USA and Canada won't let you grow your own vegetables?

Just found this amazing story! Across the USA and Canada there are apparently authorities who restrict the amount of space given up to growing vegetables in your yard or garden. Sounds crazy? It is! Follow the link for full story.
How can a pristine striped lawn with hefty use of chemicals and copious watering to keep it that way be at all sensible in a world where growing our own organic food has to be the best thing we can possibly do to help us in developing healthy eating habits for our families?
I thought it was a wind up to start with but the article seems genuine enough.
What do you think?

Grow your own Drugs and a Homegrown Revolution

I braved the weather today and went up to the allotment to see what is going on up there. The sun was shining and the sky blue but it was very cold! And the ground is totally waterlogged - so absolutely impossible to dig the ground at all - it would really damage the soil to even attempt to walk over the plot.
But I did manage to pick some lovely sprouts, some purple sprouting broccoli, and dig a few leeks and parsnips. I shall roast the parsnips with a grating of parmesan cheese - delicious!
And quite unbelievably the rhubarb has started sprouting. It clearly thinks it's spring already!
Had a super book as a Christmas present. It's Homegrown Revolution by James Wong, the author of Grow Your Own Drugs. And in it he shows us how to widen our horizons, to grow the exotic and unusual - and he trials all these in his own small suburban garden in South London. How about callaloo, watercress, cucamelons, chop suey greens, tomatillos, inca berries, shark's fin melon, dahlia yam, electric daisies .... The list seems endless; he calls them "incredible edibles." So I'm really looking forward to following his advice and pushing the boat out this year on the allotment. I can see I shall soon run out of space up there.
And through the blog I shall let you know how I get on!

Frog in a flowerpot!!

What is eating my potato flowers?

Anyone have any ideas? I have never ever seen potato flowers disappear like this before?

What a challenging year this is proving to be on the allotment! The rain continues - unrelenting. In the past week we have had thunder and lightning, hail stones and rain the like of which I have never seen before.
And the plants struggle with so much wet and the attacks from slugs and snails which are delighting in the conditions.
Some things have been good - strawberries were amazing albeit two weeks late in coming - but they are now over. The new potatoes are tasty and abundant and the perpetual spinach and swiss chard are keeping me in healthy greens!
The broad beans need another week probably to swell up but the crop doesn't look too bad, as long as the pigeons stay away. And the various brassicas, totally protected by netting from the unwelcome attention of birds and butterflies, are growing well.

As soon as the ground dries a little (if it ever does?) I shall tidy up the strawberry bed, digging out the oldest row and planting a new row from healthy looking runners, on a three year rotation plan. Then I shall put plenty of manure down between the rows, to feed them and also to keep weeds at bay  - then I can forget about them for another year.
I also intend this year to sow some broad beans where the potatoes are being cleared, hoping for an early spring harvest next year. I've never done this before but others do with seemingly good results. And I shall sow some more spinach and swiss chard to keep the supply to the kitchen going.
My main hope now is for a late summer burst of warmth and sunshine to give the poor courgettes, pumpkins, squash, etc a chance to grow and mature - otherwise I shall be missing out on beautiful squashes to store over winter for lovely roast vegetables.

Flaming June. What a month it was! Everyone is saying the same thing; plants on the allotment are just sitting there, doing nothing, especially the runner and french beans, and the courgettes, pumpkins etc, that need sunshine and warmth to really get going. And they hate the wind. It has battered all the young plants relentlessly for weeks and they simply hate it.
Nonetheless, not all things have been bad. I am still picking and enjoying spinach and swiss chard, carried over from the winter and last year's sowings. They are tending to bolt, but even the flower heads can be chopped up and steamed with the rest of the leaves. I must sow some more soon to carry over to next year, as surely the existing plants will give up soon and end up on the compost heap.
And talking of compost, I have just emptied one bin and used the contents to top dress the asparagus bed.
And the strawberries have been amazing. They loved all the rain to swell the fruit, and then a week or two of warmth came just at the right moment to ripen them. Yes they have been very late, but for the last ten days I have been picking up to 6 pounds every day!! And that is after the birds and mice have had their share and in spite of the many that have gone moldy on the plant.

And in case any of my readers wonder why I have been silent for a while, it is because I have had my head down getting my next book through the copy editing and proof stages. The cover is now designed and it is all very exciting! But with the allotment and garden to look after as well, there are simply not enough hours in the day to keep blogging as well. Mea culpa.

Rain and Weeds

Oh dear! It continues to be cold and wet and miserable - just 2 reasonably pleasant days and we were all up at the allotment beavering away with seed sowing and planting out and generally tidying up some pretty neglected plots. But everything is now so late, and we need warmth to bring things on. I only hope that autumn comes late and mild or many vegetables will not have a long enough growing season to reach maturity.
I continue to hear plotters crying that they cannot keep on top of their weeds. Do you know why? Take a look at this!

The plot looks well tended - but a moment or two getting rid of those dandelions before they seed would pay dividends in less weeds next year!! It's all a question of priorities!

Below is the photo from another plot. Again the other half of that plot is well tended, dug and raked and sowed - but why not pull out those big weeds at the same time? Why allow them to flower?

It all gets very frustrating for those of us who keep a weed free plot!!!!

Here is my plot. It's a busy plot - I like to think of it as a cottage garden allotment - there's always something on the go ready for the kitchen, and things get put where there's space, whilst still trying to avoid the same crop in the same place within a 3 year cycle. But weeds I do not have!

I've just sown rows of radish, lettuce and spring onion directly into the soil. All the seeds I sowed in modules in the cold greenhouse before I went way for a few days last week are all now well and truly up, and growing. Soon I shall be able to transplant beetroot, parsnips, onions, celeriac and many different types of brassica onto the allotment. I've also just sown all my cucurbits - courgettes, butternut squash, cucumbers etc, along with the beans - runner and french - so I don't intend to go hungry this year to come. If only we could have some more warm sunshine.

After the rain

Well it at last stopped raining for a while yesterday and I snatched an hour to go up to the allotment. The first potatoes I planted have come through, and I have earthed them up well - at the same time dealing with the abundance of tiny weed seedlings that covered the potato plot. This is one reason why potatoes are such a good crop to clean any weedy land. All the earthing up doesn't give  weeds a chance - and any that do survive are soon finished off by the shade of the maturing potato foliage.
The dandelions have had a field day - hundreds of flowers all across the allotments. I take the flowers off as I walk around, to make sure they are not given any chance to seed - one year's seeding = ten years of weeding. Oh how true.
The ground is really boggy on the plot after all this rain. I planted out some lettuce seedlings and sowed some spring onions, but had to give up because walking on such wet ground is not doing it any good.

  Not to do with the allotment at all - but just look at the progress on the banana plant indoors- wonder how many months before they'll be edible!?!