Horticultural consultant Bev Williams has this advice about growing your own vegetables.....
Much of the media is encouraging us to 'grow our own' and then gives details of a hundred vegetables you should grow. But most us have neither time nor space to grow many. So which to grow? Look in the supermarket: which are relatively cheap when compared to others? They will be those which the farmer can harvest with machinery- potatoes (main crop), onions, carrots, peas, cabbages.
Farmers want to harvest a crop in one operation, the very opposite of what you want in the garden. And of course plant breeders have worked to give them varieties with that attribute.
Following this logic you should consider vegetables :
(i) which farmers still have to harvest by 'hand'
(ii) those which will 'wait' for you to harvest.
Broad beans may be your first crop, early radish (before pests become a problem) and lettuce can follow. Then runner beans and courgettes fulfil the first consideration. Salad onions with sequential sowings will give crops for many months. For winter, squashes/pumpkins might be fun. Purple sprouting broccoli is an essential for late winter supplies.
Leeks, dwarf curly kale, spinach, swiss chard, parsnips, are contenders to satisfy the second consideration.
What about others: beetroot is easy to grow and can be pulled when you want it. Brussels sprouts might be useful although, with early, mid season and late varieties, they are plentiful in the shops for six months; early potatoes are appreciated by some people. Cauliflowers are the most difficult to grow (as good seed is usually taken by farmers always buy young plants). Sweet corn is also difficult as you need a block to ensure pollination. Celery and celeriac demand plentiful water.
Don't forget some herbs. Perennials like oregano thyme, sage in corners; parsley and rocket as annuals.
Your aim must be to enjoy your growing and to be able to say at the family dinner table 'I grew at least one part of your meal'.
If the veg is not available, at least put some home-grown flowers – sweet peas, clary sage, marigold, dahlias - on the table.
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David Austin Roses
David Austin's 'Graham Thomas' received the highest accolade in the rose world when it was voted the World's Favourite Rose by the World Federation of Rose Societies (WFRS) which represents over 100,000 rose lovers in 41 member countries. The award was announced at the 2009 World Rose Convention in Vancouver, when the rose was inducted into the society’s ‘Rose Hall of Fame’.
David Austin has consistently worked to combine the wide colour range
and repeat-flowering of modern roses with the forms and fragrances of old roses. This rose was the first to embody all of his aims. The cup-shaped blooms have a strong, fresh tea rose fragrance with a cool violet character. Their colour is an unusually rich, pure yellow which is not found in the old roses and is rare, even among modern roses. 'Graham Thomas' forms a bushy shrub of 4 x 4 ft (1.2 x 1.2m). It has a rather upright habit, so is well-suited to planting in tight groups of three in the garden, which can then be pruned to form a single shrub shape.It c an also be trained as a spectacular climbing rose reaching 8ft (2.4m) and is ideal for a wall, rose pillar, obelisk or fence. It enjoys full sun but will also perform surprisingly well in partial shade, provided it is not planted directly underneath a canopy of trees.
Other awards 'Graham Thomas' has received include the Henry Edland Medal for fragrance and the Royal Horticultural Society's Award of Garden Merit (AGM). The AGM is given to plants the RHS judges believe are of “outstanding excellence for ordinary garden decoration”.
The rose was named for one of the leading horticulturists of the 20th century. The late Graham Thomas, born in 1909, was an enthusiastic collector of old roses and a frequent visitor to David Austin's Nursery in Albrighton.