The Allotment Book

Product Information

With more than 60 fruit and vegetable crop planners, this gardening book is your go-to guide to growing fresh, seasonal produce in your kitchen garden, on your plot or in smaller city spaces.

By sharing what I have learned along the way, I hope it will help the reader's own efforts be more enjoyable and successful. While no one can guarantee you won’t be the same as circumstances and weather conditions make a huge impact on us gardeners having a background knowledge to build on can make all the difference. A stunningly presented and passionately written narrative which will both enthuse and inspire beginners and provide a fresh perspective for seasoned growers. With this vegetable gardening book, you can start growing your own organic produce from the comfort of your own home. There is also guidance on crop rotation, ground preparation, and details on a great variety of vegetables and fruits.

Medwyn Williams, Chairman of the National Vegetable Society and member of the Fruit and Vegetable Committee of the Royal Horticultural Society. He rebelled from academic life at Oxford (Hons degree in English) to start a gardening career, progressing to the Crown Estate at Windsor Great Park and thereafter employed as a head gardener in private service (initially for J B Priestley and Jacquetta Hawkes, who encouraged early potting-shed writing projects).

With everything from creating a bed to an onion rack, it gives the beginner a good know how of what is needed and how. And growing crops close to home reduces the environmental cost of ‘food miles’ associated with long-distance transport. So protecting and regenerating these community plots should be a key part of local strategies in the changing environmental context.When tilling your own plot it might take a leap of imagination to link your efforts with these prime movers and their supporting thinkers, such as Peter Kropotkin with his anarchist philosophy of self help and mutual aid, the libertarian Proudhon who famously asserted ‘Property is theft’, or the New Englander Henry Thoreau, hoeing beans beside Walden Pond. This excellent guide is all about the experience of having an allotment and to getting the most from it. If you factor in the hard work and effort plus a few cold wet days, you’ll be under no illusion that it takes dedication on your part. Her family-run organic herb farm now grows over 500 varieties and holds the largest collection of culinary and medicinal herbs in the country. There may also be restrictions on using hosepipes, lighting bonfires, creating ponds, planting trees or fencing the plot (especially with dangerous materials like barbed wire).