the green gal

Where I find gardening help

So, the sun is shining and the sound of garden centre tills is ringing in the air, it's time to get gardening! I've already made a start on some of my veggies – first and second early potatoes are in as well as red onions and a couple of rows of spring onions and leeks. This weekend I added the first row of salad leaves and also bought a couple of flowering plants to help attract bees and butterflies into the garden (and give them somewhere to feed). Following advice from the lovely chaps at Buckland Nurseries in Surrey, I went for Verbena and Veronica which will hopefully produce blue and pink flowers in a couple of months' time.

But enough about me, I want to take this opportunity to pass on some of the people, websites and books that I find hugely helpful in my growing attempts.

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Websites

growveg.com is a v clever website that lets you draw your plot, plan your crops (it automatically works out how much space you need for each), work out crop rotation and saves your plan so you can adjust and add to it over time. You can trial it for 30 days for free but then there is a fee of £15 for a year. Give it a go for the free period and see how useful you find it.

www.bbc.co.uk/gardening Whatever you need information on in life, the BBC can usually help and gardening is no exception. Whether it's veg growing or flowers or shrubs or anything soil related, this site is bound to provide you with some guidance.

Soil Association If you're interested in growing and eating organic food, then the Soil Association is the organisation for you. They are the sort of governing body of organic produce, not just food, and have a lot of info on eating healthily for yourself and the planet.

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People

The Alternative Kitchen Garden I found Emma as @akgpodcast on twitter and she's always been very patient giving me advice on my amateur gardening questions. Check out her podcasts on her site or look for a copy of her book.

Alys Flower is a newish presenter on Gardeners' World and, although she's not been a hit with some of the diehard fans, I think she's fab. She has a new show that started last week called The Edible Garden where she tries to grow as much of the food she eats as possible in her garden. Do take a look if you get a mo.

James Wong has also had a series on the BBC (I'm not on commission, honest, the Beeb just makes some really good programmes!), which I love, called Grow Your Own Drugs. It's not quite as debauched as it may sound, James tells viewers all about how to use plants to ease medical complaints. Even if you don't end up getting off the couch to make any of the potions, it's great telly and James' beaming enthusiasm is refreshingly cheering.

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People

Grow Organic is a Dorling Kindersley book, if you're familiar with this publishing house you'll know that every book they ever make is beautifully pictured and designed and has failsafe information. I find this book hugely useful as a relative novice and I'm sure the more experienced could make use of it too.

The New Complete Book of Self-Sufficiency is the bible of growing your own and going it alone. John Seymour was the founder of the self-sufficient lifestyle and from growing basic veg to having a smallholding, John is your man to help you.

Complete Guide to Gardening Season by Season This isn't a book for veg growers but for everything else growing in your outside space it's brilliant. By dividing up advice season by season it makes it easier to check what your garden needs to help bring out its beauty. 

So, those are just a few of the people and places that I find advice and inspiration in the gardening world. I hope they prove useful to you too. If you have any particular gardening gurus, I'd love to hear about them.

Breathe in the spring air

It's a beautiful day here, I hope the sun is shining where you are too. And, as is only fitting on a sunny spring day, I have been behaving in a most typically Sunday way.

1. Took the dog for a long walk in a nearby wood. Saw lots of little tufts of green leaves so hoping they'll turn into bluebells soon.

2. Went to the garden centre and bought lots of organic peat-free soil for our raised veggie beds. Last year we totally underestimated how much soil compresses down over time and our vegs didn't have enough soil to grow in. I've learnt my lesson, have thrown on lots more soil and will wait for it to settle down before sowing.

3. Planted my chitted first early seed potatoes in a low stack of tyres. This worked really well last year as you just keep adding soil and another tyre as the plants grow. Plus, it frees up the beds for other crops. I got my tyres from our local garage. The owner told me that all of their old tyres are recycled but growing potatoes in them sounded much more interesting! You can read here how I got on with my veggie endeavours last year.

4. Hung a load of washing outside on the line to dry, wind blown dry clothes are somehow lovelier than those which have air dried in the spare room.

5. Completely unrelated but I just spent a v enjoyable half hour photographing the reels of thread I bagged at my favourite antique/secondhand store yesterday. I already have wool that matches perfectly (no prizes for guessing my favourite colours) so snapped them too. I may not have photographed them outside in the spring air but the warm sunshine was flooding into the room making the light the best it's been for photo taking all year.

6. Will soon be off for another dog walk, then a read of the papers with a drink or two in the local pub, followed by a bowlful of homemade leek and potato soup at home. Pretty much a perfect Sunday! Hope your weekends have been equally or even more lovely.

Gardening lessons learned

Hello and welcome to my new look blog! It's a bit shinier looking than the last one and I've added a couple of extra things including some pics of things I have made. Does what it says on the tin. There's not a lot there yet but it will be added to in time! Hope you like it! BTW, anyone who had an RSS feed, I didn't manage to carry you over from my old blog so you might want to set that up again, sorry!

So, to gardening. As you will know I have ventured into the land of veggie gardening, with mixed results. Thought I'd give you an update as to how my little crops are doing and sum up what I've learned so far.

• Maincrop potatoes in their tower of tyres are still growing, had a few pretty flowers that my dog hasn't quite managed to jump up and bit off, little madam. They're hardy things as she REALLY wants to chomp her way through the leafiness.
• Onions are a bit sad, I'll come to that in a bit.
• Salad leaves were doing well till a few white cabbage butterflies laid their eggs and now the leaves look more like Swiss cheese than salad.
• Purple-sprouting broccoli are doing a great job sprouting enormous leaves but no actual broccoli. I'm reliably informed by veggie grower extraordinaire Emma Cooper (http://coopette.com) that they probably won't sprout till spring. 
• Peppers are growing v slowly, paint dries at lightning speed in comparison.
• Courgettes, only one plant left but that's got lots of little dinky courgettes growing on its very long stalk!
• Tomatoes, 43 of them to be precise, are okay, took some advice from Tuesday's Gardener's World and lopped off the top of one plant above the fifth truss (get me with my lingo). Two are turning orange so I have high hopes for the other 41.
• Strawberries served me very well but are now on their way out. Most of the leaves are red and the last two strawberries will be gobbled up tomorrow.
• Garlic is nearly done, stalks need to go a bit more yellow.
• Last three aren't technically veg but let's not be rigid!

So, what have I learned in first foray into gardening? A lot! To the experienced out there the below will seem pretty obvious but remember back to the first crops you planted, did you get it all right first time around? (Shush if you did.)

• A hanging basket is ideal for strawberries, no nasties get to them and they look pretty dangling in the air.
• When you fill a bed with compost, press it down because in time it will settle and look like you put in half the amount. Because I didn't do some bed squashing my onions don't have enough soil to grow in, hence their sad look.
• Purple-sprouting broccoli takes up a lot of space. I mean a lot. Courgette plant kind of amount. A lot.
• You have got to cover up salad leaves. Otherwise they will get eaten by the wildlife. For definite. (Any advice on the best and most practical way to do this gladly received.)
• Tomatoes look good, and grow well, in a window box, just be sure to fill it to the brim with soil.
• Growing potatoes in tyres works! Okay I haven't dug them up yet but look at the piccie, whatever's going on in there has to be good!
• You really do use a lot less water with a watering can rather than the hose.
• Growing your own veggies is fab. It's rewarding, it's cheap, it's interesting, it benefits you and your environment (local and global), you learn loads plus you get to eat the efforts of your labour. 
• People who don't garden are easily impressed with anything you have managed to grow. Or I have polite friends.
• Gardening books are inspirational (see below) but you can't beat advice from real-life humans too (thanks bruv!).

On the subject of tasty gardening books, I'm going to give you the chance to win a gardening book, hurray! Grow Organic is a sumptuous DK book (see here for an Amazon link http://good.ly/a82bt) and I shall give away a copy to a randomly selected person who comments on this post before midnight (UK time) Wednesday 12 August.

I’m planted!

So, I've launched myself fully into the world of vegetable growing. You've already read, in great detail, about the potatoes growing in tyres and since then I have planted a hanging basket, two veg beds and some pots! 

Deciding what to grow wasn't too tricky, we just went for what we like to eat that would work in our limited space. That means, as well as tatties, we have strawberries (in the basket), onions, salad leaves, purple-sprouting broccoli, sweet peppers, courgettes and a few herbs. Will be adding tomatoes to the collection once we have a window box in place.

However, the responsibility of planting – is the soil okay, are they they right depth/distance apart, are they in the best spot etc – took me by surprise. But now I've planted most of what I want to grow, the pressure to nurture and cultivate them into

edible crops is weighing even heavier on my shoulders! I think I expected to plonk the seeds/sets/plants in the earth, water them occasionally and then, in a while, eat their produce. Just like that. I didn't actually stop to think what else I need to do! So, any idea on how to do the best by my plants would be thankfully received!