Growing your own vegetables and fruit has never been
a more popular pastime, but it is far more than a
fashionable whim. People are digging up their gardens to
grow their own and taking on allotments; the National
Trust is creating 1,000 new plots in the next three
years to provide for the number of growing fans. These
days we want to eat organically and we need to eat
economically, so growing your own makes perfect sense.
From her North London allotment, Celia Brooks Brown
brings real-life tales of her adventures in vegetable
growing, such as the joy of spotting the first emerging
spears of asparagus in spring, the battles with snails
and slugs over the brassicas and what to plant to help
fill The Hungry Gap in the late winter months. As the
New Urban Farmer, Celia shares her gardening expertise,
picked up since taking on her allotment plot in November
2005 and learnt through a combination of hard graft,
trial and error, and shared tips from the other
allotmenteers.This knowledge has been distilled into a
year-round gardening book that is part-journal,
part-gardening manual and part-recipe book with one aim:
to inspire you to cultivate and enjoy your own delicious
homegrown produce. The New Urban Farmer is divided into
four main sections - one for each of the seasons - and
within those seasons it is further divided into
individual months. For each month of the year Celia
starts with a rundown of what is both good to sow and
good to eat. Moving through each month, Celia highlights
the key jobs for that period along with the main stars
of the vegetable plot, finishing up with mouth-watering
recipes that will put that month's harvest to best use.
For keen growers without an allotment, Celia also gives
advice throughout on raising crops in pots, growbags and
window boxes. Urban, edgy, green and honest, this is the
ultimate book for beginner gardeners. |
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