12 January 2012
Its been very windy, rather wet and now there's more cold weather on the way...but it looks as if plenty of you , like me, are making good use of the time by sorting out your grow your own needs for the year ahead! I grow the entire range of crops that we offer with 'Grow Your Own with Pippa Greenwood', because that way I know exactly what is happening with the sugar snap peas, the tomatoes, the sweetcorn, the butternut squash, the beetroot, cucumbers, the peppers, the climbing French beans, the lettuces and all the seed-raised veg and herb plants are up to....that way I can make sure the tailor-made advice emails are really useful. I also grow quite a number of vegetable plants for use in articles, especially in Gardeners' World Magazine, but luckily, at the moment the vegetable growing takes more garden space than anything else, so there is room for me to check out new varieties of vegetables and herbs and grow plenty of my old favourites too. Last year I grew okra (ladies' fingers) for the first time, it struggled in the greenhouse (where it 'should' have been happy!) and thrived under one of the lovely Kitchen Garden Cloches, producing plump and very tasty pods at the tip of the stems. It may well have been the most time consuming and uneconomic way to enjoy okra, but I felt very pleased with myself (and the cloche, which is why I have now included it in my products range) ! So this year why not try something totally new, that might mean taking up grow your own for the first time, or nurturing a vegetable you've never dared grow before. I've not yet decided on my new crop challenge for 2012, but I'll let you know how it works out (or doesn't!!)
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