Allotment Gardening Advice Help Chat
Growing => Grow Your Own => Topic started by: Digger on February 05, 2006, 22:20
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Hello
I'm new to the allotment thing and have just got myself a nice site here in Harrogate. Can anyone recommend a good book I can use as a reference 'bible'. Someone I spoke to briefly mentioned one called 'The Vegetable Patch' or 'The Vegetable Garden' or something similar (I can't quite remember), but any further help gratefully received. I could do with one that includes a 'what to do this month...' section.
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Hi Digger
There's a link to Joy Larkom's Grow Your Own Vegetables on the books page. I really rate it but some people don't. Click the link and Amazon will show you a selection of similar books,.
My all time favourite, although a little dated (1973) is Grow Your Own Fruit and Vegetables by Lawrence D. Hills but they want 22.50 for a second hand copy on Amazon. May be worth shopping around.
The Vegetable and Herb Expert by D.G. Hessayon is a good starting book as well.
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Food from your Garden by Reader's Digest is a fantastic reference book. First published 1977 so may be out of print, I picked up a copy in a second hand shop a couple of years ago, what a find. This book explains everything from the moment you first put the spade in the ground to the plate of food on the table, It also has a growing calendar which I follow each month with top result's, If you are fortunate enough to come accross a copy grab it with both hands. HAPPY HUNTING.
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I have "The Allotment handbook" by Caroline Foley
I like it very much it has a guide to pretty much everything you need to know about an allotment , a directory of vegetables fruit and herbs as well as lists of pests and diseases and a month by month section to help tell you what to do next! (Thats the bit thats most useful to me)
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john i also recommend a good book dy DR.D.G HESSAYON Vegetable Plotter it cost me 30p from the second hand shop it a good little book for biginers like myself.
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Hi Mark,
I've got that book as well but it is out of print now, replaced with the expert series book I said above. Shame really as the idea was great.
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I noticed that there are copies of Dr Hessayon's Vegetable Expert and Vegetable Jotter books on eBay...current price £3.45 for the pair.
EBAY LINK (http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/THE-VEGETABLE-EXPERT-JOTTER-BKS-BY-DR-D-G-HESSAYON_W0QQitemZ8392317841QQcategoryZ11112QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem)
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Hi Martin,
I edited your post as the long link throws the page layout. Hope you don't mind.
I expect they are older editions, but still good,
John
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I've bought several books over the past few years at boot fairs etc, but my favorite is still my Percy Throwers week by week guide to gardening. I bought it the first time I tried a bit of gardening about 30 years ago, but then working in London became more important, so I am only now this past 4 years getting back into gardening. My plot grows a bit every year! I have also just discovered the new magazine Grow Your Own, but its not often I can afford to get it being out of work at the moment. I got February and April editions plus free seeds, but missed March. I'll have to look on ebay and see if anyone has got fed up with their copy yet!
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Sorry to hear you're out of work, I hated going for job interviews especially when the interviewer hadn't got a clue, just a check box.
Good luck in finding what you want soon.
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Thanks John, it is a bit of a wrench after being on £22,000 a year, but moved to Lincolnshire so other half can grow his turkeys, and after 4 years not a turkey in sight! Should have stayed in Kent! Still had a big garden, but may still have had a job too! Up here, there aren't many buses, so even if I could have found a decent job, there aren't the buses to take you there. I can't drive, and it wouldn't be fair to ask Brian to take me back and forth. Its ok if you like cutting cabbages, but the only cabbages I want to be cutting when its freezing outside is my own!!! lol Still, I'll sort something out. Soon I hope before we run out of money completely
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Can you not work remotely? I don't know what your skill set, but a lot of firms are using outworkers for clerical and analysis tasks. Perhaps this is not the best place for employment consulting - but good luck. Feel free to PM me.
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Can you not work remotely? I don't know what your skill set, but a lot of firms are using outworkers for clerical and analysis tasks. Perhaps this is not the best place for employment consulting - but good luck. Feel free to PM me.
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:roll: Hi,1st post but having spent a few weeks roving around this wonderful site, decided it was time I put my toe in the water.I am a new allotmenteer,took over in October,I too need to be told how,what when and where :oops: Have just discovered theres a magazine called "Grow Your own" having read one of the postings. The person in question unfortunatly has difficulty in accquiring the said mag,SOO, I went looking. At www.magazine-group.co.uk they are offering a subscrition for £32 for the year,instead of the £39 over the counter price. How about asking a kindly family member or friend for an Easter/birthday present. yours tublet
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Hello tublet,
Tell us more about your allotment - is it underwater at the moment like mine?
What are your plans for this year?
Do you work for grow your own?
Incidentally, have you tried .Kitchen Garden (http://www.kitchengarden.co.uk/), I prefer it although GYO is not bad at all
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Oooh, I'll look out for Kitchen Garden John, not seen it before, but then we don't get a lot up here, boring place, and the OH doesn't like going into town much and buses are not very good, but I'll have a look next time i'm up there.
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I really like my copy of Matthew Biggs's Complete Book of Vegetables. I like it so much I wish I had bought the follow up The Complete Book of Vegetables, Herbs and Fruit but I suspect there's a third of overlap between that book and the complete veg one. I just noticed on amazon that the complete veg, herbs, and fruit one was published 5 months after I bought my veg book :roll: I'm just having to use google for fruit and herb information instead.
The book has information on all sorts of veg, including tropical ones, it's geared to the UK so it has all relativant information and suggested types. It lists cultivation of plants, pests and diseases, any companion planting, and at least one recipe for each vegetable. It touches briefly on growing in containers, growing mini veg, crop rotation, various methods of sowing seed etc. It's a good basics book although it might be an overload of information to someone starting out.
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:D hi, no DO NOT work for grow your own mag.Came across the mag on an above posting and went looking on the net for it. Will now go looking for the one you mentioned.
Took my secure plot over in October with a friend. She helped me find it, did one days work and hasn`t been seen since!!!
I inherited a well cared for shed AND a greenhouse. I can hear you all now,Oh hasn`t she been spoiled. The plot had been parlty worked in 2005.
The 1st thing that I did was accquire some pallets from work and make 3 compost bins. I then started clearing , only one bed was worked, I am still clearing. At home I garden on clay plot 4 is located on very old flood plain, so the digging experince is very different.
Have planted raspberries and rhubarb so far. got pots chitting and have my first ever tomato seedlings growing on bedroom window sill. Have always bought before.
I have questions like, How do I know how many seeds to sow, to feed my family of 4 out of a packet. I am finding this site VERY useful. Bye for now. Tublet
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Sorry Tublet
I suspected, wrongly, a sort of commercial post. I don't mind people suggesting things / companies but I do get annoyed at people who join to make one commercial post Usually I delete them and ban the user name, allotment growing is nothing to do with enhancing pills for men to make parts grow. :)
Maybe I should leave them as a laugh?
Sounds like you have a really nice plot there - well found. I'm glad you find the site useful. It's very hard to know when it's personal - I find that when I do sites for a client on subjects I'm not in to (like armoured cars) much easier to judge 'appeal'.
Isn't it exciting though, watch those little seedlings growing and knowing in a few short months you'll be eating tomatoes from them?
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No John, dont' leave those 'other' posts on for a laugh!! Its nice to have a nice place to go and talk to likeminded people, especialy with this mix of newbies like me and more expeperienced people who don't mind us asking stupid questions!!!
I was a member of a lovely cross stitch site, but we got so many weirdos on there trying to cause trouble (how can you slag people off when you've never met most of them???) that one of the girls created a passworded site just for us regulars, it gts a bit boring at times, but I have a couple of friends there who I 'talk' to, and one of them I've met and we are good friends now.
So just you keep those weirdos out!!!
Talking of silly questions, do you more expereinced people water your seedlings from above, or below? Last year I lost a lot of hanging baskets seedlings, because I think I drowned them. Must get a smaller rose for the watering can!! Then I went to Kent for a week to see my daughter, and when I got back, OH had drowned most of what I had left in the greenhouse, even my new little white lavender!!!!
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Yep, I'll keep the sillys away. they can push their wares into the sea!
There are no silly questions - sometimes the obvious isn't obvious. I spent half a day trying to find the answer to a question that was so obvious that no-one had posted the answer! I'd written nearly 50 lines of code to do a task that takes 3.
Anyway - watering. When I have a seed tray, I use an indoor watering can and avoid the seedlings. Moving on into modules or pots, I really water before planting on to allow the compost to soak it all in first. With module trays we soak them from the base in an old cat litter tray.
Overwatering is a big fault - you need some air in the compost. Little and often is far better than letting it dry out then soaking.