All about sustainable food production on small spaces plus books and gardens
Read about the one-acre plot that Sally Morgan has set up at Empire Farm in Somerset. Sally blogs regularly about the plot – whats being grown and raised, plus ideas for how you can use your produce. Read about Sally’s visits to farms, gardens, allotments and growers during the year. You can also find out about her workshops that she runs from Empire Farm.
I took advantage of a bright and still morning to watch the comings and goings on a patch of asters. These gaudy flowers were obviously a hit with #pollinators, within a few minutes I observed visits from bees, hoverflies and
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Its #bigbutterflycount time – walk for 15 minutes and record the species and numbers of butterflies that you see (https://www.bigbutterflycount.org). It’s something I do every year, but this time butterflies have been badly hit by the drought. In fact, insect
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Showing its socks off in a shady corner of the Grow Your Own garden at RHS Hampton Court 2018 was an attractive shrub with magenta flowers and spicy fragrance. Judging from the number of visitors asking about its identity, it
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A visit to RHS Hampton Court Flower Show is one of my highlights of the gardening year – an idyllic location beside Hampton Court Palace and the Thames, a vast array of show gardens, stand holders with just about everything
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You don’t see udo (Aralia cordata) very often in the UK. Its a huge Asian perennial ‘vegetable’ that grows to two to three metres in height. It’s also called Japanese Spikenard because of the spiky bristles on the shoots. Being
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What are those yellow flowers? Its a common question asked by visitors to the plot at this time of year. The eye-catching flowers that tower above everything else are parsnips. It’s a shame that more don’t keep their parsnips in
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A new book on chicken keeping dropped through the mailbox – this time The New Rules of the Roost:Organic care and feeding for the family flock written by Robert and Hannah Litt and to be published by Timber Press (ISBN
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Last week I popped along to the #NGS open day at Homeacres – Charles Dowding’s no dig garden in Somerset. I have visited before but not at this time of year, so it was good to see the beds early
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Holy hay or holy clover, sainfoin is a forgotten non-bloat legume with amazing properties and not surprisingly it’s making a bit of a come back. I went to the Cotswolds to learn about sainfoin at an event hosted by Cotswold
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This is the last of my saved Musquee De Provence, a large traditional French winter squash (Cucurbita moschata), now a puree in the freezer. These large flat, cheese-wheel squashes are often seen on sale in French markets where they are
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