We Grow Our OwnWhat we grow, what we cook, what we eat …

My crusade for the new year is get everyone growing their own fruit and veg. I know that everyone is not lucky enough to have an allotment, a garden or even a patio. However, you can still grow your own food in even the smallest space, which is why I came up with the idea for my campaign – “Grow One Pot.” I want everyone to make a pledge to grow one thing this year and tell me what it is by leaving a comment below, and tweeting about it using the hashtag ‘#growonepot’

As you’ll know from one of my previous posts my favourite ingredient next to chillies is garlic. I made the fatal mistake of not sowing it in the last week of November, and then as we all know the winter came with a vengeance, and I only managed to plant it last weekend.

So, if you were caught out by the bad weather, or now want to try growing garlic, you can plant it now, and here are some of my tips to ensure you get a good crop.

After I announced on Twitter that we had adopted another four ex-battery chickens, people have been asking for pictures of the new ones, and also updated pictures of the older girls, so the can see how they are getting on.

Those of you who follow me on Twitter will know that recently we added four new chickens to Chickenopolis, namely Fran, Beattie, Mavis and Chuck.

It seems as if Autumn is already giving way to Winter in my part of the Midlands, so I have been digging up all those lovely summer crops of sweetcorn, late beans, etc, and my mind has been turning to what I can plant over Winter and next year.

We adopted four ex-battery chickens – Edith, Gladys, Hattie and Mabel – yesterday from those wonderful people at The British Hen Welfare Trust.

After a back breaking weekend, and sunburn on top of sunburn, we finally finished ‘Chickenopolis’

Both myself and @luckylottielisa have been busy bees over the weekend.

Yesterday, the brains of the outfit, (in other words my wife!) said that instead of mindless digging and clearing, we should draw up a plan of where the beds are going to go, so that we only clear what we need to.

The plan for this year is on the ‘Masterplans’ page.

We spent the majority of the daylight hours at the allotment this weekend to try and make a start on it.