All I want for Christmas this year is more time in the garden. Oh the pleasure that can be found in the idle pottering about of a summer evening, or the power harvesting of an autumn morning after the school run. I revert to childlike status, begging my family for “Just five more minutes” as […]
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I’ve learnt a lot about gardening this year. I’ve filled my 44 hanging and wall baskets to bursting, as well as my four raised beds. Some things have worked well (I’ve grown more than £150 of organic produce and haven’t bought tomatoes all summer!) and some less well (one measly squash from six plants?). So […]
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Poles holding a basket Unsurprisingly, the biggest challenge to the frustrated gardener when regarding their tiny urban garden with critical eyes is a lack of space. I’ve covered my fences and walls with wall planters, vertical garden planting bags and hung hanging baskets from every single supporting fence post and still I don’t think I […]
Read MoreSo having sowed some more carrots to spread the harvest a little and divided up the last of my shadier raised beds, it occurred to me that I should fill the gaps and plant the last of the square foot plots I’ve marked out. I have chosen two of my favourite winter vegetables, parsnips and […]
Read MoreThe garden decked out in Easter colours ready for an egg hunt This is obviously enormously after the fact, but I was thinking the other day about all of the ways in which our garden makes us as a family happy. And one of the ways has to be how we basically use it as […]
Read MoreWay back in the mists of time (2014), I planted up my then brand new raised beds for the first time with a wide variety of expensive plants, all of which were doomed to die and be replaced within two years. All, except my Marjorie’s seedling plum tree. Since then I have loved it, I […]
Read MoreCarrots have an inherent flaw in their space requirements. Yes, you can plant teeny “Paris market” spherical carrots, but if you want normal long rooted carrots the planting directions generally require about 30cm between the rows. So if, like me, you have a tiny urban garden with a paltry four raised beds, what are you […]
Read MoreWhen trying to decide what we should plant in our tiny garden, I strove to get as wide a variety of edible produce as possible. I did, however, want to ensure we have a herb garden as well as I use herbs in a large amount of my cooking. The problem with herbs is the […]
Read MoreIn the past I’ve set myself quantitative goals for our garden. I’ve tried to save us £250 in groceries by benchmarking my harvest against the prices charged in our local supermarket and I’ve tried to grow certain foods in abundance. This year, gardening with a toddler is going to mean slightly different goals: This kind […]
Read MoreEdible flowers being as trendy as they are, you might remember that we had great fun sowing some edible flower seeds together into tiny coir pots last weekend. I’ve only got one propagator and it’s going to be used for a different project and so it was with enormous delight that I realised that the […]
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London to Land Girl 