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From potatoes to pecans: What will you be growing in your allotment this year?

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  Posted by Ramona Andrews 麻豆官网首页入口 Food host (U14570541) on Tuesday, 10th May 2011

  I'm the host of the 麻豆官网首页入口 Food messageboard and blog and I thought I'd share this with you. Sheila Dillon is on 麻豆官网首页入口 Food blog this week asking if we should be filling our allotments with available/cheap/disease-prone crops like potatoes, carrots and onions. Should we be looking for different food to grow in the face of climate change, ditching seed trays and growing perennials or making forest gardens instead?
  
  鈥淟ife is too short for unremarkable food鈥�, says Mark Diacono who featured in the programme. Read the blog post that puts forward Sheila and Mark's case for growing remarkable food and please let us know what you think.
  
  

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  Posted by Saravisiae (U2247962) on Tuesday, 10th May 2011

  I don't think it's worth growing carrots or onions for exactly those reasons- they are so cheap and carrots always get carrot fly. I do grow potatoes because they taste so much better fresh and/or home grown and because you can then get lots of interesting varieties that are not always in the shops.
  
  The things I think everyone should grow (well, if they like them anyway!) are mangetout peas and french beans. These are very easy to grow in this country but pretty muh all of these you see in the supermarket seem to be from Africa! Also you get now get some beautifully colourful varieties that wouldn't look out of place in an ornamental garden.
  
  I also think it's a good idea to grow your own salad leaves. Again you can get far more interesting varieties if you grow your own rather than buy and I also think it is important for health and taste that these are as fresh as possible.
  
  The agro forestry idea sounds very interesting and if I had any land that was likely to remain mine long term I'd probably give it a go. My job means that I'm unlikely to have this luxury though so more interesting annuals are the way to go for me!

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  Posted by nooj (U13729031) on Tuesday, 10th May 2011

  Yes indeed to mangetout and sugar snap peas
  That is the one thing that really gets me - grow easily here - and yet to buy in plastic, weighed and printed at a huge price - flown in, seems madness
  Salad leaves as well - , although I admit to not growing enough of them

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  Posted by Lorea (U14415784) on Tuesday, 10th May 2011

  I like the perennial idea and the prospect of changing our mindset and broadening our horizons with regard to planting different types of veg.
  
  Seeing as this project came about to embrace climate change, it was interesting that when talking about the weather extremes which we seem to be increasingly facing, they failed to mention the last two very harsh winters. I wonder how a lot of those plants survived as most of them seem to be taking for granted only the warmer weather aspect of climate change, or did I miss something?

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  Posted by 7magpies (U8108459) on Wednesday, 11th May 2011

  When it comes to food crops, I've always maintained that the crop needs to be at least one of these:
  1) Expensive or difficult to buy fresh
  2) Much better quality/flavour than the shop-bought equivalent
  3) Easy to grow
  
  Ideally, all three criteria will apply. I'd include carrots because, depsite their problems, home-grown carrots are so much tastier than the shop-bought ones (particularly those big wet Dutch ones in teh shops at the moment), so they score on 2) above. Other examples: raspberries, asparagus and shallots score on 1) and 3); mangetout and French beans on all three criteria.
  
  And maybe there's another criterion, which is the enjoyment factor: digging your own potatoes or eating strawberries straight from the plant are great FUN, and we all need a bit of this to keep us motivated.

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  Posted by Obelixx (U2157162) on Wednesday, 11th May 2011

  Having failed to overwinter supposedly hardy kale and Swiss chard for the last 3 winters and having had just one meagre picking from what survived of over a dozen purple sprouting, I will not be going for perennial veggies as the only survivors are fartichokes.
  
  I don't grow potatoes or carrots as we don't eat enough to warrant the space and work involved. I have grown onions but peeling and chopping fresh one always makes me weep buckets so I now buy frozen chopped shallotts and sliced onions and I can get tiny diced frozen mixed onions, carrots, leeks and celery for strating sauces and soups.
  
  I do have plenty of soft fruits which are expensive to buy and i grow salad leaves and herbs, especially varities I can't find in shops, as the savings are enormous and it's a quick crop. I also grow fennel because the taste of fresh picked is incomparable to the stale stuff in shops and veggies I can't find easily such as cavolo nero, certain varieties of pumpkin and so on.
  
  I don't always grow beans but like them to be pretty so usually sow purple podded. This year I'm experimenting with some Chinese artichokes and purple kohl rabi as I like my veggies to be decorativea and interesting.

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  Posted by netherfield (U3897706) on Wednesday, 11th May 2011

  Peas,Potatoes,Beetroot,Leeks,Onions,Cabbage,Cauliflower,Tomatoes,Swede.
  
  At the end of the day there's no point in growing anything you don't enjoy eating.
  
  Where we lived previously there was a near neighbour with a half acre garden,he would plant a 20 foot row of Broad Beans and give them all away because no one in the family liked them.
  
  

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