really old style living?

parsonswife8

There's a house down the road from us that has a park backing onto it, so their back garden must be small and it doesn't get much sun.

For years now, they have grown onions, tomatoes, cabbages, etc in their front garden, as that is where the sun and space are.

Cheapskate

ceridwen wrote: »

What I think is the shame is that localities generally arent taking a leaf out of Todmorden's book - as in "Incredible Edible Todmorden". Its quite a small town - but (some) of the inhabitants there are working wonders. It all started with two determined women planting food anywhere and everywhere they could - with the specific intention that those needing/wanting it would be able to pick some food for free.

It's certainly one of my plans when I'm not so short of time to just disperse the contents of all those spare (food) seed packets I have somewhere useful...

I think its SUCH a huge shame when most areas (including my own:() make a habit of thinking "Need to plant a tree (or whatever)" and just plant one that is purely "decorative" and I'm leaping up and down in fury thinking "Why the heck didnt you plant something thats both decorative and edible you idiots?:mad::(" Theres absolutely LOADS of trees/plants around in my area that COULD be edible - but arent - because some blithering idiot or know-nothing in the local Council chose to plant something purely "decorative" instead...:mad::(

I live not far from Todmorden, & those 2 fab ladies came to talk to our village group - SO inspiring!! :j We'd been dabbling with food growing things, but they galvanised us further & I think we're starting to get somewhere. :j

There's a slowly growing (& very subversive!) move towards growing your own edibles, for lots of reasons - cost, knowing the origin of food, keeping heritage varieties alive, dislike of supermarkets' power & way of dictating the 'choice' we have, etc... :mad: The ladies from Tod are the best example of ordinary consumers standing their ground against the system! Sorry, rant over!

A x

mardatha

RAS, thank you very much for that, I will go and have a wee look at the links. I've seen those smallholdings in the upper Clyde and they grow some fantastic stuff that I never could. But the west is always warmer.

Welsh_Poppy

We grow all our veg in front garden and it is first year and done exeptionally well none got taken but we live in a posh suburb lots of stares and interest:-) we grew
swede ,sprouts,parsnips,potatoes
Tomatoes,courgettes onions,carrots and peas and only got garden started June:-)

mardatha

I found this -:(

[FONT=verdana, arial, helvetica]"In Scotland few people know what perennial plants will produce good crops in our sometimes cold, windy and wet climate. Much work needs to be done to find out more. Many useful perennial crops won’t grow in Scotland. Many will, and they are worth investigating. A lot of work has already been done on finding permaculture crops for England. The project is called Plants for a Future.[/FONT]"
Edited- either way I will grow more veggies next year. Plotting and scheming as we type..

RAS

mardatha

Have you ever been to Inverewe http://www.nts.org.uk/Property/36/ or rubha phoil http://rubha-phoil.manvell.org.uk/ ? Both are farther north and right on the west coast. The biggest factor remains shelter, to reduce wind damage.

Start with some basics - I grow an artichoke I got from a crofter on Skye, it survived the snow last winter much better other on the plots. Rhubarb grows on the Lofoten Islands. Another Skye crofter I know grow all sorts of soft fruit, although it took time to get the hedge to grow to provide shelter, just it does not ripen until August, a month later than in England.

Draw up a plan of your site and work out where faces south, where you can get shelter from the west and north winds and tackle on bit at a time.

ceridwen

mardatha wrote: »

I found this -:(

[FONT=verdana, arial, helvetica]"In Scotland few people know what perennial plants will produce good crops in our sometimes cold, windy and wet climate. Much work needs to be done to find out more. Many useful perennial crops won’t grow in Scotland. Many will, and they are worth investigating. A lot of work has already been done on finding permaculture crops for England. The project is called Plants for a Future.[/FONT]"
Edited- either way I will grow more veggies next year. Plotting and scheming as we type..

I love that Plants for a Future site - and bought the book in the end:D.

EDIT: their Forum is obviously in very early days - I've registered successfully okay - but get error pages when I try clicking on anything. Hopefully they'll sort the initial blips okay - one thoroughly frustrating website is quite enough - ie the Celtnet one. The Celtnet one is basically a good one - but one usually cant manage to click through to it from any Google links - it takes forever and then comes to a dead end most times. When one does get into it - adverts are overlaying a bit of the text. I've been waiting for months for him to sort this out - and then managed to locate his forum and register for it - but am still having problems and cant figure how to tell him his website is only half-functional...

mardatha

Inverewe is in zone 9 RAS, I'm in zone 7. Although it's a lot further north its right slap bang on the Gulf Stream.
If I could get myself ORGANISED :rotfl: then I'd be able to grow all the veg we like.
- because we don't like veg at all really. Just eat what we have to for health.

greent

parsonswife8 wrote: »

There's a house down the road from us that has a park backing onto it, so their back garden must be small and it doesn't get much sun.

For years now, they have grown onions, tomatoes, cabbages, etc in their front garden, as that is where the sun and space are.

I grow rhubarb, onions, squash and pumpkins out the fornt (as well as an apple tree, plum tree and pear tree)

Jevvers

Welsh_Poppy wrote: »

We grow all our veg in front garden and it is first year and done exeptionally well none got taken but we live in a posh suburb lots of stares and interest:-) we grew
swede ,sprouts,parsnips,potatoes
Tomatoes,courgettes onions,carrots and peas and only got garden started June:-)

Well done, sounds fab! I have also realised our front garden is the spot for veg as it gets full sun for most of the day, unlike the back. We have done herbs, tomatoes, spuds and courgettes this year, all in pots, but ive got big plans for next year! Nothing nicked so far but I don't think I would risk strawberries....