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Grow Your Own – Maximise your Garden

Grow Your Own – Maximise your Garden

By Matthew Thompson on 6th September, 2010

Growing your own fruit and vegetables is a satisfying activity, not only does it keep you active in and around your garden and help the environment, but it provides sustainable, delicious, but most importantly of all ‘home-grown’ food to your meal table. Gardening and growing your own vegetables used to be associated with sitting in allotments, growing just a small amount of vegetables. However, vegetable and fruit gardening has grown in popularity with all ages, from newly married couples to families with small children. Gardening will not only put food on the table, but also gives pleasure and joy to anyone who tries it.

Fruit and vegetables are necessary in a healthy diet; however they are getting more and more expensive in supermarkets and greengrocers, so what better alternative to turn part of your garden, no matter how small, into an area to try your hand at growing your own? Don’t be daunted by the prospect of making mistakes, but be invigorated by the experimentation of trying something new. Eating your own vegetables, grown sometimes metres from where you’re eating, is not only delicious but also rewarding that you are helping the environment, living a healthier lifestyle, and saving money whilst doing it. So from potatoes, tomatoes or carrots, to aubergines, zucchini and melons the possibilities in your garden are endless.

Any space in your garden can be used, but to achieve the best results, you must stay dedicated to working hard and preparing your garden. Also, the internet is full of websites offering tips and advice, one in particular ‘My Tiny Plot’, is a well established blog, running for over five years consistently offering sound advice to get the best out of your garden. Dedication always makes your home grown produce taste better, thinking of the time it took to prepare, plant and harvest your crop. Knowing what you want from your garden and its capabilities is important, however don’t be disheartened if one crop doesn’t take one season, keep trying and find the best places in which to produce what you want.

Enthusiasm is a major factor, getting some new seeds and being excited to plant them and see how they turn out is an infectious attitude to have, especially for those with families and small children. Children are more likely to want to eat food they have grown themselves; so home grown vegetables don’t have the ‘soggy sprout’ stigma most children associate with fruit and vegetables. It’s a fun and exciting adventure, which they undertake, ending in the experience of trying new and different flavours of fruit and vegetables.

Your garden will not start bearing fruit and vegetables overnight, it takes hard work and commitment to your plot. At ‘My Tiny Plot’, there are tips and advice to keep you experimenting with your garden for several seasons to come. Sharing, and taking advice from experienced gardeners helping to improve your own personal harvest and then your biggest problem is not how to, but what to do with all the fruit and vegetables that you produce. 


Category:  Environment

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