Home Grown Gardens

Welcome to Home Grown Gardens where we hope you will join us in enjoying being in the garden, growing your own fruit and vegetables, and of course, eating them! Flowers and shrubs in your garden should bring colour, scent, and wildlife all the year round, so long as you can get outside to enjoy it all.

There is no mystery to gardening, or to growing fruit and veg, so start small and do more each year. Being in your garden and growing your own veg and plants should be fun and rewarding, not yet another stress agent. There is no need to have straight lines, and neatly clipped edges, but good soil is fundamental. No chemicals are used by Home Grown Gardens, which means anything from the garden or veg plot can be eaten with confidence. But, being in North Yorkshire and on the edge of town means every pest you can think of, wild and domestic, visits. Growing, eating, sharing, is the ethos of Home Grown Gardens, so it's nice to have you with us.

January 2012

After all the rush of Christmas it’s nice to wander out in to your veg plot, and hopefully lift some veg to eat, or maybe just to plan for the coming year. Whether it's mild or frosty, you can always plan what you are going to do.

Grow your own vegetables

Think of what veg you like to eat, and what you tend to buy at the supermarket, and then see if maybe you could grow it instead. Salads especially are easy, and picking your own rather than visiting the supermarket is great. Another plan could be to grow your own Christmas lunch for 2012, so you don’t have to join the checkout queues next Christmas. I’m not having a laugh here, as you’ll need to sow parsnips in February/March, and Brussels sprouts in May. Plus there are cabbages, carrots, leeks that can all be planted in the summer, to harvest/store for Christmas. You can also grow late variety potatoes for Xmas, just lift them late and store somewhere cool.

Sow some pretty and beneficial flowers in your veg plot. Borage, Calendula, Limnanthes, Californian poppies and nasturtium are guaranteed to grow anywhere. They brighten up your plot, look pretty, attract useful insects and self-seed for next year, so you only ever need to buy one packet.

The quote for the New Year is anonymous: “People are so worried about what they eat between Christmas and the New Year, but they really should be worried about what they eat between the New Year and Christmas.”