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.

September 2010

With the start of autumn comes a lovely time in the veg plot. Hopefully you are still picking fruit and veg that you have grown, and the evening rains are keeping everything well watered.

It’s a good idea to be tidy around the plot, removing leaves and debris to keep slugs and snails away. Start clearing out plants that are past it, like sweet peas, lettuces that may have bolted, a courgette plant that no longer flowers. You can sow some late catch crops like lettuce and radish and they may be fine to eat in October.

And, don't put the seed trays away. Sow some biennuals for next year, like foxgloves, sweet williams, wallflowers. Take cuttings of plants like Penstemons and Salvias (yours or a friends') and just pop them in a pot of compost and keep sheltered over the winter. You'll have lovely plants next year. Sow some spring brassicas now, and pop out the seedlings into warm autumn soil for a late spring crop next year.

Grow your own vegetables

If you have had lots of hot sun, and have kept your brassica seedlings shaded, you can bring them out now, and plant them out in their final positions, ready for a winter and spring harvest.

Now is also the time to be lifting some root crops to store, if you have the space. Trays of damp sand kept in a cool dark shed are amazingly good at keeping produce fresh for months. Apples and pears will need somewhere cool and dry to be stored, and some could last for months.

And, don't put the seed trays away. Sow some biennials for next year, like foxgloves, sweet williams, wallflowers. Take cuttings of plants like Penstemons and Salvias (yours or a friends') and just pop them in a pot of compost and keep sheltered over the winter. You'll have lovely plants next year. Sow some spring brassicas now, and pop out the seedlings into warm autumn soil for a late spring crop next year.

And you thought September would be a quiet month, but all the picking, eating and storing can take a lot of your time. And as you reap, remember the words of Janet Kilburn Phillips who wrote “There are no gardening mistakes, only experiments."