Garden Bounty

It's that time of year again to reacquaint ourselves with our gardens, to cut the grass, enjoy the summer warmth, BBQ's and to rediscover if we have 'green fingers'. The days are becoming brighter for longer and the shops tease us with BBQ and patio furniture on display whilst the garden centres are awash with promises of colour.

Here we encourage you to go one step further with potentially the easiest way to successfully grow some food for your BBQ's.

Space, time, knowledge and effort are the typical reasons why people don't grow food in their gardens. However Fruit and Vegetables plants not only produce crops but also provide flowers, interest, scents and surprise.

Every garden has the potential to grow food whether it is in full sun or total shade, large small or just a window box you can grow food.

Using Hanging Baskets has a number of advantages and perhaps the easiest option for everyone.

All of these rely on you simply finding a suitable hanging location, obtaining a wide basket, adding compost, soil, some nutrients and regular watering. Grow from either seeds of small plants readily available in the garden centre shops but do chose dwarf and trailing varieties to better suit hanging baskets. You don't want to grow a 5 foot high tomato plant in a hanging basket!

Supermarket salads and herbs in pots are not well suited for transferring and 'growing on' in your garden. They're better suited to the kitchen window sill since they were very compactly sown and will not produce much more than when you first purchased them.

Since hanging baskets are raised from the ground they're exposed to wind so they'll need some shelter. The sun too has opportunity to dry out the soil more than if they were in the ground so more regular watering is needed together with feeding.

The great advantage of baskets or pots is that they can be relocated to suit your lifestyle and the weather. If their too hot on a sunny day they can be taken down or moved around but they'll all produce crops.