Mention the term F1 to many people and it will conjure up images of powerful cars, fast drivers and glamorous pit lane scenes. Say the same thing to gardeners and they will have completely different thoughts. To gardeners F1 is a note on a seed packet that tells us there is something special about the contents. Are these seeds really as finely-tuned, fast and glamorous as a scene from a Formula One race track? Let’s have a look at the pros and cons of F1 seeds and hope it doesn’t drive us round the bend. What are F1 hybrid seeds and how they made? F1 means filial one or first child. F1 hybrid ..read more

Much has been written about getting children growing crops at school. One of the problems is that some vegetables take a long time to grow and need harvesting in the school summer holiday period but there are many crops that can be grown successfully in term time. Here are a few ideas… Cress Cress is the very first crop I ever grew and a classic primary school growing project. It can be grown very easily all year round indoors. Cress seeds are inexpensive, it is ready to harvest about two weeks after sowing and can even be grown without soil or compost! Sow cress seeds in a tray or pot of damp ..read more

It is almost midwinter and I feel as if I’m on a rollercoaster with its brakes on heading slowly but inexorably towards the bottom of a long, steep slope where, momentarily, we will pause before starting our slow journey towards the spring which is waiting at the top of the next hill. Midwinter has always been a time of festivities. We celebrate the solstice and the promise of longer days to come. As gardeners we know that light is important to plant growth and therefore to the production of food, so it is no wonder that midwinter celebrations the world over feature light and food. Saturn was ..read more

Often referred to as the engine room of the allotment, compost heaps are a feature of most plots. They convert what might otherwise go to waste into a free source of nutrients for your plants. Compost making is so fascinating that many articles, web pages and even whole books have been devoted to it. But is all the discussion about nitrogen/carbon ratios, hot composting and cold composting, aerobic and anaerobic composting and NPK values putting some gardeners off making their own? Equally disconcerting can be the equipment and amount of space dedicated to composting by celebrity gardeners. Ga ..read more

Autumn has arrived. The horse chestnut tree at the gate to the allotment is shedding her shiny conkers, there’s the scent of bonfires in the air and I have been catching up with some autumnal tasks. I’ve found a local source of well-rotted cow manure. It’s free for collection so this weekend I made four trips to the farm, collected a total of 60 bags and started spreading them on the plot. It was pretty heavy work (for me and my old Skoda!) as we’ve had a few rainy days, but it was a perfect day for working outside today. Not too warm but dry and sunny with a clear blue sky. I collected enough ..read more

It’s a busy time in the allotment and in the diary. With the spring equinox, the start of British Summer Time and the Easter break in close succession and two May bank holidays not so far away the rings around the dates on the calendar on my phone are looking a bit like the Olympic logo. With lockdown easing perhaps I’ll be able to add a few cautious social events soon too! Talking of lockdown, I’m still working from home and have flexible hours which means I’m able to look after the plants I’m bringing on at home more easily than usual. I’m can put them outside when conditions allow and water ..read more

Having had a leisurely breakfast in bed of poached eggs on toast whilst chatting about all things garden and allotment related we got up rather late. There was no plan for the day but in the morning we took a lot of our seedlings and plants out of the greenhouse and conservatory to harden off a bit, get some fresh air around their leaves and benefit fully from the spring sunlight. It was a little bit on the cool side but the sunshine was beautiful. While Jacqueline started to prepare dinner, I sowed a few seeds. Second batches of celeriac and cauliflower were started. I also watered any of the ..read more

It’s an odd thing, but just a mention of the word February makes me shiver. February makes me think of sleet and snow, wind and rain, fog and frost. February is winter. March, on the other hand, is different! Blue skies, sunshine, puffy white clouds and lambs in the fields come to mind, as do sowing, growing and mowing. So throughout February I think there’s no need to do very much at all gardening-wise and I’m well ahead of the game, but come the first of March I suddenly feel I’m drastically and catastrophically behind! There are loads of things to do on the allotment in March. There’s no ne ..read more

There’s a lot of competition for space in the greenhouse this year. My wife Jacqueline has taken on a half plot next to my allotment which she is making into a cut flower patch. She’s way ahead of me with her sowing so when I went to the greenhouse to start off some seeds of my own I found I had nowhere to work and nowhere to put my trays of seeds once sown. The situation was made worse because some of the rather flimsy staging I’d made a few years ago was near to collapsing and unusable so my first job was to knock up some new. If you’re a cut flower lover you can follow Jacqueline’s progress ..read more

It’s been so long since I wrote a post that it is hard to know how to begin, but with spring in sight, perhaps now is the right time. I will start with an explanation of my absence. It’s been a difficult year… Towards the end of 2021 my dad, gardening hero and fellow allotmenteer, was diagnosed with a brain tumour. He passed away on April 12th 2022, aged 92. Just eleven days later, brokenhearted, his wife of over seventy years, died too. Mum and Dad pictured here in their late 80s with a couple of pumpkins from the garden. In the conservatory behind some of mum’s pelargoniums can be seen. As ..read more