How to grow it well
Practical advice for UK growers. No waffle.
01Allotment for beginners
Just got a plot? The easiest crops to start with, what to do first, and how to plan your first year.
02Starting from seed
Everything you need to know about sowing seeds indoors — compost, temperature, light, watering, and hardening off.
03Understanding your soil
Clay, sand, or loam? How to identify your soil type, test pH, and improve it for better crops.
04Companion planting guide
What grows well together and what to keep apart. A crop-by-crop chart for 40 UK vegetables.
05Crop rotation
The 4-year rotation system that prevents disease, builds soil, and improves your harvest year after year.
15Green manures & cover crops
What to sow over winter to protect bare soil, smother weeds and feed the ground for free — the gardener's secret to richer beds next year.
16Sun mapping your garden
How to work out which beds get full sun, part shade or shade — what your garden's aspect means, and which crops to grow where.
09Seed starting kit
The kit you actually need to start seeds at home. Trays, compost, propagators — honest picks, no fluff.
10What you need for your first allotment
The tools that earn their shed space. Spades, forks, gloves, hoes — and what to skip.
11Composting for allotments
Cold bins, hot bins, wormeries, and bokashi — which method suits you, what to buy, and how to make compost your soil will thank you for.
13Spring vegetables to plant in the UK
Every crop you can sow this spring — hardy, half-hardy, and tender — with tips on when to start.
14What to sow in autumn & winter
The season most growers waste. Quick crops to eat before the cold, hardy veg to overwinter for an early spring harvest, and how to protect it all.
The kit we swear by
A handful of tools that earn their place in the shed. Buy through these and a little goes towards ours.
Felco No. 2 secateurs
~£45The last secateurs you will buy. Sharp, repairable, and they make clean cuts that heal fast — worth every penny over a lifetime of pruning.
Buy once, sharpen often.
Niwaki Hori Hori
~£33Half trowel, half knife, all useful. It plants out, weeds, cuts twine and divides clumps — it lives in the back pocket and barely sees the shed.
Get the holster too.
Spear & Jackson border fork
~£25A proper stainless fork at an honest price. Lighter than a full digging fork and ideal for raised beds and lifting roots without slicing them.
Border size suits most plots.
Affiliate links— This guide contains links to Amazon. If you buy through them, we earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. We only recommend things we'd actually use on our own plot.
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