them. He tells me leeks, courgettes and rhubarb are the easiest crops - we certainly get plenty of them! We save a fortune on the soft fruit, as we, and the AC and DGC, eat loads of it. We have strawberries, raspberries, gooseberries, redcurrants, blackcurrants, blackberries, blueberries, and something we've at last identified as jostaberries. Everything tastes so much better than shop bought, particularly tomatoes warm from the vine. The one thing he can't seem to grow is asparagus - has anyone any tips (no pun intended)?

MiniMoon, DS grew a Christmas tree from one of those packets of seeds you put in Christmas stockings. It moved from a pot to the garden and then to the bottom of the allotment, where it overshadows half the plot. We offered it to the village association for their Christmas tree last year, but it was too big!

Could we get back to the first post? This could be quite serious. Maggie, we could need the basics.

“Dig for Victory” was the hugely successful campaign that encouraged civilians to grow their own in order to reduce Britain’s reliance on imports. .. In the 1930s 75 per cent of pre-war Britain’s food was imported by ship and the German U-boat blockade threatened the home front with starvation. (The Telegraph)

As a small child I remember my dad digging up most of our back lawn into four vegetable beds. One was for potatoes – I don’t remember what was in the others.

If this Brexit is going to be affecting our imports of fresh foods, as the big supermarkets think, we should be doing the same this year!

Nearly every vegetable that I've tried to grow has died. Even runner beans wilted last year. Blackfly, greenfly, slugs, beetles, snails, all lie in wait ready to pounce. We haven't room for a veg plot so all these failures have been grown in pots. I feed and water religiously but it does no good.