Bonjour

[bobleponge]

Hello everyone
I have just registered onto this site after having read the entire veggie archives over the last few days and seeing how helpful people are.
We (Chris and The Boss) live in Northern France and have a decent sized plot that I intend to make us reasonably self sufficient fruit and veg wise.
We already have fruit to die for, plums, apples, apricots, grapes, kiwi's, pear, and most soft fruits, (last years blackberry brandy was wonderful) but this year we are attacking the vegetable side of life.
I will ask no end of ridiculous questions (although I always say that if you dont know the answer its not a ridiculous question) and will always be greatful for all help received.
The only slight difficulty is that I work away from home 4 weeks and then home 4 weeks, so precise planting is always going to be a bit troublesome but I can always plant either 2 weeks early or 2 weeks late.
Looking forward to having your assistance in the months and years ahead and sharing my failures and possibly even successes with you.

Chris

[debjay]

Hi
Welcome to the vine
Debs

[TonyF]

Bonjour et bienvenue.

Chris, get down to your local maison de la presse and start looking through their gardening journeaux. There are some great publications around at the moment about potagers, growing veg etc, the Rustica Potager 2008 would be a good place to start, costs about euro 6.50., and some of the others give details for growing on a regional basis, depending on your climate.

I would think that up there your likely to be the same as the SE UK and a week or two either way wont make any difference. Down here we can be a month ahead for planting/seeds and for croppping and our growing season is much longer but the general advice here for SE England should do you well.

And it's time to prune your kiwis in late Feb!

Bon chance.

[Nicos]

Hello there - and welcome to the Vine!!

I think you get the gold award for reading all our posts!!!!- you've not got 'numb bum syndrome ' have you??

Hope we can be of help....but it looks like we may have to pick your brains on the fruit side of things!

[shirlthegirl43]

Hello and welcome to the vine.

I look forward to reading about your veggie growing. I am a learner veg grower, this will be my third year of experimenting (and trying to tame my rather wild garden). Well done on reading all the posts on the vine!!

[HeyWayne]

And it's time to prune your kiwis in late Feb!

Is that some dodgy translation Tony - you still reverting back to Blighty-isms dans le Francais?

Welcome aboard bobleponge, well done for reading all the posts, that's quite something!

[Flummery]

Welcome aboard bobleponge. People here are very helpful and as you can see, there are a few in France too. There's no such thing as a daft question - but we don't guarantee that you won't occasionally get a daft answer!

[Newbie]

Welcome to the vine Bobleponge, it's a lovely helpful place and the people are very friendly. Lots of us newbies here too so we can all learn together.

[snake the squadie]

you will learn more on here than in any book.

[smallblueplanet]

Bonjour Bobleponge. Hope you find your answers here, some of us might be asking you questions too.

[wellie]

Hi Bobleponge!

Welcome to The Vine from Trousers and myself as well. We're moving to France this year too and dead excited!
And yes, you'll learn everything you need to know here, and the beauty of gardening, is that you never quite know it all, so there's always something new to learn.

You ARE lucky with all that lovely fruit. Have you got the soft fruit caged? (mmm... dangerous fruit!) or is it just growing in the open, birds 'n'all?

Really looking forward to helping out if I can.

[vegnut]

Hi Bobleponge and welcome to the vine. Ditto on the above messages.

[lainey lou]

Hello Boble glad you decided to join in with the fun!

[TonyF]

Is that some dodgy translation Tony - you still reverting back to Blighty-isms dans le Francais?

Welcome aboard bobleponge, well done for reading all the posts, that's quite something!

Not at all HeyWayne, Feb is the time to give your kiwi fruit their first pruning.

[Hans Mum]

& welcome from me too, theres always lots of good advice to ne had on here