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Geoffrey Carr |
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February 2010 Eliminate Pesticides From Your
Diet My
wife burst into tears as I proudly showed her the deeply overgrown, weed infested
wasteland that was our recently allocated allotment - they were not tears of
joy! She felt completely overwhelmed by the seemingly impossible task that
lay ahead. That was two years ago. Now after lots of healthy digging and
weeding she loves the “lottie” and although we are not completely weed free
we have been enjoying our own organically-grown spuds, sprouts, different
sorts of beans, peas, rhubarb, carrots, leeks, parsnips, swedes, beetroots,
courgettes, onions and garlic. The wild mint and strawberries are nice too;
and we are looking forward to harvesting the asparagus next year. Such
is the local demand for allotment space that it took months of patiently
waiting on the list for a plot to become free, but it was well worth the
wait. If we didn’t live in the centre of Cirencester with only a courtyard
garden we would probably have dug up the flower beds and turned them over to
veg, but the lottie has proved to be an excellent alternative and has given
us all we need. We encouraged our neighbours to put their name on the list
and they now share a neighbouring plot with a brother, his wife and four
young children. Back home in the
centre of Town we use the shed roof for growing tomatoes, lettuce and herbs
and we grow spuds in recycled compost bags. There
is lots of free information available from newspapers, magazines, the library
and fellow allotmenteers to help you get over that, “But I don’t know how to”
feeling that can so easily deter you from taking the plunge into growing your
own. Please also feel free to contact me at www.geoffreycarr.co.uk for free
advice on any aspect of growing your own fruit, veg and salad. A
lovely little allotment based film is available at: Video:
Winter work on the allotment | Life and style | guardian.co.uk and
a good source of seed and growing sundries can be found in the Kings Seeds
catalogue available from Kings Seeds, Monks Farm, Coggeshall Road, Kelvedon,
Colchester, Essex. CO5 9PG. Telephone: 01376 570000, Fax: 01376 571189,
Email: sales@kingsseeds.com web site:
www.kingsseeds.com. |
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