The Cottage Smallholder

  The water table is very high in our garden. When John Coe used to mow our lawn he declared that it was the greenest midsummer lawn that he had ever mowed. “Even in the hottest summers it’s still lush when the lawns in my village are burnt and dry.” Admittedly he gardens on sandy soil over in Freckenham. Read More »

  Have you heard of the One Pot Pledge®? This is a great campaign started by Garden Organic – the largest organic growing charity in the UK. The idea is to encourage 30,000 people who have not grown some of their own food before to make a pledge to grow something edible in a pot. Read More »

  “Danny I’m thinking of renting some more land. We just don’t have enough space for all our projects.” “I’m sure that you could rent some land very easily around here but let’s wait until we have maximised the space at home first. Our land is free.” “But we have maximised our space – increased Read More »

“I gave him some purple sprouting broccoli plants and told him to net them. A week later he rang me to say that the pigeons had eaten the lot.” John Coe peered at me, eyebrows raised over his coffee cup. “And then he had the nerve to ask for replacements! No chance. I’d cared for Read More »

Water is expensive and so are plants. We have a water butt drip feed watering system for the kitchen garden in the summer. The initial investment has paid dividends – in time and money. Drip feed watering is used by the poorest countries and is designed to get the best possible results from the smallest Read More »

“You’ve spent hours on the Internet. What exactly are you looking for?” “I’m trying to decide what disease our tomatoes are suffering from. If I can identify it then we can treat it.” “Why? The great thing about our vegetables is that they are not treated with chemicals.” Having lost fifteen tomato plants to an Read More »

My Bee Mentor, Mike, is a dinger. When I mentioned the automatic watering system that we have here, he finally agreed to come for lunch. Mike and his wife, Brenda, examined my system and asked hundreds of questions. They rang me a week later. They had not ordered the components online. They had actually driven Read More »

I’ve spent the afternoon playing with water. There’s nothing more relaxing. Especially if you know that your system will save time, energy and water throughout the summer. There are loads of watering systems available for your garden. The ones that run from butts appealed to me as they are environmentally friendly by reducing mains water Read More »

It’s been raining on and off for about three days now which has set back the work on the outside of the cottage. The garden is loving it. The plants look so much fresher. The pond and all the water butts have filled up (even the butt holding 1400 litres is half full!). We water Read More »