Organic gardening is becoming more and more popular
Image: shutterstock
Do you long to garden the natural way? Take a look at our collection of great organic and permaculture blogs. They’re sure to provide the inspiration, tips and ideas you need to change the way you grow.
Lovely Greens
Re-use, recycle, get fruit!
Image: Lovely Greens
You don’t have to spend money to make your garden look great. Check out the beautiful creations Tanya from Lovely Greens makes from wooden pallets! “Passionate about sharing how to make useful things”, she’s an expert at finding ways to repurpose items you already have lying about the house
You’ll love the way Tanya takes it back to basics with her post on gardening with sticks and twigs. She creates practical plant supports, DIY birdhouses, delicate decor, and more with totally natural resources. There’s no limit to what you can create with the materials nature provides.
Two thirsty gardeners
Heavy metal cucumber – a young rocker
Image: Two Thirsty Gardeners
Did you know playing your cucumbers heavy metal produces bigger crops? That’s according to Nick and Rich, the duo behind Two Thirsty Gardeners, who’ve been pondering how to get the best results from their cucumbers this year.
Gardening is thirsty work, so it makes sense to turn your produce into tasty drinks. Well, that’s the idea behind this quirky blog. Follow the team as they chronicle their journey from novice cider makers to, well, novice gardeners, turning their harvest into beer and cider.
This week in the garden
Forage for your dinner
Image: This Week in the Garden
Want to “work less, grow more and spend much more time just enjoying being outside”? You’ll want to take a leaf from blogger and permaculture fan, Kay Hebbourn of This Week in The Garden. She says instead of slavishly following standard gardening practises, she’s learning from nature instead.
Do take a look at Kay’s foraging calendar, a guide to what you can safely find and eat each month. Gathered your ingredients? Now head over to the recipe page to make something tasty! We can’t wait to try the kohlrabi, beetroot, carrot and apple salad. Perfect for summer, it sounds amazing.
Gwenfar’s Garden
Permaculture Produce
Image: Gwenfar’s Garden
Chronic illness hasn’t stopped Julieanne Porter, AKA Gwenfar, squeezing a beautiful permaculture paradise into her Sheffield back garden. Find out how she does it by popping over to her blog – a mine of information to help you avoid things like waterlogging and taking on more than you can handle.
As well as Julieanne’s gardening posts, you’ll find lovely snaps and charming accounts of day trips and mini-breaks. Like when she and her husband visited Dovedale – check out her photos of pygmy goats…very cute.
Permaculture Designer
Growing in glass!
Image: Permaculture Design
You don’t need a permaculture diploma to create one of these easy-to-make terrariums. Popular since Victorian times, they were originally used for transporting tropical plants to the chilly UK. Blogger Flo shows you how to make yours from recycled materials. An added bonus – when they’re finished, they survive with very little attention.
Qualified in Permaculture Design, and a founding member of the Low Carbon Trust, Flo knows what she’s talking about. Over the years, she’s been involved in many forward-thinking ecological projects, and shares her thought-provoking ideas on her blog.
Reclaiming Paradise
Magic Seeds
Image: Reclaiming Paradise
Ever since blogger Jackie watched helplessly as trees were chopped down to make way for parking spaces, she’s been doing her bit to bring some colour back into the world by turning her garden into an organic paradise.
But even with 20 years of gardening experience under her belt, Jackie still feels the magic when she spots those first signs of life after planting a seed. An expert germinator, take a look at how she got her parsley to sprout. Perhaps it has something to do with her fascinating new peat free plant pods.
No Dig Home
No digging here!
Image: No Dig Home
Tired of digging the garden? Stephanie Hafferty’s No Dig Home is for you. She says when you disrupt the soil, it tries to recover itself – with weeds. It’s time to throw out your shovel and learn how to grow crops without disturbing the earth. Stephanie also co-wrote a book on the topic with Charles Dowding called ‘No Dig Organic Home and Garden.’
In nature, nutrients come from above ground – think of a forest floor. By mulching, Stephanie adds a top layer of compost and manure – no digging needed. If you’re hoping to follow in her dig-free footsteps, Stephanie’s post on setting up a no-dig polytunnel is a great starting point.
My Climate Change Garden
Gardens hold our future
Image: My Climate Change Garden
The climate is a-changing, and the garden bears the brunt of it. Blogger Deborah seeks to make life a little easier for gardeners by tracking updates from experts, and providing tips and tricks on staying one head of the game.
Deborah believes that the garden provides an opportunity to understand climate change. Her award winning blog full of tips on how to garden for the future.
No Dig Organic Gardening
Frost free flower
Image: No Dig Organic Gardening
One of the innovators of no dig gardening, Charles Dowding helps budding organic gardeners by providing events, courses, books, talks and of course blog posts.
You’ll love his regular updates on his work tending the gardens at Lower Farm and now Home acres. Discover how long to keep your tomatoes under cover– it’s a good idea to keep them sheltered until any chance of frost has passed – and how soon you can put out hardier vegetables such as onion and lettuce.
Our Little Field
The first steps to sweet potatoes
Image: Our Little Field
Our Little Field is The Good Life for real. It’s the story of one family’s attempt to grow their own food and live as sustainably as possible.
Have you ever tried to grow your own sweet potatoes? This tuber is a popular ingredient for many healthy dishes and tastes great too. Check out this step-by-step guide to getting yours to grow. It all starts with plonking a sweet potato in a glass of water. We loved step two – planting in a pot – the potato looks like it’s waving!
If you’ve enjoyed these blogs, or have a favourite organic or permaculture blog you love but we haven’t mentioned, please let us know on our Facebook page.
A late sowing of dwarf French beans, 
The twenty or so cuttings I took from my perennial 
The wonderful 
So, as we approach the end of the season, how have then plants received this year fared? Without doubt the one that has excelled and received many comments from our many visitors is 
Didn’t Think I Could Grow Them Prize: Trial Dahlia Plug Plants. Having never grown dahlias from anything other than tubers, I was hesitant to take on this trial. That said, wasn’t I likely to be the ideal candidate as, if they proved successful, then surely they could be catalogued as Idiot Proof! Three plugs each of four experimental varieties. Due to lack of space I planted each group of three into a 12” pot to start them off and eventually transplanted them onto the allotment. Well, within a fortnight two out of the four came into bloom, with more robust buds coming on. One group seemed particularly prone to slugs so I collared them with plastic tomato auto watering rings, which put a stop to that problem. I swear by those rings! Never have used them on tomatoes though…….
And in conclusion, the prize for the most innovative hanging basket must go to Catus Jitterbuggus, who enjoys the shade of the patio in her very own hammock.
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