Vegetable Growing Guide

Planning on buying vegetable seeds for your garden this summer?

Then look no further. I bring to you a fantastic range of seeds for you to peruse at your leisure. Buy your seeds from the comfort of your own home. Take your time and pick out the ones your family like the best.

This guide brings you some growing tips which will help you become self-sufficient in vegetables this summer.

There is nothing nicer than a garden full of well-tended rows of green vegetables all ripening for use in the kitchen, the sight and smell of which set your taste buds tingling in anticipation.

No more tramping off down to the supermarket and hauling heavy bags of veggies home; grow your own and save a fortune as well as knowing that what you are doing has a low carbon footprint.

Also, when you grow your own, you know what chemicals and sprays, if any, have been put on the vegetables that you are eating, because you will have used them.

There are natural alternatives like neem spray you can make to avoid using pesticides, and green fertilizers can also be home made without the addition of nasty chemicals.

Some garden vegetables are, to my mind, far better eaten straight off the plant, like garden peas. Not only good for you, but cheaper than have to using fuel to cook them with all the goodness intact (some vitamins are destroyed by heat).

Home grown vegetables always taste so much better than shop bought ones, so what are you waiting for? Let's get started.

I grow what I use. If I don't like eating a vegetable, I don't grow it.

Think of the ones you and your family like eating. What about carrots? Carrots come in all sorts of colours now too instead of just the plain orangle-coloured ones.

Just clear the ground of weeds, dig it over, rake it smooth and plant in a line of them.

Use a piece of string with a stick either end to guide your line straight, use another stick to make a straight indentation in the soil, scatter the seeds thinly along this line.

You can thin them out after they germinate if they are too close together.

Lettuce and broccoli

Among the easiest veggie to grow, and it can grow all year round if you have a greenhouse or conservatory for the winter. Again just plant in drills, thin as required.

Potatoes don't come in seeds, they come as seed potatoes.

Basically you can just plant any of your household potatoes that sprout 'eyes', but the advantage is buying seed potatoes from breeders is that they have bred disease-resistance into them which your second generation shop bought ones might not have.

Follow the manufacturer's guide on when to plant seeds potatoes, but as a rule of thumb you want to plant them:

• 4" deep
• 15" apart
• in rows 2' 6" apart

Use a dutch hoe to draw the soil up into furrows so that your potatoes have plenty of room to grow.

Expect to lift them for the table about 100 days after planting.

These fantastic plants have a rightful place in everyone's vegetable garden.

If you can pick enough for the pot, fair and good, but personally I just don't care. I will eat them just as they are.

They generally need some form of support to climb up, old twigs inserted in a criss-cross fashion, or a proper chicken wire fence.

You know the size of the dried seed and they can be hand planted in drills, just an inch or so apart from each other. Do two drills in tanden and put your support in the middle between them.

Water well during dry periods and it shouldn't take long before you can enjoy fresh peas straight from the pod.

I hope you have enjoyed browsing through this hub full of different seed ideas for your garden this summer, half as much as I have enjoyed putting it all together.