Spade Work : From Plot to Plate

Organic gardening and vegetable growing within flooding distance of the Thames, weekend allotmenteering overlooking the North Downs, and tending a monastery garden.

My Photo

Subscribe to Spade Work

Growers in the UK & Europe

  • A Country Garden
  • Bean Sprouts
  • Bifurcated Carrots
  • Bliss
  • Claires Garden
  • Daughter of the Soil
  • Dave's Allotment
  • Down on the Allotment
  • Fluffy Muppet
  • Fresh as a Daisy - The Veggie Garden Experience
  • Horticultural
  • Joanna's Food
  • Lodge Lane Nursery
  • Losing The Plot
  • Mike's Allotment Diary
  • Mildew
  • Mustard Plaster
  • My Tiny Plot
  • MyUrbFarm
  • Organic Allotment
  • Pumpkin Soup
  • She Who Digs
  • Simply Living
  • Snapdragon's Garden
  • Snappy's Garden
  • The Balcony Garden
  • Trying to Grow Things
  • Veg Plot
  • Wild Burro

Growers in the US & CAN

  • A Study in Contrasts
  • Calendula & Concrete
  • Dirt
  • Dirt Sun Rain
  • Earth Home Garden
  • Garden Rant
  • In My Kitchen Garden
  • Kate Smudges
  • Kitchen Gardeners International
  • May Dreams Gardens
  • Outside
  • Path To Freedom
  • Petunia's Garden
  • The Vermont Gardener
  • This Garden Is Illegal
  • Transatlantic Plantsman

Gardens to visit

  • The Chelsea Physic Garden
  • Museum of Garden History
  • The Eden Project
  • Ryton Organic Garden
  • Yalding Organic Garden
  • Audely End Organic Garden

Seed Suppliers

  • Real Seed Catalogue
  • The Potato Man
  • The Organic Gardening Catalogue

Garden Reading

Vt_and_grounds_for_sculpture_005 Just back from holidays and missing the view, pictured here, from the porch in Vermont where we sat around all day long reading.

If you've time try these garden related books - a US bias but each a good read.

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life, Barbara Kingsolver

The Earth Knows My Name: Food, Culture and Sustainability in the Gardens of Ethnic Americans, Patricia Klindienst.

This Common Ground: Seasons on an Organic Farm, Scott Chaskey.

May 30, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Tags: Barbara Kingsolver, Patricia Klindienst, Scott Chaskey

Beeton's All About Gardening

Driven off the allotment by bad weather last weekend, I went home, brewed a mug of tea and pulled Beeton's All About Gardening from the bookshelf.

It's a dictionary of gardening with some nicely coloured illustrations. My copy is undated but it's probably from the 1890s or early 1900s judging from some of the entries.

I was struck by the extraordinary range of potato varieties listed by various seed companies - many more than appear in modern day catalogues. That's if you could be sure that Ash Leaf Kidney was different to Ash Top Flake in anything but name.

But one thing for certain is that catalogue writers, then as now, are not shy about being foreward in their descriptions. So Magnum Bonum was an 'enormous cropper of high quality and almost free of disease'. Early Puritan was of 'great excellence, vigourous constitution and very productive'. Best of All had few equals as a cropper, very free from disease and excellent when cooked.

November 28, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

Tags: Beeton's, Gardening, potatoes

My Book:It's Out

Ndw_book_1 I've just received advance copies of my book, North Downs Way.

Not garden related, I know, but I'm guessing that a lot of you are outdoorsy types.

If you follow the route keep a look out for my allotment which you might just glimpse from the ridgeline!

You can read an excerpt and find out more about Trailblazer here and, end of advertisement, it's available on Amazon or support your local bookshop.

November 13, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)

Tags: long distance path, north downs way, trailblazer, walking guide

Books

Praise for Paul Waddington's 21st Century Smallholder:From Windowboxes to Allotments - How to Go Back to the Land Without Leaving Home came from an unlikely source this weekend in the FT Magazine.

In the magazine more usually containing reviews of  'everyday' drinking wines for £15 and £90 lunches for two without wine, the book, Edi Smockum, writes;  " offers exactly what it says on the cover - a straightforward guide to planting your own food whether you have just a balcony or a few acres on which to raise pigs, bees and chickens. You can't help but buy a packet of lettuce seed and get planting."

July 18, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

©John Curtin 2006-2008

Recent Posts

  • Bloggers' Seed Network
  • TPS - True Potato Seed
  • Garlic Bulbs For Winter Planting
  • Growers meet
  • Gypsy Red
  • Vekak Czech & Colorado Black
  • Korean Red
  • Prim
  • Inchelium Red
  • Mortgage Lifter

Archives

  • January 2009
  • September 2008
  • August 2008
  • July 2008
  • June 2008
  • May 2008
  • April 2008
  • March 2008
  • February 2008
  • January 2008

Categories

  • Advice (5)
  • Alloltment (20)
  • Blog Business (5)
  • Books (4)
  • Food and Drink (9)
  • Games (1)
  • Garden (34)
  • Garden Visiting (11)
  • Harvest (55)
  • How to (7)
  • Monastery (8)
  • News (12)
  • Pests & Diseases (3)
  • Planting (15)
  • Question (2)
  • Recipe (6)
  • Seeds (8)
  • Television (1)
  • Tools (3)
  • Travel (1)
  • Weather (1)
See More

January 2009

Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat Sun
      1 2 3 4
5 6 7 8 9 10 11
12 13 14 15 16 17 18
19 20 21 22 23 24 25
26 27 28 29 30 31