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21.08.2023 - 11:59 / theunconventionalgardener.com / Emma Doughty / Eco Garden
Allotments are going to be all the rage this year. The National Trust recently announced that they’re making available enough spare land for up to 1000 allotments, via the Landshare scheme. British Waterways and British Rail are in on the act, too, looking for land along canals and railway lines that could be used to grow vegetables.
With the environmental benefits of growing your own, rising food prices and the credit crunch, having a kitchen garden plot has never been so fashionable – and that means that ‘allotment chic’ is on the rise as well.
Allotment chic isn’t about wearing your wellies down to the pub or showing up for work with grass stains on your trousers. Allotments have a real style of their own, based on allotmenteers embracing DIY and using salvaged, free and recycled materials on their plots.
It may look a bit ramshackle, but there’s some real savings to be made by adding a bit of allotment chic to your garden. If you can’t afford to buy a greenhouse, have a look in classified ads – or on Freegle – to see whether anyone is selling theirs or giving one away. You may have to dismantle it yourself, and replace a few panes of glass, but you’ll have a place to grow your tomatoes at a fraction of the cost.
Net curtains make great crop protection netting – keeping the birds off your soft fruit and the caterpillars away from your cabbages. Net curtains aren’t at all trendy at the moment, so you may be able to find second-hand ones for sale in your local charity shop.
If you keep your eyes open on your travels then you may be able to find enough old windows (where people are having double-glazing installed) to build yourself a free cold frame, and the wood from discarded pallets is endlessly useful if you like DIY –
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I met the Duke of Edinburgh a few years ago. Shame I was stuck in front of a computer at the time, and not somewhere more exciting like the Chelsea Flower Show. Meeting human royalty might be a rare occurrence for most people, but you can surround yourself with royal plants and get that regal feeling every time you step into the garden. To illustrate my point, let me share with you an old joke….
The garden and I have not spent much time together this summer. I’ve been busy… there was weather… there have been too many days when I didn’t feel like going outside. Since the courgette and summer squash started fruiting, I’ve been a bit afraid to go outside in case there’s a mountain of fruit to pick. But the light was nice this morning, so I ventured outside to take a few photos (and the squashes seem to be slowing down, so it’s safe).
The Body Shop has announced that it is creating its first show garden at RHS Chelsea this year. It’s called The Lady Garden, designed to pay homage to its “founding feminist principles and activist roots”.
Plastic bottles are everywhere these days, even floating around in the oceans. Fortunately for the environment, recycling facilities are improving (here in the UK at least) but a lot of plastic bottles still end up in landfill, where they just don’t break down. If you would like to give your plastic bottles a new lease of life once they’re empty, and save money too, then try recycling them into something useful for the garden.
If you’re currently tending lettuce plants, then you have something in common with the crew on board the International Space Station (ISS). They’re testing NASA’s new Vegetable Production System – affectionately known as ‘Veggie’. At 11.5 inches by 14.5 inches, Veggie is the largest plant growth chamber to have been blasted into space, and was developed by Orbital Technologies Corp.
The UK has been battered by storms over the last few weeks, and the weather has been very mild – if not warm – for the time of year. It seems ludicrous to deny the fact that the climate is changing, and that this wilder weather is the result. We’ve been lucky, but gardeners elsewhere in the country have suffered storm damage and flooding. The long-range forecast threatened a cold, hard winter for the UK, but there’s no indication of when, or if, that will arrive.
Without pollen, the world would be a pretty drab place. Pollen is the male part of the reproductive system for flowering plants, as well as a source of food for bees and other beneficial insects. And yet, as soon as the sun comes out and the plants start flowering, it causes millions of people in the UK to stay indoors to minimise their hayfever symptoms.
There’s nothing quite as British as a nice cup of tea, and sitting down for a good cuppa can certainly brighten up your day. A tea bush is unlikely to thrive in most UK gardens (although there are a couple of tea plantations) because of the climate, but there are plenty of herbs that are easy to grow and make a refreshing brew. They’ll even grow well in containers – so they make ideal plants for a windowbox or a patio. Having them close at hand means you can harvest leaves as and when you need them.
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Here in the UK it’s traditional to take a couple of weeks off work over the summer and head off to somewhere with better weather – or at least somewhere that you can get away from it all for a little while. It’s one of the ironies of life that this takes you away from the garden at a time when it really could use your help. If you have a gardening neighbour then you can rely on them to take care of your garden while you’re away, but if you don’t and don’t want to come home to dead plants, weeds and giant marrows then there are a few things you can do to prepare your garden for your absence.
If you’ve got a small garden then you might find it difficult to find space for a conventional compost heap. A possible solution is a worm compost bin, which takes up far less space because an army of worms does most of the composting work.