The Damson Gin and Sloe Vodka went down a treat over the holidays... but it’s now time to get down to business! The New Year is here, longer warmer days are on the way. The opportunity to improve on last year in the garden has arrived.

Food for Life at a Lincolnshire School: In November I had the pleasure of attending a planning meeting being held by the Food for Life project at Gartree Community School in Tattershall.

A team of enthusiastic staff and students from year groups across the school have formed a group which is now determined to grow food on school grounds. The school has become a part of the Food for Life program (www.foodforlife.org.uk).

“The Food for Life Partnership is a network of schools and communities across England committed to transforming food culture.” said a spokesperson. “We aim to reach out through schools to give communities access to seasonal, local and organic food, and to the skills they need to cook and grow fresh food.”

The site that has been selected to become the school kitchen garden is an enclosed grassed court yard area. Over time it hasbecome a thoroughfare. But this year it will be transformed into a productive school garden.

The group has chosen to grown its crops in raised beds and to use as many recycled materials as possible when they create their food for Life garden. This means using all kinds of containers and boxes that can be put to use as planters. The team also hopes to enter a school improvement competition.

If you know about a school that would like to grow their own food and is looking for some help and support, please get in touch.

Get Ahead in January: January is usually the time of year to try to get ahead of Mother Nature. Covering the ground with polythene helps to warm the soil a little quicker so that crops can be planted that little bit earlier. The long winter of 2010 certainly stopped my plans to get ahead early and I’m sure that it made quite a difference.

Careful consideration of the growing conditions for your crops and a little attention to detail propagating the plants can bring about the same success over a growing season.

I will be having another go at growing sweet peas this year. Propagating them is a greenhouse job for January. Germinating the seeds that grew during 2010 was not as straightforward as I hoped. So, this year I will try chitting some of the seeds before I sow them.

This means cutting a slight nick into the hard outer shell of the seed to help the seeds germinate. I have a large number of sweet peas seeds as I made sure that I collected as many of the seed pods from my garden as possible at the end of the summer and stored them in paper bags. This has allowed them to dry out.

If you are planning to grow some sweet peas, January is the month to sow them. Using toilet roll inners packed into plastic trays fill the tubes with compost, and sow two seeds to each tube. The roots will grow down into the tubes where they can develop and establish themselves before being planted out into their final flowering positions later in spring.

Dig for Victory: The WWII message Dig for Victory is back, as more of us are growing our own food. Perhaps a more relevant message for our times is ‘dig for sustainability.’

The earth’s resources are being used up and governments are recognising that food security and fuel security are the byword for the future. This has inspired a group of keen growers to start a campaign to get us all gardening this spring.

The equinox on 20th March heralds the first day of spring and the real beginning of the new growing season. The group is hoping that as many people as possible will use this date to begin to grow something in their gardens, containers, patios,
windowsills or allotments. Visit the website for more information; www.thegreatbigearthdig.co.uk.

A small change made by each of us, can influence the future for us all. If you’re in any doubt about your power to make a difference consider the power of a movement like the BBC Children in Need; the campaign demonstrates the power of people to change things and really make a difference to the children that are supported through charities’ programmes.

The No-Dig Method: Here at Damson Cottage the debate about the allotment site at the bottom of the plot rumbles on. Somehow that space has to be prepared for the season ahead; growing crops on a bigger scale is a target for this year. The nettle roots are so big that there is a serious doubt about the potential effectiveness of my ‘no dig’ beliefs.

‘No dig’ is still my preferred choice of cultivation though; the ground is covered with a layer to smother the weeds — for example cardboard — and then a thick layer of mulch is laid on top. The mulch would be soil, rotted manure or any other material that can be used for growing.

The crops are then planted straight through the layers. The advantage of ‘no dig’ is that no disturbance of the nettle root system takes place and so the weeds are not able to multiply. The mulch is intended to smother the weeds and in doing so, impair the growth. It is not the back-breaking exercise that digging and removing the roots used to be.

Of course, the particularly compelling reason for ‘no dig’ is that this is an organic method of growing preparation as no chemicals are used to kill the weeds. If you have experience of ‘no dig’ on this scale, please get in touch and share your thoughts!

Don’t be put off by my experiences with triffid sized nettles and allotment sized plots; just start small, pick your first home grown tomatoes this year, gain a little confidence and you, too, will become hooked on the: ‘grow your own’ way too... Happy New Year!