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Towards the end of summer and into autumn, activity in the vegetable garden slows down as crops are fully grown and their fruit begins to ripen. Winter brassica

If you have your own apple trees of any reasonable size you will know that despite your best intentions the only journey many of the apples make is when they fal

This week I'm giving you a look at what goes on behind the scenes at the ground breaking Quickcrop Design Bureau. For the last number of weeks we have been wo

If you are considering building a garden pond you may want to calculate the volume of water for water treatment or if you intend to introduce fish. Water treatme

Timber raised ponds can create a beautiful water feature centrepiece for your garden. With a raised structure you can have an instant garden pond in your garden

Well, it's August again in the Quickcrop garden (and elsewhere I suspect) so I thought we'd take our customary stroll around to see what's growing and hopefully

I spent a good bit of time in the vegetable garden this weekend as the skies were blue for a change which made working outdoors a pleasure. I was also able to ha

Regular watering and sensible irrigation is essential to the development and healthy growth of any plant. Water is drawn from the root of the pla

Vegetable Garden Pests Seeing your vegetable crops decimated by garden pests can be a very disheartening sight and it can happen seemingly overnight if proper p

You have to hand it to garlic for it’s sheer audacity, showboating through the kitchen, loving the attention it gets as its aroma permeates everything whether be

Perfectly healthy plants can be affected by air, water or soil borne diseases at any time. Understanding the causes, identifying them early and taking effective

Perennial Weeds Perennial weeds come up every year from the same plant and are difficult to get rid of but not as hard as they are often made our to be. Most ha

Common garden weeds are a large part of our gardens, and need to be identified before they manage to sow seed and multiply. If you keep a strict and thoroug

Timber raised ponds can create a beautiful water feature centrepiece for your outdoor garden. With these kits you can have an instant garden pond in your garden,

Soil is the foundation of any vegetable garden, if it is treated well it will reward you. Year by year soil needs to to accommodate the demands of cultivatio

Garden soil comes in many forms depending on consistency and nutrient content. By identifying and understanding the type of soil you have you can create a wor

This March I am starting a new monthly update project which is centered more around what I'm doing in my garden. This is because it's easier for me to write but

The unwelcome garden visitors that come back every year. Here's a rundown of who they are and how to send them away. Slugs. These garden molluscs, along with t

With so many available options causing confusion for novice gardeners here are some simple suggestions for anyone planning to grow vegetables.Herb Garden Prefer

1 Planning. Decide what you want to do with your vegetable garden and spend time working out the best way to achieve it. There are so many choices –fruit or veg

Top ten list of the easiest vegetables to grow for the beginner gardener. Our list of easy to grow vegetables all have a good chance of first time success and

Fruit trees and bushes are planted in the garden with the intention of remaining for the long term, providing produce for many years. In return for this supply o

What kinds of things can you do in the garden at this time of year. It’s not quite Spring after all? Well, no, we’ve still a long way to go before we get to Spr

I quite like February, it's a bit of a renegade. Not only does it have a different number of days than any other month but it also reserves the right to change t

Sowing and planting too early in the year We can all get a little over excited when the new year comes around especially if, like now, we've had relatively

Blueberries are high in antioxidants so widely regarded as a 'Superfruit' (whatever that is) but taking their health benefits apart they are also exceptionally t

Timber planters in raised bed garden design Timber raised beds are an ideal solution for building an urban vegetable garden as they are relatively quick to asse

'How to grow gooseberries' is intended as a solid introduction to growing this relatively easy to grow fruit bush. For more detailed information on gooseberri

How To Build Raised Beds This article deals with how to build raised garden beds, what is the best size to make them and what is the best material to use.

Currants are an excellent fruit for the home gardener as they a relatively trouble free and produce large crops of highly nutritious fruit. Currants are divid

Hello and welcome back to the Quickcrop garden. Well, it’s a beautiful day in mid September and today we are going to build one of our large New Zealand Bo

Can potato plants with late blight be composted? If care is taken the answer is yes. Blight spores can only survive on living plant tissue, once the foliage

Raised bed vegetable garden plan. I include my 2016 vegetable garden plan below if anyone is interested in what I'll be growing next year. My garden is now

Growing garlic is one of my favourite jobs in the vegetable garden. It is pretty much trouble free to grow and adds wonderful flavours to our home cooking.

Onions are some of the easiest things to grow and require very little looking after. As our friend Dermot Carey (last head gardener of Lissadell House) says i

I think I mentioned last week that haven't been spending as much time as I should have in the vegetable garden due to the uninspiring weather we have been having

I must admit I'm finding it a little difficult to write my usual enthusiastic post today as my garden isn't quite the paradise it normally is at this time of ye

Raised vegetable beds have a number of benefits, including protecting crops from foot traffic and creating a more comfortable working height. Another benefit is

This is a follow up to a weekly newsletter post where I mentioned a guy who worked with me a number of years ago who was always good for a funny turn of phras

If you are thinking about building some raised vegetable beds to make you kitchen garden a whole lot easier to manage you might want to consider our revolutio

Planting Christmas potatoes in July If you have some spare space in your vegetable garden in July you could put in some 'Second Cropping' potatoes for a late Aut

How to plant your own Raised bed vegetable garden using the Quickcrop Square Foot garden method. Square foot gardening is all about taking advantage of smaller

I have always been a bit jealous of my brother in law as despite not being the worlds best linguist he manages to communicate no matter what country he finds him

Water is necessary to sustain all living life forms, we are made up of about 60% water while herbaceous plants like the vegetables growing in your garden contain

It really is incredible how things burst into life when we get a bit of warmth and sunshine: my little plot is suddenly a very different place. It was such a ni

A brief explanation of soil pH  'pH' refers to how acid or alkaline a soil is. The scale runs from 0-14 and basically measures the amount of calcium in

Beginners Gardening Kits Vegetable gardening can be a little intimidating to the beginner and it is hard to know where to start with all the various informat

Using growbags couldn’t be easier, here is how to grow potatoes in a bag. The great thing about potatoes is that they can be grown almost anywhere, even if space

Cabbage Pests & Diseases Cabbages and other brassicas have become a very important part of the vegetable garden in our climate. Different varieties of cabba

If you have read any of our previous blog posts you will know that we are rather spoiled at Quickcrop with our large rural gardens with plenty of room to grow

Square Foot Gardening is an easy to understand method of planting vegetables which splits a gardeners plot into square foot areas rather than into rows. This

Why You Should Use A Vitopod Heated Propagator The award winning Vitopod electric heated seedling propagator provides the perfect environment for seeds, cu

Urban Planters / Container Gardening for vegetable growers. An image blog post. Wooden Wine Boxes make great little planters for herbs and salads.   &nb

Growing carrots in containers can be more successful than you would expect, and it is a great way to begin growing your own food at home. Patio planters

Small Garden Ideas Vegetable growing should be available to anyone even if you have have a very small urban garden or worse, no garden at all! Small urban garden

Mini Polytunnel Kits Our Quickcrop mini polytunnel kits have been designed to be attached, via a hinge, to a  timber raised bed. They can also be secured s

A collection of images from our raised bed gardens.   Please feel free to send us pictures of your raised bed garden. All our raised beds can be found

Growing your own can be tricky business for someone new to vegetable gardening but there are a number of ways you can stack the odds of a successful harvest i

How to grow bare root soft fruit In general and for the purposes of this article, soft fruit refers to soft skinned, juicy fruit borne on bushes or canes. O

Raised Vegetable Bed Soil Volumes Our Raised vegetable beds come in all shapes and sizes and each has a different soil volume requirement. It is very easy to un

Gardening Gifts / Christmas Presents For Gardeners Gifts for gardeners and gardening gift ideas, it can be quite tough trying to figure out what the gardener i

November is the month when growth in the vegetable garden finally grinds to a halt. Temperatures fall and daylight levels decrease, the season is over and oth

Researching the benefits of drinking wheatgrass juice has to be one of the most challenging tasks as opinions vary wildly from one side to the other. The problem

The best time to prune apple trees is in late winter or very early spring before any new growth starts. The tree takes up a dormant state after shedding its

The soil or compost you use in your school vegetable garden is the single most important part of the project. Vegetables are demanding as plants go, after all we

Site Vegetables are expected to give a lot. We want them to grow quickly and provide good quantities of nutritious food. To do this we need to pamper them a

Be Realistic! I'd give the same advice to any new gardener - to start small with easy to grow crops. A school vegetable garden also has the holidays to take

Remember Quickcrop give all schools 10% discount on all orders, please call us to receive your unique school code. Contact Andrew at 01788 298 795. An Intro

Using school raised garden beds We would strongly recommend using timber raised vegetable beds for your school vegetable garden for a number of reasons, the

As my garden moves into Autumn and I harvest and clear spent crops from my beds, I am looking at an increasing number of empty spaces. Some of these gaps will b

It is rare that my wife and I agree on anything but I was pleasantly surprised when my liking for pickled vegetables converged neatly with her interest in the

When we move towards the end of July and into early August, it can be easy to think that the time for sowing new crops has passed. To be fair that's tr

Healthy vegetables need a healthy soil, it's as simple as that. Soil Improvement for Vegetable Gardeners is very important as the quality of the vegetables pr

Most people (including me until relatively recently) think of a small, round, pink variety when picturing a radish, usually either sliced or added whole to a gar

Harvesting homegrown vegetables can be just as important as growing them as some crops can quickly go past their best and loose precious flavour and texture. Har

We are often asked about the pros and cons of raised bed gardening, and how raised bed kits can help you overcome space or soil limitations. And since th

Growing Vegetables places more strain on a piece of land than flowering plants or shrubs because we remove nutrients every time we harvest a crop. Vegetables

Low Maintenance Gardens Growing plants in timber raised vegetable beds makes a lot of sense for all vegetable gardeners but especially for urban growers where sp

What is Square Foot Gardening? Square foot gardening is a method of growing vegetables which centers around planting crops in blocks rather than rows. The s

If you're staring off your vegetable plants in early Spring you'll need to give them some heat as temperatures will be too cold for the seeds to germinate. If

Well, it's been a while. I always have great intentions to write more articles every month but time seems to slip by so easily with the day to day business at Qu

Here at Quickcrop HQ we propagate large amounts of vegetable seedlings in the early spring, so we need some heat to get them going. Clearly a heated propagator

A Protective Seaweed Mulch I took the opposite photo in early January, it's frosty seaweed obviously but it's in my garden rather than on the beach. I prepa

in 1978 in an attempt to document the wild foods available in Ireland's hedgerows and meadows. The book includes information on when and where to find hidden

One of the things first time vegetable gardeners ask about when they call or email us is tomatoes - everyone wants to grow their own tomatoes. This is a bit u

Propagating vegetable seeds using a heated propagator Indoor vegetable seed propagation has two main advantages; plants are protected from pests and disease

There's something quite pleasant about raking up Autumn leaves, it feels like such an ancient, seasonal practice that it connects you not only with the

I'll be honest, I'm not a natural salesman despite the fact I'm supposed to be in online sales. I'm much happier on the editorial side of things but as we app

As I've mentioned in my bee article I have accidentally ended up with a hive of bees. This is all fine and well but clearly I need to learn a lot more about t

I don't think I ever showed you my garden did I? It was originally put together as the shared Quickcrop garden but since the business moved from my house this Sp

Rattan Wood and Turf Baskets. We must have the largest selection of  wicker and rattan fuel baskets in the country as Niall seems to have been bewitc

I absolutely love vinegar, I'm addicted to the stuff. My hand actually starts shaking in anticipation as reach into the cupboard for one of the many jars of p

I rarely get out these days but myself and Niall always try to squeeze in a relaxing pint on a Friday evening. Pubs whether you like or loath them are great p

I asked my wife Siobhan to have a go at documenting her chutney making endeavours with the following results, go Siobhan! The English made chutneys their o

Everyone who has grown potatoes will have heard of potato blight, it's the most serious disease affecting potatoes and one which is almost impossible not to get.

Wheatgrass is a tricky one to pin down. Many people I've spoken with swear by it while others will dismiss it as utter nonsense. It is claimed to be an energy bo

How times have changed regarding the use of wild foods in our diet, since Wild and Free:  Cooking from Nature, written by my late husband, Cyril and I wa

I always liked beetroot anyway but since my wife started making a salad with roasted beetroot and feta cheese my interest in growing them reached new heights.

If you read any of the guff I write you will probably have heard me mention Charles Dowding before. He's a bit of a hero of mine basically because his book 'O