June sweet June, summer is here...or is it...?  What is the weather like for you?  June should mean a Eaton Mess, light, warm evening, al fresco dinning and of course amazing displays of flowers, vegetables, trees and insects in the garden.  What does June mean to you?  I asked the creator behind My Tiny Plot; she said Strawberries and Rose wine, what an excellent response hey!

Here are a list of jobs you can be getting on with in between showers!

1 Take lavender cuttings

2 Plants leeks and other brassicas, it is not too late to order our vegetable packs!

3 Spread mulch around beans to help conserve moisture

4 Keep the children entertained and make some bird scarers for your vegetable plot, you can use Cd's, bottles, be creative with paints and recycle your house hold waste.

5 Water beans and sweet peas as they start to flower

6 Feed tomatoes and take off side shoots to help keep nutrients and energy focused on producing fruits

7 Collect and sow seeds from fox gloves

8 Spray roses

9 Lift early spuds - because your spuds will be coming up and going from ground to pan in a matter of minutes, I thought I would let you have a simple summer recipe for the good old faithful British potato!

Summery New Potato Salad With Mustard Dressing

500g New Potatoes, scrubbed and halved

1 tablespoon of wholegrain mustard

4 spring onions, finely sliced

1 tbsp clear honey

2 tbsp good olive oil

1 tbsp white wine vinegar

1 tbsp low fat mayo

Preparation

Add the potatoes to a pan of boiling water, lightly salt the water. Cover and simmer until the potatoes are tender and cooked.  Drain and return the potatoes to the pan.  Mix the rest of the ingredients together in a small jug or something similar, add to the potatoes, season to taste and allow to cool then serve into a pretty dish and enjoy with a simple salad, fish, chicken or to compliment a summer al fresco barbecue.

10 Take any odd apples off apples trees so to keep the energy for the good apples

11 You can be planting out lettuce, rocket, spinach, beet, french dwarf beans, radish, carrots, endive, kohlrabi, suede, turnips

12 Plant out tender crops like courgettes, beans, pumkins etc

13 Give birds water

14 Design and plant summer hanging baskets

15 Sow or plant out salad in guttering, pots and generally everywhere!!

16 Tie new sprouts up on fruit plants, feed and mulch.

17 Look out for green fly; I use my Grandmother's recipe of water and washing up liquid as a great green fly killer and repellant!

Here it is. My first blog. And I am excited. But where do I start!

There is so much to do and so many decisions to make.. fonts, color schemes, images, layout, pages and that just the non techy stuff!!

So with my head spinning with all the things I need to do I thought I would take my mind off things for a few minutes and tell you about me!  I am a member of the Quality Garden Supplies team and the guys in the office thought it a great idea that I create a Blog for our website.  After all I was the only one in the office going wild with excitement about my new house, how I am going to become a self-sufficient, jam making, home maker with my little cottage in the country which for the benefit of my new blog I will call the QGS Cottage. All the plans I have made and now out loud which means there is no going back, everyone in the office knows! I mean I would look a fool if I didn't carry them out!

I moved into the Cottage in December and so now with Christmas out of the way I bought my chickens! Made their pen, which they are at this very moment making home.  Hurray I am finally seeing a little bit of progression to become the self sufficient creative type that I have always desired to be; of course I have had practise, growing up on the family farm, learning how to grow veg from my Grandmother, learning about the changing seasons from my Grandfather, taking cuttings and pruning trees from my Father and cooking and preserving what we had grown from my Mother.  Then I moved around various parts of the country and to countries further a field too, enjoyed myself a little and learnt life skills and now I feel ready to put all I have learnt into my new house and grow a home!

So please pop back soon and read more of my Blogs.

Helen

Now growing vegetables to me is something I have always just been able to do, putting the main elements together to be able to produce fruit or veg to take back into my kitchen and cook. Simple!

For some people however, taking on the task of building a vegetable plot and growing their own food is something they have never done before.  So this blog is to help those people gain a little understanding of those key elements to then go onto to produce home grown food for themselves and their family.  Growing at home or an allotment is so popular at the moment, especially with the price of produce at supermarkets which is incredibly tasteless, grown out of season and mostly outside of Great Britain.

So here are the factors you need to think about when starting your fruit and vegetable patch.

Choosing the right spot

Your plot needs to be light and airy with plenty of sun light throughout the day.

It should be south facing. Avoid areas with trees and large fences which will potentially shelter the area.

If the plot is open and exposed you will need to consider some kind of wind break position to block the wind, maybe a small fence, hedge or wall.

Access and Water

Your plot should have good access so that not only is it not too far away from your home, but you can easily reach it and get a wheel barrow to it.  If you are buying in things like soil improver or topsoil you will need to think about vehicle access too!

Also water, is there water near to the plot or will you have to take water to it, if so how will you do it and can you easily do it.

Soil

If you are mainly growing in pots then you wont need to worry about this section too much.  Just ensure you are using the best compost you can buy that has been specifically designed for fruit and veg and contains the correct balance of nutrients and the best structure to help promote healthy growth.

Soil is the anchor for your plants, it holds water, air and nutrients to make plants grow.

From clay to sand all soil types will be suitable to grow some fruit and veg successfully and others not so!

Clay holds nutrients well but is heavy slow to warm up, it also holds the water.  Sandy soils are lighter and easily eroded, the lack of substance means its ability to hold nutrients is poor.

Sadly you can't choose which your soil type is but you can improve it's nutrient content and improve the quality.  You can use things such as kitchen waste like vegetable peelings or well rotted manure.  Also a great idea is to buy soil improver's or compost which you mix into the soil plant beds from around February.

Helen