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.

May 2012

“Be careful what you wish for” goes the adage, so those of us who wished for rain, may rue the day! The rainfall in North Yorkshire has been torrential, with and without hail.

It rained from 17-28 April, and still more promised as I type, and we could be heading for the wettest April since records began, even in an official drought. But fleeting, the sun is out now for a beautiful evening, whilst those who have been to the lovely Harrogate Spring Flower Show are wringing out their socks.

If the temperature stays low nothing will germinate in the veg patch, but it will in the greenhouse. The weeds however are “Lovin’ it” and have popped up everywhere, especially hairy bittercress and cleavers, and obviously those never fail perennials like dandelions and creeping buttercup.

Grow your own vegetables

May should be the most lovely of the months in the veg patch, as everything turns green, the sun warms the soil and the soul, and the evenings stay light ‘till late. So we have that to look forward to. Reading through previous year’s weather statistics shows May can be very dry, and lots of parts of the country need the rain, just not here!

Nature has a clever way of dealing with all the vagaries that the weather throws at us, but help your veg patch by protecting young plants from pests and weather with fleece, cloches, and traps. Walk through your patch with a cup of tea, and check for pests picking off any you see, and making sure that supports are in place for plants that need them. My sweet peas have shot up in the cloches with all the rain, and now need an obelisk to climb up. Otherwise they will flop over and be easy prey for slugs.

If you have a cold frame then use it as way of helping plants get big and strong before sending them out into the big bad world of the veg patch. There is often no advantage to the plant or you, to putting out plants too soon. They get cold, sulk and don’t grow any quicker. A cold frame can simply be a pane of glass over your pots. The glass keeps the rain, hail and frost off, and warms the soil.

The Old English Proverb “Ne'er cast a clout till May be out” is probably going to be true in Yorkshire for 2012. I think it means – don’t leave your coat off till June, but it is used to warn you not to plant out un-protected plants till June either!