Grow Your Own Needs Your Tips

[jeannine]

Due to the popularity of our Subs Club pages, we're putting together another page of top tips for the next issue.

There's a 10 T&M voucher for the writers of our favourite tips!

We'd love to know what your favourite plant to grow is and why. For example, I'm a huge fan of heritage varieties of peas - they taste sweeter and they often grow 2 metres tall so you get bumper crops from the same space. And, as if that wasn't enough, they often have a longer harvesting period.

This is your chance to see your expertise in print. Have you found a slug-proof potato or a radish that stands without going woody? Do you know any exotic or unsual veg that deserve to be more widely grown?

Thanks from all of us at Grow Your Own in advance for your help!!!

[lainey lou]

I've only had my allotment since last july, prior to that I was growing what I could in my flower borders and in pots etc.
Despite the fact that this year I have my lottie, I'll still be growing all my cut and come again salad leaves in window boxes, it's so easy just fill the boxes with compost sprinkle on the seed, water and hey presto within a few weeks you have loads of lovely salad leaves that taste nothing like the ones bought in bags at the supermarket. As they are on my kitchen windows I can harvest them right at the last minute so they are still fresh and crisp. There are loads of different varieties to try so each meal can be different, yum!

[Flummery]

I wouldn't be without French Climbing beans. For a small area of ground you can get a very large crop. Choosing your varieties well, you can get fresh 'snap' beans, shelling beans and dried beans. I have several wigwams each year, with a different variety on each. There's a fantastic array of colour to be had - green, purple, yellow and some are even splashed with red. Best of all, because they tend not to cross and are self fertile, you can save your seeds from year to year. I've grown the Yin-yang bean (sometimes called the Pea-bean) for about 7 years from one handfull of seed from a friend. This year's new (to me) varieties are the Cherokee Trail of Tears (a black bean for drying) and Bird's Egg - one of the red splashed type.

[pigletwillie]

We grow huge amounts of beans for eating as french beans or shelled as haricots. They eaither freeze or dry well and are a great protien fix especially if your a veggie. Climbing varieties give bigger yields over a longer period of time.

Also try Tomatillos, they make a great authentic Mexican style salsa. Another fruit from the same family, cape gooseberries stay fresh for ages when picked and add something special to any dish you cook.

We love morrello cherries, they make fantastic sour sauces thay compliment and bbq meat and the trees just love the more shaded areas of a garden.

Melons are always worth a go, keep them in a sheltered warm spot and you will get a crop, even if its just 1 or 2 fruits, you wont believe how sweet they are.

[rustylady]

Beans, both runner and climbing french. Usually reliable and give a good crop for little ground space. Courgettes (which I love) - when they do well they do really well. Potatoes for first earlies you don't have to scrape, just dig - wash the mud off - and cook - superb. For fruit, my favourite is raspberries. Most of them don't even make it home we eat them straight from the canes.

[Two_Sheds]

Well, French beans are my favourite crop, but everyone else has voted for them.

I'll go for Rainbow Chard - use as spinach, but easier to grow. I've had leaves available for picking for 9 months of the year. They are a beautiful plant with yellow, pink, white or red stems.
They make superb guinea pig/chicken/rabbit fodder too.

[momol]

My favorite will be the squash (both summer and winter). They are so easy to grow, got lots different shape/size/colour/taste. I can choose either bush or trailing habit to fit in my small back garden. There are so many varieties to choose from and I certainly like the heirloom/OP type for seeds saving purpose, the early maturing will be ready to harvest from mid spring (if started early) all the way to late autumn and winter (the winter squash). They are so versatile, can be use in most cooking (in soup, baked ,in pie, in bread, mashed,in desert, etc). Just love them.

My second favorite will be the tomato as they too got so much choice to choose. Though I don't have green house to grow them but it is still possible to grow outdoor toms and I would usually choose the early type (to mid season) that comes with interesting form,nice colour, tasty, compact plant (both bush and vine type), withstand cool summer and disease resistant (if possible). If they ever produce loads, there are always way to preserved them for later use such as drying, sauce making, freezing, chutney, pickling,etc.

[Hans Mum]

beetroot, theres no comparison to the stuff you buy in shops, its easy to grow, has a long growing season, & you can eat the young leaves, & the beets raw, boiled, roasted,steamed, in cakes, fantastic stuff

[shirlthegirl43]

My favourite thing to grow is spuds in containers. I use 10litre florist buckets which I drill holes in the bottom of. I put one seed spud in each bucket, snuggled into a couple inches of general purpose compost and some fertiliser (well rotted manure, chicken poo pellets, or specialist potato fertiliser). Cover with a few inches more compost and then wait for the shaws to appear. Add more compost as the stems grow, until reaching the bucket top. Keep them out of the frost and you can get a really early crop. Keep the soil moist and water well when they flower as this is when the tubers are developing. When the flowers die off or the shaws start to flop and turn yellow, turn out the bucket and enjoy the treasure hidden in the soil.

[muckdiva]

You can't beat an early greenhouse crop of French Breakfast radishes, ready in just a few weeks, and tasting fresh as a daisy!

[Madasafish]

If you are looking to get maximum fruit and save most money, grow raspberries. They cost a fortune in the shops and of course are not freshly picked.
Growing your own is very easy: they can be grown against a fence in any sunny spot, they need minimum maintenance and they produce lovely fruit. 10 canes will yield up to 7-10kg..Lovely eaten freshly picked with cream

Careful choice will give a range of fruiting times from July to October. And of course they freeze easily and raspberry jam is very easy to make and takes 30 minutes. (even I - a mere man - can make raspberry jam:-).

[crichmond]

I love cucumbers, last year I grew passandra I had a great crop picking nearly every day once they started ripening I even took to eating them straight from the vine.

Of course I was too lazy to dig a hole in the soil in the pollytunnel so I made a ridge with compost along one side of the tunnel and just planted them into the ridge.

They grew great but then we had that bad weather in the summer and my allotment flooded and most of the plants on my allotment were killed apart from the cucumbers that I had planted in the ridge, in the polytunnel they were the only things that survived.

This was the path and we had a couple more days of rain after this picture was taken.

I am getting several tons of topsoil next week.

Cheers Chris

[Paulottie]

Asparagus: lots of initial effort to really clean the bed, a little waiting... but then years of easy reward. You'll be feasting during the hungry gap, its expensive in the shops and it tastes so much better freshly picked. Top tip: Apply salt (approx 30 grams per sq metre) in early March. It kills the weeds and slugs but not the sparrow's grass.

[Sue]

Although I love my veg it's the fruit that's been my biggest pleasure. Grow your own and you can eat fresh fruit everyday in season. Strawberries are easy to grow and reward you with pounds of fruit.
Blackcurrants once they start producing give a heavy crop and you can grow red and white currants -hard to find and very expensive.
If I'd had to pay shop prices for the amount of fruit I ate last year I'd be bankrupt!
Sue

[jeannine]

These tips are all absolute corkers!!!!!

Keep 'em coming and thanks everyone, it's a joy to read them.