Vegmonkey and the Mrs.

There are sooooooooo many blogs out in cyber-growing-land!

There are a lot in America, most infact, and the majority i have seen are either ‘flower growing’ gardening blogs or ‘general’ garden blogs with a little fruit and veg thrown in.

I suppose this makes sense, America is a big country, which in turn means lots of gardens.

But i want to read fruit and veg growing blogs.

I know blotanical is useful for finding blogs, but i really do have no desire to grow anything that will not ‘produce’ for me, (just a personal preference) and the website doesn’t allow a specific search for this.

So the purpose of this post is to highlight decent fruit and veg growing blogs in the U.K.  Simple as that. (There are lots of fabulous non-U.K. based blogs in my sidebar…but that’s a post for another day!)

Fork In Hell - An neat little allotment blog based near us, in Gloucester.

Fresh as a daisy - They describe their site as a ‘Veggie Garden Experience,’ which is alright by me.

Growing our own - Another Gloucester allotment, focused on fruit and veg growing.

Manor Stables Veg Plot - A much larger project…and still mostly focused on veg!

Nomegrown - A large plot and a back garden in St Albans.

The smallest smallholding - I’d love this much space and chickens!

Souper Allotment - Adventures getting started with an allotment.

I’m sure there are more that are equally as super, but these are the ones i read regularly. I’d love to hear of any others that i might like, but it’s where to find them! The best place i think is other people’s blogrolls… perhaps we need an award system similar to Mouse & Trowel for veg blogs! Any takers?

We have officially been up and running in the veg garden for 6 months now. It’s amazing the amount of things we’ve grown and lessons we’ve learnt.

Roots bed - Carrots and parsnips harvested and stored in moist sand in wooden boxes from the local wine shop (it’s amazing what a free bag of veg can bring!), onions hung in shed from wire - but mostly eaten. The leeks have grown a lot of leaf but i dug one up and it wasn’t very long.  So i’ve put a load of compost in between the rows to encourage more to go white. Next year they get planted deeper!

In the space where the carrots and parsnips were, we’ve planted a hundred japanese onion sets (covered with a homemade cloche to encourage growth). These will start producing onions big enough to eat about April time, and will be all done by June/July so the leeks can go in in their place. On the left of the roots bed are the carrots that will hopefully be ready by December!

Brassica bed - The height is purple sprouting broccoli. Very tall, covered in annoying whitefly (although it aparently doesn’t damage the plants too much), wants to fall over. I hope it actually produces! There are a few caulis in there growing nicely, as are the 4 brussel sprout plants. If only we could grow Christmas Puddings too, we’ve almost have a whole Christmas dinner!

Legumes bed - The runner beans are coming to an end now - we have more than we know what to do with! The 5 sweetcorn plants look nice but it is way too late for them to produce. Everything will be coming out next weekend, and  green manure going in.  This’ll keep the ground used through winter and i’ll dig it in in March ish time. I’ve chosen winter field bean as it doesn’t grow too tall

Cucurbits bed - About 6 courgettes, nothing much else. Next year we are going to plant a lot less plants in here to give them more space.

It really has been a learning curve this year, i’m looking forward to watching all the winter veg grow and clearing the mess to the compost bin, so that we can give the garden a bit of a rest.