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’

“Grow One Pot” came from the idea that you can using one pot or one container can produce a lot more fruit or veg than most people think.

Common things that people use are:
- A window box to grow herbs, or ‘cut and come again’ salads.

- A hanging basket to grow tumbling tomatoes

- A dustbin to grow your own potatoes

- Three canes to form a wigwam shape which can be used for all climbing plants such as peas, beans, etc to scramble up.

There are many wonderful reasons to garden partially or exclusively in containers. Growing crops in containers also gives you much more control over your plants. You can usually move them indoors if you are faced with an unexpected frost, or move them to another position if they do not appear happy where they are, perhaps getting too much sunlight? You can even grow some vegetables indoors if you have a suitable sunny or bright area where you can sit some pots. So it can be easy to have a fresh, year round supply of flowers, vegetables and herbs.

The great thing about container vegetable gardening is that, apart from buying a few essentials, like good quality compost, it can be done on a low budget and is extremely versatile. You can grow plants in virtually anything that holds some soil and has holes in the bottom for drainage. It’s only bounded by your imagination – a chance for some really creative recycling! I’ve used old bathtubs, 20-litre plastic containers with the tops cut off, baskets of various sizes lined with bin bags to hold the water in, milk cartons for seedlings, anything that comes to hand. I almost used some dumped toilet bowl …..only I didn’t like the colour as they were pink.

Using containers makes it possible to grow food in areas where it would otherwise be impossible, and by employing some simple and innovative methods covered in more detail in future blog posts, such as vertical gardening, raised bed gardening, and square foot gardening, you can extract some excellent, and money-saving crop yields from just a tiny amount of space.

I’ll also be resurrecting my monthly blog post of what to do in your garden each month, and include tips on what to grow in your ‘container garden’ that month.

So, start the new year by making a pledge to get your fingernails dirty and growing at least one crop this year. Don’t forget to tell me what it is by leaving a comment below, and by tweeting me (@wegrowourown) on Twitter, and using the hashtag #growonepot. I’ll retweet every one I see!

Happy gardening!

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.

We think of garlic as a crop from those hot sunshine countries, but it grows well in the UK.

To grow good garlic, you need good stock. There’s no point in trying to grow from a bulb purchased in a supermarket. Chances are it’s a Spanish variety bred for a warmer climates and it will not thrive in a British summer. You need to buy varieties suitable for our weather.

I ended up buying ‘The Garlic Lover’s Seed Selection’ from The Garlic Farm, which contains Tuscany Wight x 1, Early Purple Wight x 1, Lautrec Wight x 1, Iberian Wight x 1, Chesnok Wight x 1, Albigensian Wight x 1, Elephant Garlic x 2 cloves, Solent Wight x 2 and Provence Wight x 1.

You can, however, grow from your own saved homegrown garlic if you want to save some money. Select the best bulbs and user larger cloves for the best results.

Types of Garlic

Garlic comes in two main types, hardneck or Rocambole garlic and softneck garlic. Softneck tends to store better. Varieties will vary in flavour, you just choose what suits you.

Elephant garlic is actually a perennial leek, and has a much milder flavour. Its cloves split up when it is dried, so elephant garlic does not store for very long.

Cultivating Garlic

Usually garlic does best planted in November(!) although some varieties are suitable for spring planting. Because the garlic is going to be sitting in the ground for a long time, you can get losses due to rot. A well-drained and cultivated soil will give the best results. A week or so before planting, give the soil a dose of a general-purpose fertiliser like growmore or preferably fish, blood & bone, which is slower to release. A couple of ounces per square yard is about right. Garlic doesn’t need too rich a soil but it will do better with some nutrition.

Use a dibber, an old spade handle is ideal, to make holes around 4″ deep and about 8″ apart each way. Break the bulb into individual cloves, being careful not to damage them, and drop into the holes pointed side up. Fill with soil and more or less forget about them until spring.

Birds can be a problem when the shoots appear, pulling the garlic out of the ground. You may need to keep them off with netting or fleece until they’re really established.

If you have a heavy clay soil, water logging is much more of a problem but just dib your hole a little deeper and put some grit and sand into the base of the hole. This will allow drainage and get your garlic through a wet winter.

You can start garlic off in 3″ pots under glass, planting out in early spring when the shoots are showing but I think there is little if any benefit to this method, as long as you prepare the soil first.

In the spring, another dose of fertiliser will really bring them on although you really don’t need to do much more than keep the plants weed free and water in the summer if dry.

The bulbs are harvested when the leaves begin turning yellow in midsummer. If you leave them too long, the cloves will split apart and storage will be a problem. Use a fork to dig them up carefully.

Sometimes the plants will throw up a flower spike or scape. Snip this off as soon as possible. These are actually quite nice snipped up small and used as a spring onion in a salad, but with that garlic tang. You can even use the flowerhead. If you leave them, the plant puts energy into seed rather than fattening the cloves.

Allow them to dry off for a week or so before storing in a cool, dark, well-ventilated place, although wet garlic, freshly harvested, is prized by many chefs and can be used immediately.

Garlic Problems

Apart from the birds mentioned above, the worst problem affecting garlic is rust. Usually this isn’t too much of a problem unless the plants are too close together or in a shady spot. Keep garlic well watered during dry weather. If it’s dry for long periods, the cloves will not swell and the resulting crop will have a short storage life.

So, as you can see, it is really easy. Give it a go even if you do not have a garden, as garlic does well in pots too!

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.

So, since it is Christmas, here they are! First is a group shot of all of them in their temporary home in the polytunnel where they are living until the snow clears.

Then from left to right on each of the rows is the older girls, Edith, Gladys, Hattie and Mabel, and then the newer girls, Beattie, Chuck, Fran and Mavis.

If you’re looking for a last minute Christmas gift, then you can’t do any better than agreeing to give some ex-battery chickens a new home in the New Year.

Finally, whatever you are doing this Christmas, I hope you and your family have a fantastic Christmas and a peaceful New Year.

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.

Since I’d had chickens before with my ex-wife, I knew that there would be a bit of fighting while they sorted out the new pecking order, but I think it still distressed my wife a little bit, who started talking to the chicken that was bullying the new arrivals like they were an errant teenager who had arrived back from the pub a couple of hours later than they said they were going to!

After a week or so of getting to know each other, things seems to have settled down in Chickenopolis, and the old girls seem to have accepted the new arrivals.

Also, we have got them a Christmas present, which is a bigger house and an extended run!

We have also decided in the new year that we are going to start breeding chickens and hatching our own, so watch this space!

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.

People who know me will be able to tell you that next to chillies, my next favourite thing to grow is garlic.
At my last allotment, all I used to do was put my name down for some of the seed garlic that the allotment shop used to buy in bulk. However, as this is the first time that I have been able to grow garlic on this plot, as we only took it on in January, I decided that I wanted to try a few different varieties.

There is a huge patch of the allotment that I have just cleared and dug over, and will have had green manure dug into it before I plant the garlic. After a lot of research I found it impossible to narrow down my choices and have decided to go for the Porcelain Seed Garlic from The Really Garlicky Company and the ‘Garlic Lover’s Seed Selection’ from The Garlic Farm.

The Garlic Lover’s Seed Selection contains Tuscany Wight x 1, Early Purple Wight x 1, Lautrec Wight x 1, Iberian Wight x 1, Chesnok Wight x 1, Albigensian Wight x 1, Elephant Garlic x 2 cloves, Solent Wight x 2
and Provence Wight x 1.

Also, I have never tried Porcelain Garlic before, and looking on The Really Garlicky Company’s website, they also produce edible garlic shoots, known as ‘garlic scapes.’ They are described on their website as “Deliciously tender and providing a delightfully subtle garlic flavour, Garlic Scapes are the edible curly tops of our Scottish Hardneck garlic. Garlic Scapes are well suited to a variety of dishes such as stir fries, soups, salads or just simply as a vegetable or garnish.”

Sounds delicious, and I always willing to try something new!

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

We arrived at the collection point early, but by opening time there was a massive queue of cars behind us. It was heartening to see that there are so many people wanting to give ex-batts a second life.

When we got them home they all congregated in one corner, obviously frightened and disorientated, but after a short while their curiosity got the better of them.

They left their grit and food alone, and decided to peck away at the grass in their run. I don’t mind admitting to a tear in my eye when I saw how happy they were having grass under their feet.

I was then severely told off by them when I put them to bed at about 8.30pm, and there was lots of squawking as they jostled for position in the coop!

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


It may not win any design awards, but we hope that the four ex battery chickens that we are adopting next weekend will like it. If they decide to give us some eggs in return, that will be fantastic, but it will be enough to see how they react to having grass under their feet.

The chickens will soon get their own page on the blog, so watch this space ….

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


Despite only getting our allotment plot in January, and also all the late frosts doing their best to kill anything we took the chance to plant out, we had our first major harvest from the plot this weekend.

We’d been able to pick a few peas and broad beans here and there, but this weekend, we lifted all the first and second early potatoes, and now have enough of them to feed an army! The picture above is me planting two varieties of pumpkins and some climbing courgettes in the place where they used to be.

The planned third installment of building ‘Chickenopolis’ was postponed as I had a monumental hangover, so instead I used the carcasses of some old drawers as raised beds, and planted the baby turnip seedlings.

The onions are also looking suspiciously ready, even though technically we shouldn’t be pulling them until August. They have swelled that much with the changeable weather, that we had to pull a few onions anyway to give the others more room to grow. We used them in a Shepherd’s Pie for dinner yesterday, and they weren’t bad at all!

The sweetcorn is really kicking into life now as well, so it looks as if we will have an OK crop from those as well.

What I can’t work out though is why some of the chillies in my greenhouse have decided that they want to flower, even though they are only about a foot tall!

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.

It has certainly focused our minds, and now we can see where everything is going to go, and it now looks like real progress is being made. Next week, I cannot use the excuse that the Six Nations is on TV to stop halfway through the afternoon!

Click here and here for larger photos of how the plot is shaping up.

We need to get the beds dug now, so that we can get our spuds and onions in. I’m aching now as I type this – God knows what I will feel like in the morning!

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

Whilst I dug one of the beds over, Lisa did a stirling job cutting back all the brambles, and as a consequence we have gained another five feet on one side!

It is just about ready for the half a tonne of potatoes that I have chitting at the moment!

Although I ache from head to toe today, I’d much rather be down the lottie again, rather than cooped up in an office at work. Oh well, I will just have to hope the days pass quickly until the weekend again …