How to Grow Your Own Food

Kitchen Gardening 101: How to Grow Your Own Food | Kitchen Gardeners International:
Choosing Garden Crops

The most important recommendation after “start small” is “start with what you like to eat.” This may go without saying, but I have seen first-year gardens that don’t reflect the eating habits of their growers — a recipe for disappointment. That said, I believe in experimenting with one or two new crops per year that aren’t necessarily favorites for the sake of having diversity in the garden and on our plates.

One of the easiest and most rewarding kitchen gardens is a simple salad garden. Lettuces and other greens don’t require much space or maintenance, and grow quickly. Consequently, they can produce multiple harvests in most parts of the country. If you plant a “cut-and-come-again” salad mix, you can grow five to 10 different salad varieties in a single row. And if you construct a cold frame (which can be cheap and easy if you use salvaged storm windows), you can grow some hearty salad greens year-round.

When it comes to natural flavor enhancers, nothing beats culinary herbs. Every year I grow standbys such as parsley, chives, sage, basil, tarragon, mint, rosemary and thyme, but I also make an effort to try one or two new ones. One consequence of this approach is that I end up expanding my garden a little bit each year, but that’s OK, because my skills and gastronomy are expanding in equal measure, as are my sense of satisfaction and food security.

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Learn How to Build a Greenhouse.

Greenhouse Building Materials - PVC, Wood & More | Learn How to Build a Greenhouse:

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Во саду ли, в огороде.

- The most popular veggie that people grow in their gardens is tomatoes. Then cucumbers, then bell peppers.
- If you grow the veggie for its leaves (spinach, lettuce, kale) you need partial shade. Everything else can use full sun.
- Carrots hate to grow near strawberries. Beets like to grow near anything. And more.
- An easy way to practice crop rotation: for each area of your garden choose root, fruit, or leaf. Swap them each year. So the root section would grow onions, carrots, etc; fruit would grow broccoli, bell peppers, etc; and leaf would grow all greens.

The varieties of tomatoes.

There are two basic types of tomato
The first are called ‘Determinate’ or Bush types.
The second type are called ‘Indeterminate’ commonly called Cordon or Vine tomatoes.
Cooking
Jersey Devil*
Romany Striped

'Normal'
(For me that's (1) not large (2) Not too dark (black/purple) in color. I do not grow Supermarket type tomatoes i.e. red golf ball size)

Tomatoes blight.

Try growing cultivars such
as 'Ferline', 'Legend' and 'Fantasio', which have some blight resistance.
All that said, there is hope for outdoor growers. A wilder Mexican tomato called Matt's Wild Cherry shows signs of resistance; another is Koralik, a sprawling bush tomato (the type where you don't have to pinch out side shoots) closely related to Matt's. Both have tiny cherry tomatoes.

Ferline and Legend are F1 cordons (the type where you do pinch out the side shoots) that were bred in Oregon, where blight is a common problem. They are not immune to blight, but are very early fruiting, so you get a tomato salad or two before your chutney-making begins.

Poor air circulation compounds the problem, so if your plants are in pots, give them plenty of space; in the ground, aim for 1-1.5m apart. There is some anecdotal evidence that a solution of 50/50 milk and water sprayed weekly helps to keep the spores at bay. And feed pot plants weekly with comfrey or liquid seaweed, to keep the plants' strength up.

Tomatoes.

Seeds - Simpson’s, Plants of Distinction, Tamar, Plant World Seeds gardens.
- Unfortunately with some of the best tomatoes you cannot buy organic seed so only from the second year of my own growing can they be considered truly organic.
- end of February or the start of March is about right for sowing.
The seed trays are put in a propagator and the plants are pricked out into 9cm terracotta pots when the third leaf appears.
Feeding starts intermittently then, (see web site for Liquid feeds) until the end of May when they are planted out into 30 cm (12 inches) terracotta pots in the main polytunnel.
From here on in they get my standard feed every day.
- The reason I only fill the pots half full with compost is I want to ‘stress’ the plant. Plants that are stressed often produce their best fruit in a last ditch effort of life. This stressing is not easy and requires a little practice as it can be a fine balance between success and failure and it is very easy to end up with small yellow tomato plants. The feed has to be constant and of a good quality so that the plant actually flourishes rather than dies. Stressing is a bit of a knack but CAN produce great fruit.
- I remove the bottom leaves only to get them out of the way so as not to splash water on them when watering. Tomato blight needs wet leaves to enter the plant and so by not wetting any of the leaves you have a very good chance of not getting blight later on. You needn’t do this if you are really careful with watering.
- After final repotting and once the compost has settled down I cover it with some fine OLD wood chips.
That’s about it for the preparation. Now it is just keeping up the watering and feeding.

Apart from my home made potting compost I only use the three feeds mentioned on the web site under Liquid Feeds.
Once I start watering I add ONE of these liquid feeds every day.
- To start with I use the nettle juice daily. This carries on until the end of June.
- July will be mostly comfrey but towards the end I will progress to Wood Ash.
In all the plants are fed like this every day for 3 months.

Watering
- On a hot day in June or July a 2 gallon watering can is sufficient for 8 plants watered around mid day.
- If the weather is exceptional I will go round again in the late afternoon (as the water will be hot again by then) with plain hot water at perhaps a 2 gallon watering can will do 12 to 16 plants.
- On overcast days if it’s raining I may just give them a splash at midday.
If my terracotta pots start turning green (even the tiniest amount) then I’m over watering, if the top of the compost is dry then I’m under watering.
do not put any of the plants on the compost heap, I throw the plants away..
Author - Richard Sandford- Lower Lovetts Farm.

" Kumato seeds are not available commercially, and the company that produces Kumato, Syngenta, has said they will never make the seeds available to the public.
As you can imagine, this announcement generated a large amount of interest in the Kumato and its possible lineage. While most likely a hybrid, some have speculated that it is an OP variety. In case you have not heard of Kumato, it is a "black" tomato introduced last year available only in Europe and Australia that is supposed to have a good shelf life. From its incredible sales last year in Sainsbury's grocery stores (the only stores to sell the Kumato), it was a very popular introduction. "

How to make your own container with water reservoir

How to make your own container with water reservoir:

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Bounty from a North London Allotment Gardenista

Bounty from a North London Allotment Gardenista:

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Vertical Allotments – what’s the cost?

Vertical Allotments – what’s the cost?: "Comparison with Allotments A survey in 2008 / 2009 found that allotment holders spent an average of £202 a year, and worked 203 hours to maintain a 300 square yard plot. The average yield worked out as nearly double mine at £1564 a year.  Based on my figures, this shows that an allotment produces double the return per hour invested. However, these figures don’t take into account the time spent travelling to an allotment (significant in some areas) or the benefits of having food growing at home and being able to harvest it just as you need it."

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How to start an allotment

River Cottage - Features - How to start an allotment - Channel 4: "Can I blag any freebies to get me started? Some of the more generous seed suppliers may offer you samples as an incentive and you can always look into joining your local Seed Exchange - a swap shop for seeds, seedlings and invaluable know-how between allotment keepers. Here are a few seed swap links: www.seedypeople.co.uk www.growfruitandveg.co.uk www.overthegardengate.co.uk"

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My allotment.

Мой огород сегодня.

Вот так растет ревень в темноте. Часть мы уже съели.

Он не выглядит столь мощным как хотелось бы.
Возможно потому, что он посажен только первый год.

For lazy gardener.

Ethelind Fearon's The Reluctant Gardener.
The Reluctant Gardener, the short and easy ways to good husbandry, you can play with vegetables to save yourself work and avoid growing more than you need.
Gardening, like entertaining and cooking should be done with whimsy and joy.
Use of mulches and irrigation channels to conserve water (and effort), home-made liquid manures and she comes close to no-dig gardening.
You would be surprised how much of the grim toil undergone by the allotment holder is unnecessary.
a. That half the things you sweat over are better bought than grown.
b. The ones that are better grown can be grown much more easily than you thought.
and c. Quite a lot of them will serve two purposes, thereby cutting out one operation, one ache, one moan.

1. Don't toss the compost out the kitchen door!
2. Better to grow Welsh onions which have authentic onion flavour but are no hassle as they will grow anywhere and right through winter. Self-generating, when the clump gets too big you can split them which is why they are known as 'everlasting' onions.
3.Growing potatoes- a shortcut method.
- Dig a little so the delicate roots of the potato can 'run about'.
Cut out a trench, keeping the soil on one side and place the your seed potatoes on the floor of it.
Fill the trench with compost, and when the potatoes grow through, earth them up with the soil you dug out from the trench.
By growing them in 'soft luscious compost' you will get nothing but 100% perfect potatoes, and none 'baffled and battered' as they try to push through inhospitable soil.
4. Calabrese and turnips produce roots in summer and 'greens' in winter (though not from the same plant). There are ornamental kales, good to eat but which can be used for flower borders or arranging as 'widely used by our most famous decorators.
5. French beans are a case in point as they can be eaten as green beans (haricots verts), as flageolets (when they are eaten like fresh peas) and as dried haricots for winter.
6. Not a chemical control, but my Father used to have a lot of trouble with carrot root fly until he started using old coffee grounds a couple of years ago. He collects the spent grounds from the coffee shop in his local Sainsburys when he's shopping - just leaves them a clean bucket when he goes in and collects it, full of grounds, on his way out. Then liberally spreads the grounds round the carrot plants, it seems to work very well - now that I've got myself an allotment I'll be trying it too.

My neighbour gets a paintbrush and splashes (sprints?)* paraffin along the rows when he thins them out.

From!

Что любят и не любят томаты.

- Никогда не высаживайте растения томатов в тени.
- Никогда не загущайте растения томатов.
Лучше всего высаживать их в один ряд на расстоянии 45 см на грядке шириной 90-100 см.
Если же вы хотите высаживать рассаду в два ряда, то ширина грядок должна быть не менее 120 см, оставляя между растениями не менее 50 см.
- Никогда не заливайте водой почву по всей площади грядок.
В противном случае корневая система без поступления к ней кислорода из воздуха будет задыхаться, что отрицательно сказывается на обеспечении надземной части растений питательными веществами.
Лучше делать недалеко от стеблей (на длину корней растений) бороздки глубиной 10 см, в которые при необходимости вносите растворенные питательные вещества и влагу.
- совет по количеству органических и минеральных удобрений:
положить 1-2 стакана перегноя, т.е. навоза, срок которому не менее 5-ти лет, 1 ст. ложку суперфосфата и полстакана золы.

Вести с поля...