Jonathan Stevens - Vegetable Growing: A Money-saving Guide

For my wife and my boys

First published in Great Britain in 2017 by

Michael OMara Books Limited

9 Lion Yard

Tremadoc Road

London SW4 7NQ

Copyright Jonathan Stevens 2017

All rights reserved. You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN: 978-1-78243-763-5 in paperback print format

ISBN: 978-1-78243-855-7 in ebook format

Illustrations by Andrew Pinder

www.mombooks.com

Contents

Thanks to all at Michael OMara Books for giving me the opportunity to write Vegetable Growing.

To my lovely wife Ailsa for all her support while I shirked parenting responsibilities to sit in a room and write.

To my friends and fellow plot holders at the Burnham-on-Crouch allotments for all their tried-and-tested tips and tricks, so many of which appear in this book.

A massive thank you to all the people who have taken the time to visit my blog, Real Men Sow, over the past few years. As always, thanks for reading.

And a million thank yous to my wonderful mum, for her patience, endless enthusiasm and teaching me the way of the soil.

Ah, ten years ago

There I was, twenty-four years old, not long out of university and still the proud owner of a full head of hair. My gardening-mad mother, Jan, was undergoing treatment for cancer and was becoming increasingly frustrated at not being able to get outside and dig. So one chilly afternoon my brother and I helped her make a couple of raised beds to grow some vegetables.

Although Mum has always loved gardening, growing vegetables was new for her, and gave her something fresh to focus on while her treatment continued. We spent evenings looking at books and seed catalogues, and I became mildly obsessed with the River Cottage TV programmes. The summer came, and together we spent time growing vegetables and, thankfully, Mum kicked cancers butt.

I realized a few things during this time: cancer is rubbish, mums are incredibly important and we should always be nice to them, and growing vegetables for your dinner is absolutely the most satisfying, glorious hobby.

The following year, Mum and I took on a redundant allotment plot together. Three years later, Mum stopped watching over my shoulder, and I figured I must be doing something right. A steady stream of incredibly tasty fruit and veg continued to wing its way to my kitchen and soon I was spending most weekends and plenty of summer evenings at the plot. Id found there was something joyful about allotments, growing your own food and living within the seasons, and I longed to tell the world about this new discovery. However, I found the fussiness of cauliflowers and just how much better homegrown tomatoes taste tricky subjects to shoehorn into conversation. My football team werent overly interested, and my mates humoured me for a minute or so before moving on to more suitable pub discussions nothing to do with allotments.

So, like you do these days, I set up a social media account and found a hashtag. Suddenly, everything changed, and at the click of a button I was exposed to hundreds of people who loved growing vegetables! Some even enjoyed discussing cauliflowers, and some even went as far as writing about their escapades on allotments. I began reading blogs and my evenings were spent working through the feed on my blog reader rather than watching the TV.

I realized that, despite my initial difficulty finding people to talk to, allotments were becoming popular again and Id just been looking in the wrong place. Lots of people were discovering the wonders of growing your own food and, like me, many were newcomers. We talked on Twitter and passed on tips to each other, and as I watched these useful nuggets of information gradually disappear down my feed, I developed an urge to try and save them. I wanted to collect all the great advice Id picked up from the internet and fellow plot holders, and put it all in one place, while also celebrating the marvellous, life-affirming qualities of growing your own food. I wanted to help people and I wanted to show my absolute happiness at being an allotment holder, so I bought some webspace and Real Men Sow, the cheery allotment blog, was born.

At the same time, I embarked on a mission to find out how much I could save by growing my own fruit and vegetables on a half-sized allotment plot. By this time, Id moved into my own place and had become intrigued by the cost of food in the shops and concerned about the cash in my pocket. I began weighing my harvests and comparing the weight to equivalent supermarket prices.

I made a spreadsheet to calculate savings, and weighed every fruit and veg harvest for twelve months, from leafy salads to bumper butternut squashes. My lovely girlfriend thought I was nuts, but hey, Im a man, we do these odd projects. Shes now my wife, so I guess it didnt put her off too much.

My calculations told me that I saved approximately 500 growing my own fruit and veg that year. I found the project strangely fun, so ever since Ive geared my allotment and veg patches towards maximum productivity and focused on those fruit and veg that I now know save me and my new family the most money.

I wrote up my monthly findings on Real Men Sow, and to my surprise, a few people started following the blog. By the end of the year, a few more were following, some had downloaded my sample spreadsheet, and Id even been mentioned briefly in a gardening magazine. I checked my web stats and a fair chunk of people had taken the time to visit and read a few pages of Real Men Sow over the past twelve months. I asked my mum if it was her repeatedly pressing F5, but she denied this. To my amazement, I had readers

Since then, Real Men Sow has been featured in national newspapers, magazines and on TV, and now receives over 100,000 visits a year. My blogs popularity still surprises me, but it is lovely to know that people are reading what Im putting up. This book is the culmination of seven years of blogging, and focuses on frugal allotmenteering, including planning your plot, looking after the plants and practical tips for keeping your costs down, such as clever ways of making freebie alternatives to common growing tools.

There is also a section offering advice on which fruit and veg will save you the most money, as well as a guide on the key seasonal jobs for spring, summer, autumn and winter. The book is aimed at beginners and improvers alike, and is designed to offer uncomplicated advice on cultivating reliable and satisfying crops that not only save you money, but build veg-growing confidence, too.

For me, there is no more important year in allotment growing than the first one. The first year shapes your veg future, changes eating habits and, most importantly, decides whether youre even going to like allotmenteering at all. So getting off to a good start in allotment life is vital, and thats something else Im hoping the book realizes: to help beginners achieve a fruitful first year, rather than hanging up tools at the end of the summer because all that grew were weeds.