Articles

On one level, food growing is quite simple – you sow a seed, a plant grows, you eat it. But of course it’s the bits in between those major milestones where things can get complicated. Sometimes it doesn’t get complicated at all and everything flows beautifully. I smile, zen-like, and feel mighty happy with my abilities – but even then I can’t shake the uneasy feeling that I have no idea why it went so well this time.
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We added ten new hens to the flock here at home this week, ostensibly so the Eldest Child could satisfy his entrepreneurial instincts and start to sell our excess eggs.
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I absolutely love being a GIYer at this time of the year. It's hard not to feel all spring-like and full of hope about life in general when one sees a little green seedling emerging from the cold, brown earth.
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And so it begins. Another season starts with the determined act of seed sowing in the potting shed. A bag of compost opened and tipped out on the sowing bench. Cold black plastic pots filled with even colder blacker compost.
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I have two blackcurrant bushes in the garden – they are prolific croppers and don’t get a huge amount of love from me if the truth be known. I always consider them a second-tier crop – not quite as tasty as say raspberries, strawberries or blueberries.
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We have a pretty fixed view of what makes up the human body – cells, blood, tissues, bone and so on. But, did you know that inside your gut you carry around a whopping 2kg of microbes, which consists of over 1,000 different species of bacteria that outnumber our cells 10 to 1?
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It really is hard to believe that it’s already October, and the year is winding down inexorably towards Halloween and that other mid-winter festival that will remain unmentioned.
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I own more cookbooks than is sensible, and though I can sometimes be accused of being a little slow on the uptake, I've spotted a trend in them of late – yes my fellow laggards, I bring you astonishing news: to an increasingly large number of our fellow citizens, carbs are bad.
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Successful food growing is as much about time spent in the kitchen as in the veg patch and at this time of the year that point is usually in sharp focus. The garden is at its most productive and you’re unlikely to be able to use all of its bounty straight away.
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Tomatoes can be difficult to grow well, but I think a proper watering regime is one of the keys to an abundant crop. The secret to watering tomatoes properly is that you need to water 'deep'. A healthy tomato plant is a thirsty beast, supported by a deep root system - so in other words, there's no point in standing there with the hose and spraying the plant or the soil around it with water.
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