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Growing Your Own - Information, Advice & Help

Hints & Tips, Help, Advice and Views

This is a personal site – feel free to disagree with me! Suggestions, comments and contributions are really welcome.

If you would like to add an article (that will be credited to you) please contact me. Don't worry if you don't think you are an author - I can edit it for you.

Growing Month by Month

A series on what you should be doing in the garden or on the plot each month. Of course this will vary depending on where you are and the weather, but I hope it provides some guidance.

Allotment Hints & Tips

My hints and tips for the allotment channel TV programme are now online here along with video.

Vegetables Growing Advice

Vegetable Growing
Month by Month

The bestselling guide to growing your own

With FREE SEEDS

The Essential Allotment Guide

All you need to know!

With FREE SEEDS

Easy Jams, Chutneys & Preserves

Bestselling guide from Val Harrison who runs our recipe pages.

With £5 VOUCHER

Low Cost Living

Practical Self Sufficiency advice to help you live better for less!

With £5 VOUCHER

A selection of articles about growing vegetables, guides to growing individual vegetables and general advice on growing. I'm expanding this section over the next few weeks, so do keep checking.

It's quite surprising how some simple 'tricks' can make a big difference to your crop results. Take a look a Henry's Gardening & Growing Hints

I've also put some articles up about what I think is the most under rated vegetable we grow - the humble potato. Planning what to grow? Think about the flavour and take a look at Potatoes - What Varieties to grow for Flavour When you taste your own home-grown potatoes you will realise what you have missed out on when you eat those supermarket spuds.

Growing Fruit Advice

Allotments are not just for growing vegetables. This section covers fruit growing and provides advice and help on fruit growing.

Greenhouse Growing

A selection of articles about greenhouses, growhouse, propagators, codlframes etc. From where to put a greenhouse to how to build a second hand greenhouse.

Allotment Articles

Information of interest to anyone who grows their own as well as allotmenteers. Various topics - from storing the surplus to planning your plot and, of course, my rantings on the evils of supermarket food.

The most common question on our forums tends to be about how to start with a new allotment and planning - my advice on Clearing a New Allotment and Planning the Plot may be useful.

Allotment Foods

When the harvest is in what do you do with it?

These articles give help on how to store your crops including freezing. There's a blanching chart you can print out and keep in the kitchen for when you need it.

Ever fancied making your own cheese? There's a great article by poultry expert Katie Thear who used to edit various self sufficiency magazines including Home Farm.

Manures & Fertilisers

You cannot expect the soil to feed your crops year after year without putting something back and these articles cover the types of fertilisers and manures and their uses

National Vegetable Society

The National Vegetable Society or NVS is a charity dedicated to advancing the culture, study and improvement of vegetables offering help and advice to novice and expert show grower alike.

Links to articles and sections of the NVS web site

From Medwyn Williams

Champion vegetable grower Medwyn Williams has allowed the National Vegetable Society to re-publish over 400 of his articles and we've got them listed by date along with a description of each article linked directly to the NVS web site.

Frugal Living

Just basically some of the ways we try to save not just money but also save energy and try to reduce our impact on the environment and reduce our carbon dioxide output. More related to our lifestyle than gardening but I hope they will save you money as well.