Squashing expectations

August 20, 2018.Reading time 2 minutes.

I have already realised that we grew far too many courgettes this year (although we’re yet to throw any away, we just keep pressing them on people). But I didn’t realise that our summer squashes might follow suit. I used to grow pumpkins up trellises in London because I had no space – vertical growing […]

Review of 2017: garden successes and failures

October 1, 2017.Reading time 10 minutes.

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 […]

Recipe: Warming spicy squash and lentil soup

September 16, 2017.Reading time 3 minutes.

We recently harvested our Crown Prince squash. I really enjoyed growing the squashes and pumpkins vertically and I was pleasantly surprised by how well they climbed but I do wonder if the fact that they were growing up rather than out was responsible for their poor crop. That or lack of pollination perhaps? Because I […]

Plugging the gaps in the raised beds

April 11, 2017.Reading time 1 minute.

I sometimes wonder if people with an allotment or vegetable beds in their garden face the same complications that I do when it comes to deciding what to plant where. Even if I’d been growing my own plants from seed rather than cheating and didn’t have to wait for the plug plants to be shipped […]

Sowing seeds with a toddler: Proper propagators

March 29, 2017.Reading time 4 minutes.

With the growing space that I used to use pre-baby occupied by a busy toddler who has more personal belongings than many Royals, I’ve been severely limited in how many seeds I can sow from scratch. I did have a very small greenhouse but walls of glass and busy bouncing boys didn’t really seem to […]

Sow many plans, sow little time

April 8, 2015.Reading time 1 minute.

On Easter Monday the lovely Mr Garlic helped me to do a whole morning of gardening. Because I’m stuck on the knee scooter with a broken foot (and my stupid scooter doesn’t fit into the side return), he was wonderful and shuttled back and forth with bags of soil and bean shoots and all sorts […]

It’s all a bit of a squash in here

July 4, 2014.Reading time 3 minutes.

Oh, puns. They prompted Caligula to roast a comedian alive and Bierce to sneer at them as a “form of wit to which wise men stoop and fools aspire.” But my love of them, established early at the knee of my maternal grandfather, lives on. Puns and cracker jokes. I just can’t get enough, and […]

When you can’t grow out, grow up! Or, vertical gardening.

June 5, 2014.Reading time 3 minutes.

When you’re as limited in space as I am, sometimes up is the only way to grow. Vertical gardening, vertical planters or “green walls” have all become very popular over the last five or six years, as urban dwellers seek to grow food regardless of the size of their plot. From planters made of old […]