 Friday, July 11, 2008 by Jeremy Dore (48 comments)
Manure has long been the standard way for vegetable gardeners to improve the fertility of their soil. On my local allotment gardens, manure is delivered by the truckload each year and for just a small cost large quantities can be dug into your vegetable plot ready for the next season. This cheap high-nutrient boost is the way many gardeners have been producing vegetables for years but that’s going to have to change. Over the last few months a large number of plots treated with manure have been producing warped and damaged plants and the culprit seems to be a certain weed-killer... Read more...
Categories: gardening organic problems |
Friday, July 04, 2008 by Jeremy Dore (7 comments)
Earlier this year we asked gardeners using our website to tell us what their favourite and worst garden jobs were. Most found it easy to name planting or weeding but a few people simply wrote that they loved it all. I envy people who find such pleasure in an activity! Of course what motivates people to garden is usually a very personal thing and varies from a love of the outdoors to a desire for gourmet-style fresh kitchen ingredients. But I have always thought that there must be some common thread with those who ‘get it right’ and just love the whole experience... Read more...
Categories: gardening |
Friday, June 27, 2008 by Jeremy Dore (4 comments)
Seed companies would have you believe that all you have to do is buy the right seed, water regularly and use good soil to be guaranteed success. But real gardeners know differently: every garden is different and there are thousands of important factors that make up success. No matter how carefully you follow books and seed packet instructions, you soon realise that conditions you have and the way you garden are unique - and both have a great influence of the results you get. So how about some experimentation to find out the best methods for your own garden...? Read more...
Categories: gardening |
Friday, June 20, 2008 by Jeremy Dore (5 comments)
A few years ago my parents gave me three dwarf apple trees for my birthday. You might think that’s a strange present but I love apples and they’re great to grow. I carefully set up supports and planted them as thin ‘cordons’ where they grow up at an angle to maximise the crop in a small space. Soon they were blossoming and then laden with lots of tiny fruit. Imagine my disappointment then when after a few weeks the apples started dropping off. What was the cause? Read more...
Categories: gardening fruit apples |
Friday, June 13, 2008 by Jeremy Dore (10 comments)
This week I noticed that two of my tomato plants had yellow-brown leaves at the bottom and certainly didn’t look as perky as I expected given the attention I have been giving them. Admittedly these were two of the many surplus plants I raised from seed and so they ended up outdoors in rather poor soil usually reserved for less fussy plants. But I love tomatoes and can’t bear to see plants die, so out came my reference books to find out the cause... Read more...
Categories: organic gardening tomato soil |
Friday, June 06, 2008 by Jeremy Dore (2 comments)
Herbal teas are a great alternative to regular (‘English’) tea or coffee. Not only do they add refreshing variety to the hot drinks on offer in your kitchen but they are free from caffeine and often have beneficial medicinal effects – from calming nerves to aiding digestion. You might think that growing herbal teas is a specialist area but nothing could be further from the truth. With just a few minutes preparation you can be growing your own varieties and can enjoy the superior taste of fresh tasting drinks through a good portion of the year... Read more...
Categories: gardening herbs |
Friday, May 30, 2008 by Jeremy Dore (6 comments)
Mulching is the practice of covering the soil around the vegetables and plants you want to grow. This is done to boost the various natural processes that help growth and to suppress weeds. It’s something that nearly all organic textbooks recommend and is amazingly easy to incorporate into any garden system. So why do more of us not mulch around our plants? Read on to find out the pros and cons and best ways to get mulching... Read more...
Categories: gardening organic mulch |
Friday, May 23, 2008 by Jeremy Dore (8 comments)
Salad leaves have to be one of the most rewarding things to grow in a garden. As summer approaches there is nothing more satisfying than going out into the garden to harvest a selection of fresh crisp lettuce leaves which can be ready to eat in minutes. In fact my first growing success was a packet of mixed lettuce leaf seeds – it was so easy to do that I started to grow tomatoes and soon got hooked by vegetable gardening. Now, several years on, I thought I would round up my favourite ways of growing salad and why I like to grow it... Read more...
Categories: gardening salad |
Friday, May 16, 2008 by Jeremy Dore (2 comments)
Last week I wrote about how I had been asked to produce a list of top tips for new gardeners and gave the first five that I wish someone had told me when I first started out. This week I’ll complete the top ten with some advice that, although coming from a variety of sources, has proved invaluable to me over the past few years, yet is rarely found in books... Read more...
Categories: vegetable gardening |
Friday, May 09, 2008 by Jeremy Dore (0 comments)
A little while ago I was asked to produce a list of top tips for new vegetable gardeners. I suspect that it's a very individual matter but nonetheless it did sound interesting and got me thinking about all those things that aren't in the books but you just 'pick up'. So here's the first five of my recommendations, with numbers 6 to 10 following next week... Read more...
Categories: vegetable gardening |