Grow your own food, whatever space you've got
Forcing rhubarb sounds like allotment lore, but it is really just a crown, a pot and a bucket that keeps out the light. Here is how to time the cover in 2026, which varieties earn their space, and how to pull tender pink stems without running the plant into the ground.
Before you sow another pinch of winter salad, it's worth knowing which sills can actually raise a crop and which will only produce pale, stretched seedlings. A free phone light meter, used properly, will tell you in about twenty minutes — here's how to take readings that mean something and what the numbers to expect.
Bare-root season is the cheapest and widest moment to buy fruit for a balcony or cramped plot — but only if you choose the rootstock before the variety. Here's how to order a tree that crops in a pot rather than sulking in one.
No garage, no shed, no problem — if you are willing to give up a little floorspace and check your stash often. Here is how to cure winter squash properly in a flat, store it under a bed or in a wardrobe box, and eat your way through the blemished ones before they turn.
The first hard frost can make a small plot look finished overnight, but blackened foliage is not the same as a dead plant. Here is a calm, practical walk-round for November 2026: what to cut, what to leave, and how to turn the damage into useful notes for next season.
A bucket, a bag of spent coffee grounds and a little oyster mushroom spawn can turn a dark cupboard into a winter cropping space. Here is the realistic kit, the pasteurisation shortcuts that work, and an honest look at yield and cost per flush.
The leafy crown of a Brussels sprout plant is tender, sweet and almost impossible to buy, yet most growers leave it in the ground. Here’s how to harvest it without sacrificing the buttons, which varieties earn their space, and what to do with a pile of tops in the kitchen.
Overwintering onion sets can look worryingly sparse by mid-November, but most gaps have a fixable cause. Here’s how to read the row, rescue loose bulbs and get more sets through to a summer harvest.
Frost-sweetened parsnips and a decent leek are a realistic Christmas Eve harvest. Tomatoes and new potatoes are not. Here's the honest shortlist of what to pull on 24 December, the summer sowings that made it possible, and what to do when a bed lets you down.
Forcing chicory is one of the quietest tricks in the winter grower's repertoire: lift a root, tuck it into damp compost, cover it completely, and wait. This guide walks through varieties, timing and the mistakes that turn a promising root into a mouldy stump or a bitter green bunch.
From mid-November the kitchen asks more of a herb than a few torn basil leaves. Here are five winter stalwarts — bay, rosemary, thyme, sage and parsley — that justify their patch of windowsill or balcony, plus how to harvest them so they keep going and how to talk a supermarket pot out of dying by Friday.
Outdoor compost heaps slow to a crawl in November, but a small worm bin tucked into the utility room keeps ticking over. Here’s the honest version: what to buy, what to feed, how to stop fruit flies taking over the kitchen, and whether it really beats the council caddy.
Before you buy another cloche or move a cold frame for the third time, spend a week learning how cold actually moves through your growing space. A handful of cheap min-max thermometers and a rough sketch can show you where frost settles, where walls give back warmth, and which windowsill is colder than it looks.
November is the honest month: wet patches, slug trails, stubborn roots and bare corners all tell you something useful. Grab a notebook and a spade, walk the plot before the light goes, and turn this month’s mess into a simpler plan for next year’s food.
Heavy clay is not a life sentence for a veg patch. This November, put the spade down, layer on compost, leaf mould and cardboard, and let worms and weather do the structural work before next season's crops go in.
The hungry gap is easier to handle when you treat it as a scheduling problem, not a storage problem. Here are six compact, stagger-sown crops for windowsills, cold frames and protected beds, timed to land before the broad beans do.
Regrowing supermarket scraps is either the cheapest gardening you'll ever do or a month of watching a carrot top sulk in a jam jar. Here's the honest ledger for a UK windowsill in winter — what pays for its space, what needs light you haven't got, and what belongs in the caddy.
Before the catalogues land, spend one rainy afternoon with your seed tin. A keep-toss-test system, a kitchen-paper germination check, and a one-page 2027 sowing plan that fits the plot, balcony or sill you actually have — not the one the glossy pages assume.
A frosty morning can look like the end of the harvest, but for parsnips, kale, leeks and several other winter stalwarts it is often the start of better eating. Here is the plain science behind sugar conversion, plus which crops to leave alone, which to cover, and how your own microclimate changes the rules.
Ten pounds, no heated greenhouse, and a target of fresh leaves until March. This is a budget-led winter salad challenge for UK gardeners, with hardy varieties, a November 2026 sowing plan, honest yields and the failures you should expect along the way.