GROW YOUR OWN....

Get your garden off to a flying start for this Spring by growing your own vegetables. Whether in a vegetable patch, allotment or even just a windowbox. The soil is warming up making it time to start growing your vegetables. To ensure success year after year, plant perennials such as rhubarb, artichoke and gooseberry, as these only require one planting and keep coming back year after year.

Lettuce

Lettuce is a cool season crop, most varieties must mature before the weather gets warm. Lettuce is a fast growing hardy annual with either loose or compact growing leaves that range in colour.

Tomatoes

Keep the soil evenly moist, not too wet and not too dry. Too much water will drown the plant, too little will stop fruit production. Tomatoes are easily grown in containers and have the same growing requirements as garden-grown tomatoes.

Onions

Onion colours range from white or yellow to red or purple. Yellow onions are all-purpose and have a balance of astringency and sweet in their flavor. White onions have a sharper more pungent flavour, they are also more tender. Red onion have red flesh and purple skin, the flavour is similar to a yellow onion.

Potatoes

Potatoes are still very much one of Ireland's most popular vegetables. Potatoes like deep, fertile soil that is not exposed to strong winds. Growbags are a pratical way to cultivate potatoes if you are short of garden space

Carrots

Keep the soil light and stone-free for your carrots leaving spacing between plants. Grow carrots in full sun, carrots will grow slowing in partial shade.

Fruit Trees

Fruit bushes such as raspberries, gooseberries and blueberries and small fruit trees can be very productive and easy to maintain. Choose a sunny, shelter spot where the soil is fertile.