Plants and seedlings will be available to buy. Master Gardener, Susan will be onhand to offer timely advice and support on how to care for your new plants.

Master Gardener and Master Composter shared a space and spoke with lovely visitors about all things gardening and composting.  Norfolk Organic Group also joined us and hosted a seed swap – lots of lovely seeds were shared among new and experienced growers.  Our table was abuzz with growing and cooking tips between those who were donating seeds and those who were experimenting with new varieties.

Thanks to Composter Emma and Gardeners Emma, Hannah, Sarah and Clive for coming along and maning our stand.

Do have a look at Grapes Hill’s Facebook page for photos.

Alternatively you could grow your own hazel and in about 5 years, be able to copice for your bean poles.  Click here for further information on growing your own copse.

This variety is a great all-rounder – boiling, chipping and mashing.   Because they are large and have a thin skin they make great baking potatoes too, with the skin forming a lovely crusty edge.

I’ll be planting these on the allotment in about 6 weeks time and with a little frost protection, good watering and earthing up, we will be enjoying our first potato mid June.

Download our potato growing card

If you are interested in some advice and support with your growing this year and you live in the Ashill area,  contact me.

There are many reasons for deciding to supplement your diet with home-grown fruit and vegetables.  Many of our favourite foods are easy and cheap to grow.  Lettuce, herbs, tomatoes, beans, blueberries, strawberries, raspberries – all very patient with novice gardeners and will give you crops to harvest regularly during the summer/autumn months.  These foods are not cheap in the supermarkets, but they are great for maintaining a healthy diet.

It’s a great way to get fresh air and free exercise.  30 minutes of general gardening activity invigorates mind and spirit.

If you decide to grow in your front garden or on a community growing space, then you get to meet like-minded people and share exciting food-growing moments.

It’s easy to get started, just some seeds, soil, container or little plot in the ground and some information on how to look after your chosen crop.   Why wait?  Why not contact your local Master Gardener now for support as you embark on an exciting adventure for 2012.

Are you a Master Gardener?

We’ve been lucky enough to find funding to extend our programme for another growing year and we’ll be holding a foundation training for 20 new volunteers on the weekend of 31 March 2012. We are looking for individuals who have:

* experience growing fruit and veg (two years to many decades)

* enthusiasm to engage with the public to share their knowledge

* a willingness to develop both their own horitcultural and community horizons

The two day foundation course will set you up with the knowledge and resources you need to become a successful Master Gardener. This course is free to you but, as a funded programme, we will ask you to commit to feeding back details of the volunteering activity you do so we can document and report the results to our funders.

Interested? Then contact us to find out more.

Our own Jeremy Bartlett’s fine article – February’s Garden – in this month’s KL Magazine, has tempted me to clear my windowsills of their decorative ornaments (dust-collectors) and pave the way for setting up my propagator with seeds of peppers, chillies and celeriac. I also plan to sow lettuce, Lollo Bionda, the seeds that Santa delivered. Lettuce has never been a great success for me, but I’ll not be deterred.

Read the rest of Jeremy’s article here and if you fancy a hard copy, then pop into a large store in Kings Ling. I know that Waitrose in Swaffham and Aldiss in Fakenham stock free copies.

Another good read is Richard Mabey’s Weeds. For me, this is a great bedside book where I can dip into a couple of pages of entertaining musings of weeds. To quote Mabey, this book tells “how vagabond plants gatecrashed civilisation and changed the way we think about nature.” Weeds today can be a real scourge to us gardeners and food-growers, but they were the first vegetables, the first home medicines and the first dyes. Even horsetail had a use as an abrasive for polishing pewter and arrow shafts, utilising the tiny crystals of silica that cover its fronds. So maybe we can harness it today for cleaning the fork once we’ve dug another 100 yards of root out of the plot.

Gardening books are not the only source of inspiration in this house. Paul collects old cookery books and browsing through the latest edition to this collection, Farmhouse Cooking, lead to discussion on the herb Savory. Perhaps not the most common of herbs, but it is a great addition to cooked dried bean dishes. Savory comes as a small, bushy, summer half-hardy annual with aromatic, narrow leaves and tiny mauve-pink or of white flowers in summer. It’s good to use from late June until mid-September although you can grow it in pots indoors throughout the winter.

Winter savory looks similar but it’s a semi-evergreen perennial that lives for several years and with its pink flowers in the summer, a great addition to the ornamental garden. If you want to use it through the winter, bring a pot grown plant under cover from September to April to ensure you get enough leaf.

Herbs are a great addition to any dish and what could be easier than harvesting within minutes of cooking. The secret to good herb plants is to keep using them. Snipping little and often keeps the plant growing healthy and bushy with an ongoing supply of snippable material for you to add to your cooking.

We’re keen to share your food growing enthusiasm across our mentored networks, websites, and Garden Organic’s membership magazine, ‘The Organic Way’.

In fact, lots of growers are looking for the ingenious watering tips that you’ve passed on – or learnt from your lovely mentored households and community gardens.

Please get in touch today to share your ideas

Email project manager Philip Turvil using the contact form here, including:

• 10-30 words per tip (from windowsills to ambitious spaces; water saving, crop-specific)
• Your full name
• Your programme area, ie Norfolk
• If you have a small photo of you to accompany your tip (only if you fancy!)
• If you rather not have your name or photo published (only if you fancy!)

Oh, and any suggestions for future ‘tip-topics’ are very welcome…

Please send your tips by the 27th February 2012

Seed sowing tips from Master Gardeners

Tips already shared

Thanks to a huge response in autumn 2011, seed-sowing tips from Master Gardeners will soon feature in the spring edition of the ‘The Organic Way’, the national membership magazine of the UK’s leading organic growing charity, Garden Organic.

The tips from 15 volunteers have already featured in the March edition of the national ‘Grow Your Own’ magazine, pages 66 and 67.

Look out for a growing blogs too coming soon…

It’s the perfect moment to kick-start the growing year! Come along, grab a seed tray, get your ideal sowing mix of compost and then choose from a variety of veggies to sow, grow and eat at home.

A great event for children and beginners. You’ll be helped and advised by friendly Master Gardeners and Composters!

Visit Ryton Garden’s event web page

Local Master Gardeners will be out in abundance helping visitors grow lovely organic food. Look out for lots of other Garden Organic folk too, including Bob Sherman, Pauline Pears and Philip Turvil.

Scheduled for the beginning of the growing season, the show has lots of money-saving ideas, a mix celebrity gardeners, chefs, livestock experts, growers, unique products, cookery demonstrations and interactive events for the whole family.

Voted the UK’s Most Popular Garden Event of the Year – this ‘must-see’ 2012 show.

Read schedule from Warwickshire Master Gardener website

Visit Garden Organic’s website for more details – and where members can claim ticket discounts