Good to Grow's Harvest-ometer

You might already know that I weigh and record all of my fruit and veg that I grow over the course of a year. When people find this out, they often ask me how much money I save by growing my own fruit and veg and up until now I've not been able to tell them. This is mainly as I didn't have a clue as to how I would calculate it. Recently however I was recommended this website called Capital Growth

It sounds like some sort of investment company to me, but Capital Growth is a food growing network and supports people who grow food, whether at home, on allotments or as part of a community group. And the best thing for me is that they have a Harvest-ometer, which when you enter the weight of your produce it not only adds up how much you've harvested, it tells you how much money you have saved and how much CO2 you have saved as well by growing your own food. Amazing!

I highly recommend you give it a look as there are lots of other advantages of being a member, and it's free to join.

Lottie News!

Last month had some good news and some not so good news. Quite a bit of harvesting was done which is always nice. The very last of the Parsnips were dug up and lots of Purple Sprouting Broccoli was picked.

After the first round of seed sowing I started to pot on a few things in my greenhouse. The tiny Celery and Celeriac seedlings now had their own individual plugs which will allow them to get stronger and not have to compete with the other seedlings.

My Oca had started sprouting little shoots which meant they were ready to pot on in their own pots. Last year was my first year growing Oca, also known as New Zealand Yams, and I put several tubers in one big pot. This apparently wasn't the best thing to do, so now they will be given a lot more space to spread and hopefully this will result in a much bigger harvest.

I finally got round to cleaning the poly tunnel on a drizzly day while precariously balanced on a plastic chair. The results were really good and straight away you could notice the increased light levels while inside.

Unfortunately, my first lot of Peas I'd put in and covered with fleece got completely munched by Snails, which I subsequently found out were hiding under the rim of the pots...whole families of them! It was a good job I had a second lot of seedling waiting in the wings to replace them.

And lastly...I finally got to see my article in the April edition of Kitchen Garden magazine with all my pictures I'd taken. I was so chuffed and still am.