by Thompson & Morgan | Aug 19, 2020 | Gardening Posts, Vegetables
Courgettes are one of the easiest to grow vegetables
Image source: vaivirga
Growing your own fruit and veg has many health benefits, but there are practical benefits too, particularly if there’s a sudden shortage of fresh, organic produce in your local shops. Whether supply is affected by adverse weather, transport issues or a global pandemic – growing your own means you’ll always have access to fresh, healthy vegetables to feed your family.
What could be better than growing courgettes from seed in your own garden? Not only do they taste better, they require fewer pesticides, no plastic packaging and generate zero food miles. Here’s everything you need to know to avert a courgette shortage and grow your own at home…
Less is more…
Courgettes, also called zucchini, belong to the same family as pumpkins and squashes, and are one of the easiest vegetables to grow. If picked regularly, each plant will continue to produce vast quantities of delicious, nutty and flavoursome fruits, right through to October. Added to which, the large yellow flowers are also edible, with a slightly sweet ‘nectar’ taste.
You don’t need an allotment garden or veg patch to grow fresh produce. Courgettes can be grown in large pots and containers on your patio. On average, each courgette plant produces 4-5 fruits per week so you’ll only need two or three plants to feed a family – any more and you’re likely to end up with a glut!
How to sow, grow and max your courgette harvest
- Sow courgette seeds into individual 10cm pots of general purpose potting compost. Courgettes have a very high germination rate, but sow a couple more than you need, just in case. Water the pot until the compost is moist.
- Place the pots in a warm place like a windowsill, but out of direct sunlight. Continue to grow indoors until they’re ready to harden off and plant out. Wait until after all chance of frost has passed.
- For planting out, courgettes prefer a sheltered position in full sun. They’re reasonably large plants, so space them at least 60cm apart. Alternatively they can be grown in large containers on a patio. Protect young plants from slugs and snails in their early stages.
- Give them a mulch of 5cm of compost to help the soil hold moisture. In times gone by, courgettes were planted on the top of compost heaps because they enjoyed the high level of nutrients this gave them.
- Water your courgettes every day. Keep the soil just moist but water at the base of the plant only or they’ll rot.
- Try to give your plants a weekly liquid feed once they start flowering, and pick the courgettes regularly when they reach about 10cm long. This will ensure a delicious crop right through to October.
Growing problems and remedies
Harvest your courgettes regularly or the plant will stop producing fruits
Image source: Axel Mel
In good conditions and normal weather you’re unlikely to encounter any problems growing courgettes. But here are some of the most common problems, with tips on how to remedy them.
- Powdery Mildew is a white powdery deposit over the leaf surface caused by too much humidity and insufficient air circulation. To prevent, don’t plant your courgettes too close together, water the base of the plant, and keep the soil moist.
- Grey mould (botrytis) is a common disease, especially in damp or humid conditions like a greenhouse, and appears as a grey, fuzzy fungal growth that starts as pale patches. The best way to deal with this is to cut out and remove any damaged plant parts. Reduce the humidity in your greenhouse through ventilation and don’t overcrowd young plants and seedlings.
- Reduced fruiting: A lack of fruit is usually caused by the growing conditions and not by a pest or disease. Cool weather in early summer can sometimes cause inadequate pollination, and if you start your courgettes in a greenhouse, remember to open the doors often to let pollinators in. Water your plants every day and pick the fruits regularly to make sure they keep producing.
Courgettes are never dull
Growing your own courgettes allows you to experiment with varieties that you can’t buy in the supermarket, including those with interesting round, striped or yellow fruits. Popular varieties to try include:
In the right conditions, your courgettes will grow rapidly, maturing into large marrows and squashes in just a matter of days if not picked quickly enough. Plan plenty of recipe ideas in advance so you’re ready when it’s time to harvest – salads, soups, pasta dishes and even cake recipes will keep this easy-to-grow vegetable from ever becoming boring! For more courgette advice & harvesting tips, check our our helpful courgette hub page.
The Thompson & Morgan horticultural team produces a wealth of content around gardening and food production. Since the first seed catalogue was published in 1855, Thompson & Morgan has grown to become one of the UK’s largest Mail Order Seed and Plant companies. Through the publication of our catalogues and the operation of our award-winning website, Thompson & Morgan is able to provide home gardeners with the very best quality products money can buy.
by Thompson & Morgan | Aug 18, 2020 | Gardening Posts
Naturalised swathes of bluebells, tulips and daffodils herald the arrival of spring
Image: Lois GoBe
Would you love to bring your garden back to life with a joyful burst of scent and colour next spring? With a little organisation – a well-planned combination of flowering bulbs or shrubs, colourful perennials and instant-impact plug plants will help you replace your winter blues with some fantastic early colour.
Small garden? No problem. Here are some top tips to help you plan a spring display with real wow factor, even in the tiniest of outdoor spaces.
Planning your spring display
The best way to start planning for the coming growing season is to begin with the plants you like. If they’ll grow in your soil – plant them. Other sources of inspiration include flower shows, gardens which are open to the public, and the parks and gardens you pass as you walk the dog or pick the kids up from school.
Think about plant colour, height, structure and density. And do remember that foliage plants, shrubs and small trees should also feature in your design, depending on how much space you have at your disposal. Consider your garden’s aspect, and the soil type you have at home.
Start with some spring architecture
A bright splash of yellow forsythia is a welcome sight at the end of winter
Image: Vlad_art
Ornamental trees are architectural centrepieces for your garden – and they needn’t be big. In fact there’s a wealth of dwarf trees from which to choose, some of which are great to grow in large containers – the perfect solution for people with small gardens, patios, or even balconies.
An ornamental cherry, for example, produces a radiant display of blossom in April, followed by foliage all summer and, come the autumn, fiery red, gold, or orange leaves. Or what about a crab apple? You’ll get copious amounts of blossom from early spring plus golden fruits during the autumn which the birds will love to feast on.
Providing a welcome backdrop of evergreen foliage, Clematis ‘Winter Beauty’ flowers through the bleakest months of December, January and February to help launch your early spring display. A favourite for fences and trellises, an all season clematis collection will provide height and interest, all year round.
Shrubs are an important way to provide structure in your garden and provide shelter for tender and shade-loving plants. Choose varieties that flower during the winter and into the spring – like forsythia which produces golden blooms from February or March, followed by attractive green foliage. Alternatively, try a dense shrub like Camellia, a popular plant border mainstay offering a striking display and long-lasting flowers.
Add some spring foliage
Evergreen foliage is a must for any garden because it gives you something to look at, even on the gloomiest of January days. But as the grey of winter gives way to bright and breezy spring, foliage plants really come into their own, giving your spring flowers a vibrant canvas to bloom against. Large, silvery leaves of plants like brunnera brighten up shady corners and make excellent ground cover when planted with striking architectural bulbs like spring alliums.
Try growing shrubs like Pieris japonica ‘Debutante’ in containers or borders – this hardy evergreen features pretty, ivory-white flowers from March until May. Alternatively, if you live in a milder area of the country, with its dramatic foliage, pittosporum is a great choice.
Choose a succession of spring bulbs
Spring wouldn’t be quite the same without a plentiful show of brilliant spring bulbs, but we suggest that you think about successional planting so that when one bulb finishes blooming, another is ready to take its place. Snowdrops and crocuses are among the first to flower, followed, depending on the climate where you are, by daffodils, tulips, anemones and plenty more.
Stick to a colour scheme, or mix it up – either can work well, but typically around half a dozen complementary colours creates a dazzling display for a small garden, without overdoing it. Plant your bulbs in drifts of seven to twenty bulbs so that each variety has a strong presence. Do also bear in mind the plant height – generally, it makes sense to put taller stemmed bulbs behind lower growing ones – for example tulips behind crocuses and irises.
Most spring bulbs should be planted during September and October to bloom the following spring. For a quick recap on exactly when to plant and at what depth, see how to grow bulbs, corms and tubers. When your bulbs have finished blooming, allow the flowerhead to die off completely before deadheading as this gives the plant time to reabsorb all that goodness, ready for next year.
Finish with some spring flowers
Finally, complete your spring display with colourful flowers like violas, pansies and primroses, all of which offer that bright seasonal spectacle you’re looking for. They’re easy to grow in pots or in the front of your borders and are a wonderful way to add instant interest.
Pansies and violas are a popular way to bring early colour to your beds, borders, pots and hanging baskets. Buy them as plug plants for quick and easy results.
Coming in pale yellows through to riotous colour, primroses are a hard working perennial that bloom for months at a time, providing continuity as your late spring and early flowers begin to show through. Sow cheerful pansy seeds during the autumn to flower next spring, or buy garden-ready plants to put straight into the soil.
A spring garden is fun to plan and plant in autumn, gives you plenty to look forward to during the depths of winter and, when the new season finally arrives, you’ll be rewarded with a kaleidoscope of spring colours and scents that will prove well worth the wait.
The Thompson & Morgan horticultural team produces a wealth of content around gardening and food production. Since the first seed catalogue was published in 1855, Thompson & Morgan has grown to become one of the UK’s largest Mail Order Seed and Plant companies. Through the publication of our catalogues and the operation of our award-winning website, Thompson & Morgan is able to provide home gardeners with the very best quality products money can buy.
by Thompson & Morgan | Apr 15, 2020 | Gardening Posts
With so many sources of online gardening help, advice and information to turn to, it can be difficult to know where to start. To help you sort the good from the not so good, we’ve checked out a plethora of gardening YouTube channels for the quality of their content. Here’s a selection of some of the best. Enjoy.
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The Thompson & Morgan horticultural team produces a wealth of content around gardening and food production. Since the first seed catalogue was published in 1855, Thompson & Morgan has grown to become one of the UK’s largest Mail Order Seed and Plant companies. Through the publication of our catalogues and the operation of our award-winning website, Thompson & Morgan is able to provide home gardeners with the very best quality products money can buy.
by Thompson & Morgan | Apr 10, 2020 | Gardening Posts, Vegetables
Growing your own fresh fruit and veg is hugely rewarding
Image: Wollertz
Decided to try to grow your own? Growing veg in your garden takes less effort than you might think and is a cost-effective way to enjoy delicious herbs, fruit and vegetables.
To help you take your first steps, some of our favourite gardening bloggers have kindly shared their top tips, perfected over many years of trial and error. Here are our handy hints…
Where’s the best place to grow vegetables?
Where are you thinking of growing your veg? An old flower bed, new raised beds, containers or maybe a window box? Wherever you decide to plant your produce, the location should satisfy three basic criteria: good soil, some sunshine, and stable growing conditions.
The best soil is a rich loam – it’s fertile and holds moisture without becoming waterlogged. If that doesn’t sound like the soil in your back garden, don’t despair – adding plenty of organic material helps to improve poor soils, and if your soil is prone to waterlogging – build raised beds.
South-facing plots make good veg gardens because they get the best of the sunshine throughout the day. But just because your garden lacks the perfect orientation doesn’t mean it can’t be productive – some veg, like salad leaves and brassicas, prefer slightly shadier conditions. Avoid planting fruit and veg in areas that suffer from extreme conditions – choose somewhere sheltered away from cold winds and pelting rain.
How to choose vegetables for a small garden
You don’t need a big garden to grow lots of tasty veg, but if you’re short on space, it’s important to plant smartly. Mark Willis of the perennially informative blog Mark’s Veg Plot uses a scientific planting scheme he learned from garden writer Joy Larkcom – the Value for Space Rating. VSR takes into account things like crop yield per square metre, growing time, availability of the crop and its quality relative to supermarket purchases. So what’s the best thing to grow if space is at a premium? Mark says:
“The best examples of VSR are in the herb department. Herbs don’t take up much space, and they are usually expensive to buy (and never available when you want them).
Richard, producer of ever-popular The Veg Grower Podcast, adopts a similarly scientific approach. Under his scoring system, top marks go to asparagus, tomatoes and garlic, which is great because he likes all three!
In a small garden, Caro Shrives at The Urban Veg Patch goes for small plants that work hard. She says: “Plants that keep on cropping are a good choice; compact courgette plants look good, have vibrant flowers and provide a decent amount of small courgettes without overwhelm.”
If you’re really short of square footage, Youtube presenter Kelly, of Kelly’s Kitchen Garden, suggests vertical growing: “Growing crops like beans, cucumbers and some types of squash up trellis, supports and cane wigwams can save a lot of space.”
And if you have no garden at all? Kelly says that as long as you have a balcony or somewhere to stand a few pots, you can still grow fresh produce in containers or window boxes: “I’ve had fantastic success growing lettuce in containers. By picking individual leaves to increase yield, I harvested 5.5lbs (2.5kg) from a container measuring no more than two square feet.”
Grow what you like to eat
These tumbling tomatoes are perfect for patio containers or hanging baskets
Image: Tomato ‘Tumbling Tom Red’ from Thompson & Morgan
If you’re lucky enough to have room to grow whatever you like, how do you narrow down the choice? We asked our favourite bloggers that very question – the consensus – though growing expensive or rare veg is a fun and tasty sideline – concentrate on growing what you enjoy eating.
There’s little point cultivating exotic veg if you won’t eat it reckons Pete Polanyk of Weeds up to me Knees. Pete, whose blog offers a wealth of encouragement for beginner gardeners recommends bog standard spuds, tomatoes, runner beans, peas, carrots, beetroots, onions, garlic and herbs. Simple fare maybe, but “they’re a lot more tasty, fresh from the garden.”
Jackie Gulland of Reclaiming Paradise agrees, saying that you’ll be surprised by the flavour of freshly picked produce from your own garden. Although she has an allotment, she explains why she still grows some of her favourites at home:
“The garden [is ideal] for picking herbs to throw in your cooking or a handful of soft fruit for your breakfast and for keeping on top of beans and peas which can grow too fast to eat sometimes. It’s great to go out after work and see what there is that you can have for an evening meal, rather than planning further in advance.
Whether you go for the VSR method or simply plant what you think you’ll enjoy, it’s important to feed your soil and rotate your crops. Avoid planting the same thing in the same place each year to help keep your ground fertile and free of pests.
Start small
Just a small patch of soil and a few pots are enough to get started
Image: Joanne Dale
A well-planted plot of about 12’ x 10’ is the ideal size to supply most of a family of four’s summer and autumn veg needs (with a little left over for freezing). If you start small, you won’t get overwhelmed with veg you can’t eat.
If you’re just testing the water to see if you like growing veg, why not follow Pete’s lead? He planted tomatoes in his flower beds next to his dahlias, pointing out that there’s nothing wrong with a bit of gardening anarchy.
Other options for the first-timer might include planting a few containers. Richard’s a great fan of growing new potatoes this way:
“They’re easy to look after and, if grown in pots, can be moved around if needed. They don’t take much care – plenty of water and food as they are hungry and thirsty plants, and that’s about it. The flavour of homegrown new potatoes far exceeds anything you can buy too.
You might also consider building a raised bed which doesn’t need to take up much space and can easily produce a significant quantity of your favourite veg. Use good quality seeds and plug plants, avoid planting your veg too close together, water well and reap the rewards.
Growing alone? Caro does too. She says: ”It’s tempting to give up when things don’t work out. Joining a local horticultural society, visiting kitchen gardens and attending courses and talks gave me more confidence. Growing food should be fun!”
5 top tips from our brilliant bloggers
- “The most cost-effective crops are the ones that are expensive to buy [in a shop] and don’t keep well – such as Purple Sprouting Broccoli and salads…[but] my favourites are still tomatoes and chillies.” Mark – Mark’s Veg Plot
- “Growing your own is a good way to try unusual veg, especially if you have children. I grow yellow beans, oca, spaghetti squash, sweet red gooseberries – none of which is available in the shops – and physalis (Cape Gooseberries) that taste much nicer freshly picked.” Caro Shrives – The Urban Veg Patch
- “We have rosemary, thyme and bay in the garden that we planted years ago. They’re easy to grow, you just bung them in and voila, you’ve got fresh herbs when you need them.” Pete Polanyk – Weeds up to me knees
- “I try and practise successional (staggered) sowing with salad leaves. This gives our household plenty of delicious salad leaves all year round saving us having to buy those expensive bags from the supermarket.” Richard – The Veg Grower Podcast
- “Things like peas, radishes, salad/spring onions and deliciously sweet turnips are on my budget list – great for the beginner gardener and take up very little space.” Kelly – Kelly’s Kitchen Garden
If you’re thinking about growing your own vegetables we hope our gardening bloggers and YouTubers have provided the inspiration and advice you need to get started. As Kelly says: “Just give it a go and have fun!”
The Thompson & Morgan horticultural team produces a wealth of content around gardening and food production. Since the first seed catalogue was published in 1855, Thompson & Morgan has grown to become one of the UK’s largest Mail Order Seed and Plant companies. Through the publication of our catalogues and the operation of our award-winning website, Thompson & Morgan is able to provide home gardeners with the very best quality products money can buy.
