Hello and Happy New Year! We hope you had a delicious and delightful festive season, and that you’re now up and raring to leap into 2010 with renewed vim and vigour!
If you’re resolving to embrace this new decade in a spirit of personal, community and planetary health, you could do worse than making like the Obamas and growing your own food.
If you’re starting from scratch take it gently and start off very small. This way you can build your confidence and once you have your first crop cooking on the stove you will really feel ready to get to grips with more challenging crops.
And be reassured – whether you have a balcony, a small urban garden or blissful acres, you can grow your own food.
If you were growing last year, don’t forget about crop rotation to minimise the chance of crop diseases. Here’s a link to the RHS guide on crop rotation.
Here are our January top tips
1) Keep checking any veggies you’ve already grown and put into storage. Remove anything showing any sign of decay.
2) Keep those weeds down, don’t leave them till the Spring – they’ll only be twice as hard to remove later.
3) Clean up your garden tools by scrubbing them down with hot water, drying them and wiping them over with an oiled cloth before putting them somewhere safe and sheltered.
4) Start your own leaf mold and compost bin if you haven’t already, and fit a water butt. For compost bins, check with your local council environment team – there are many subsidised schemes run by the Government to help you buy one.
5) Plan what you’re going to grow this year and where you’re going to grow it. Think a little outside the box if you don’t have lots of space, e.g.:
-Tomatoes in hanging baskets
-A series of glass shelves in a bright window for herbs
-Round-variety carrots and other veggies for shallow containers
-Potatoes in an old jute bag hung on a hook
-Climbing beans (like French and Runner) that can grow up trellis.
6) You can start the following off now on the windowsill to be thinned or "pricked out" into their own pots when the stems are sturdier, and then you can plant them outside when it warms up a bit:
Broad Beans
French Beans
Cauliflowers
Leeks
Lettuces
Onions
Peas
Indoor Tomatoes
7) Buy / order your seeds or check out Rocket Gardens if you want to buy ready-started seedlings.
TOP LEARNINGS FROM LAST YEAR
If the seed is a big one (eg Broad Beans) you should plant each seed in its own pot right from the start.
Make sure seeds are sown and placed into a very light window, as close to the light as possible, as seeds placed too far back will strain for the sun and get very "leggy" or tall and skinny.
Use old toilet roll tubes as planters.
Start saving any clear or green plastic bottles to make "cloches" or seedling protectors out of when you transfer seeds to the outdoors. If you saw the bottle in half, keep the neck end for the cloche – it will sit nicely over a seedling and the open neck allows rain in / water from your watering can.
Use the RHS Veg A-Z guidelines to find detailed guidelines on how to grow each of these best.
Find local growers or growers online who can support you while you learn. The first year is as much about learning as growing.
Don’t be shy about using your front garden for growing food, if that’s where the sun is. Who knows – it might inspire the neighbours!
AND FINALLY
If you have a health condition that limits your mobility, get creative with some table top container gardening or very raised beds to save you from too much bending / crouching.
We hope that helps.
And we’d love to hear what your plans are for the year.
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