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 unfortunate as for the most part they a ... … Read more

‘French Intensive Gardening’. Sounds kind of daunting, who wants gardening to be intensive? Me, I like to do a little burst of work here and there and take it easy on myself. But you shouldn’t rea ... … Read more

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 produced is directly related to the qual ... … Read more

In a perfect world, there’d be plenty of room for gardens, greenery and foliage to exist in harmony with us as we go about our day-to-day lives. However, urbanisation and increasing levels of populat ... … Read more

If you don't have a patch of soil to grow in then clearly you will have to grow your vegetables in a container of some sort. A container grown urban garden adds life to your balcony or back yard a ... … Read more

I guess it is important to say from the outset that herbs are very easy to grow. Considering what they add in flavour and how often you will use them they are probably the best value plants in the ... … Read more

As bin charges increase and households try to be more environment friendly, we are seeing a corresponding increase in home composting. We have been interested in domestic composting for a lon ... … Read more

The trouble with pots and planters made from ceramic or stone is that they are heavy (extremely heavy if we're talking about stone), and can split in a heavy frost. From our point of view, they ... … Read more

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 is limited like in an urban setting. … Read more

I do love the colour of beetroot, its glorious deep fuschia just makes me feel good looking at it. Add chickpeas, oil, garlic, lemon and some ground cumin in the blender and I still see tha ... … Read more

Courgettes are easy to grow with two plants producing ample courgettes for most families. Courgettes are best picked small for best flavour, these plants are also very prolific so don't worry ther ... … Read more

I do love the colour of beetroot, its glorious deep fuschia just makes me feel good looking at it. Add chickpeas, oil, garlic, lemon and some ground cumin in the blender and I still see that wonderfu ... … Read more

A raised bed can provide the perfect environment for creating a herb garden. It can be positioned anywhere that suits you and can be maintained easily. A selection of plants can be mixed for a div ... … Read more

As was briefly mentioned in my mail of a couple of weeks ago, changing weather patterns can challenge our habits and our 'collective wisdom' about the traditional growing season. In recent years ... … Read more

How to grow endive, a popular salad vegetable on the Continent there are two types: curly endive (chicorée frisée), which is more heat-resistant, and Batavian or broad leaved (escarole); there are ... … Read more

Like you, I am itching to get outside and can't wait for the season to get started. This year I will be spending more time in the garden as my output of video and photos was pretty weedy last year, I ... … Read more

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 places to meet people in a similarly re ... … Read more

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 be filled with autumn or overwinte ... … Read more

We recently decided to tackle some of the gardening FAQs that we get asked most frequently on this blog. Can I grow vegetables indoors? is one of those questions that pops up all the time and the ... … Read more

I'll be honest from the outset - this article is a ploy so I can tell you about the best seedling propagator available, the 'Vitopod' heated electric propagator. I'm giving you the other options a ... … Read more

Growing your own fruit has to be the easiest, most satisfying and most joyous gardening pursuit. Yes, I am delighted when I fork out some nice straight carrots or creamy skinned potatoes but do th ... … Read more

A finish generally refers to a coating which you can apply to your garden furniture to add extra protection, improve its weather resistance or retain its visual appeal. This can be done just af ... … Read more

Brace yourselves folks, we are now entering the busiest time of year in the vegetable garden. The soil has warmed sufficiently for sowing and planting out but has also warmed enough for weeds and gra ... … Read more

I know marketeers (am I a marketeer? I suppose I am) always say they are very excited about the launch of a new product range but I am genuinely giddy about our new range of succulent plants. Th ... … Read more

As you know the Quickcrop research bureau never sleeps. Our aim is provide you with the best products for your garden but also to back them up with plenty of useful information. If there is a me ... … Read more

Last week I filmed the first in a series of over 200 videos which will become the backbone of our new Quickcrop vegetable growers course. This epic learning experience will cover all the cr ... … Read more

This week sees a whole new departure for the Quickcrop team as we stick our pretty little toes into the wonderful world of flowering plants. It is not that we have fallen out of love with our vegetab ... … Read more

Borage, also known as a starflower, is a mediterranean annual herb that also grows well in the UK and Ireland. It has hairy leaves and stems with a 5 pointed blue flower, white and pink var ... … Read more

Rocket is very quick growing, Rocket Cultivated Rucola Coltivata is a vigorous, robust plant with pungent leaves. Use as a main ingredient of a mixed green salad to add zest and texture. Where ... … Read more

I am not sure what it's like with you but we have had some real January weather over the weekend with some hard overnight frosts. A hard frost ads a touch of magic to the garden, with ice cryst ... … Read more

As you will know from my fascinating communication a week or so ago we are now in the season for putting in bare root plants including fruit trees, hedging and roses. Bare root season makes the winte ... … Read more

It is has been an interesting year in the Quickcrop garden with a hot and dry start followed by plenty of rain. The overcast or rainy days have not been much use for ripening tomatoes but has been gr ... … Read more

Soil is often overlooked even though it is the foundation of a successful vegetable garden. Growing vegetables can be tough on the soil as they are very greedy plants and take all the nutrients and m ... … Read more

I have two books which are my vegetable growing bibles. One is Joy Larkcom's 'Grow Your Own Vegetables' and the other is 'Organic Gardening - The Natural No-Dig Way' by Charles Dowding. Both are f ... … Read more

Whatever style of greenhouse you opt for - whether it’s a ‘lean-to’, a compact house or a larger one - it will open up new possibilities for you and extend your growing season. It’s also a very ... … Read more

Water is one of the most crucial building blocks for plant growth. The rest of the ‘Big 5’ consists of oxygen, light, favourable temperature and nutrients. Interestingly enough for the purpose of thi ... … Read more

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 that date on a leap year. It is the mon ... … Read more

As I mentioned in my mail the week before last, I have a lot planned for the garden this year and just to prove it wasn't a load of old waffle I include some photos taken over the weekend of the larg ... … Read more

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 delicacies as well as how to prepare t ... … Read more

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 phrase.To set the scene, James was an older ... … Read more

Urban gardening often involves having to make the most of small spaces. Just how much space you have to work with will depend on circumstance, but it’s possible for even an apartment-dweller to ... … Read more

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 Autumn/Winter harvest. Winter seed potato ... … Read more

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 booster, and a detoxifier, to be benefic ... … Read more

I had the pleasure on Monday evening to give my very first talk to a gardening club. It was all very professional with a projector for my (first ever) Powerpoint presentation and a microphone s ... … Read more

One of the key differences between growing plants inside and growing them outside in your garden is that indoor plants don’t benefit from rainfall. As such, irrigation becomes even more importa ... … Read more

Vegan gardening has a lot of overlap with organic or no-dig gardening. However, the ways in which it differs are related to the principles of veganism itself. Veganism is a belief or philosophy ... … Read more

Plastic may have taken much of the attention in recent times, but food waste continues to be a pressing issue affecting the environment.  Recent statistics show that the UK throws away r ... … Read more

Home composting is a fantastic way of killing two birds with one stone. You can process garden and kitchen waste (and reduce your bin collection costs) while at the same time producing your ... … Read more

Tomatoes can be grown in containers like pots, planters, growbags, and hanging baskets, they may not be the easiest plant to grow at home but they are definitely one of the favourites. There are many ... … Read more

Mizuna is one of those strange oriental vegetables which arrived in the West in the last 20 years or so. The name for this leafy green comes from the Japanese mizu, for “water,” and nu, for “mustar ... … Read more

Green Manures Green manures are 'crops' which are sown to cover bare soil and do a number of jobs depending on the species like protecting soil, storing nitrogen or mining minerals. As I was writing ... … Read more

Edible landscaping or foodscaping is the practice of interspersing ornamental plant displays with edible crops, often in a way that creates a lush and colourful variety of foliage.  There’s ... … Read more

The humble cucumber is perhaps the single most popular food to use for pickles, so much so that over in the States the word ‘pickle’ pretty much means ‘pickled cucumber’. We& ... … Read more

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 Quickcrop. Yes, I am the same person who ... … Read more

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 split up into long raised beds with gr ... … Read more

One of the greatest pleasures in gardening is watching life flourish all around you: not just in terms of the plants you grow, but also the non-human visitors to your garden. A biodiverse garden isn ... … Read more

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 pickled produce that line the shelves. … Read more

I don't know whether you know this already but of the 267 species of bee in the U.K. and Ireland, 90% of them are solitary bees. Solitary bees don't produce honey, aren't social, don't live in hive ... … Read more

I know I have looked at soil and plant feeds a number of times over the years but, for the benefit of new growers, I think it may be helpful to cover it again today as we prepare our gardens for a ... … Read more

If you were alive 144 million years ago, you wouldn't need to worry about providing winter food for wild birds because you would have been on the menu yourself. It might be hard to believe when ... … Read more

I'm not sure what the weather is like where you are but it has been dry in the Quickcrop garden for the last week which means the soil is dry enough to work. As you probably know, digging saturated s ... … Read more

The vegetable garden is still pretty quiet this week so I thought we would return to ornamental gardening and look at some of the plans for my garden and some ideas we are working on for yours. I had ... … Read more

Following on from last week's post I thought we would continue with more planting tips, this time on tomatoes as I put some in my tunnel at the weekend. As regards flavour, there is no comparison bet ... … Read more

I don't know what the season has been like for you but thanks to a warm and dry early summer followed by some welcome rain, my garden is looking vibrant and green. Despite the fact that the ... … Read more

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 cultivation and the weather. Here are some suppl ... … Read more

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. I have been improving my garden soil ... … Read more

As we are probably all itching to begin the growing season, I thought it might be helpful to talk about starting seeds off early and how to give the best chance of success. As we need extra warmth t ... … Read more

Beetroot is one of my best friends in the garden as we get so much out of it: using it for juicing, grating it for salads, roasting, baking and - my favourite of all - pickling. This crop has ... … Read more

July in the garden is a bit of a double edged sword, Mother nature shows her muscles both in the vigourous growth from your vegetable crops but also in the vigourous growth from your weeds. While you ... … Read more

After a cold start to the year, the recent warm weather has seen a huge spurt in growth in almost everything in the Quickcrop garden and tunnel. It is wonderful to see what was an unremarka ... … Read more

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 lately. I had noticed on one of my br ... … Read more

I took the above photo on Friday morning on the last day of my holidays, it shows Gurteen bay in Co. Galway on another gloriously sunny day. For the first time ever the weather went my way with ne ... … Read more

Right then. For the last while I have been both adding to our list of flowering perennial plants and working on planting plants and corresponding plant packs. As the year so far has been nuts, progre ... … Read more

After a wet week last week, the weekend looked promising (well, Sunday at least) to get some work done in the garden and start preparing it for the Winter. As you may know, my garden is in an area of ... … Read more

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 other than harvesting any remaining crops ... … Read more

They may not be the first thing you think of when planning a vegetable garden, but herbs are very easy and rewarding to grow. They provide a rich array of options when it comes to cooking and garn ... … Read more

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 Box composters. This the area where my o ... … Read more

Lovely long slender stems, this variety makes a lovely, tasty baby leek for harvesting from mid summer onward. The flavour is no less impressive when eaten full size in the autumn. The leek is ... … Read more

Polytunnels are designed to draw in and retain heat, and they tend to do this job very well. The inside of a polytunnel can get swelteringly hot on a warm day, and this excessive heat and humid ... … Read more

Rewilding is a somewhat complicated topic, suitably so for the complicated times that we live in. In simple terms it describes a way of restoring ecological balance by lessening the grip that ... … Read more

Sleep is something many of us take for granted and don’t give a second thought to, but for others it’s a huge obstacle in their life. Sleep deprivation actually has more negative effects on our healt ... … Read more

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 or containers make for a great wa ... … Read more

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 in your favour. My number one would be ... … Read more

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 revolutionary new raised bed joining brackets. … Read more

Mackerel sky Before we get going, here's a photo I took on Monday morning while out walking the dog showing a pretty 'mackerel sky' which, as you know, signals a change in the weather. The old sailo ... … Read more

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 there's a good chance you're asking your ... … Read more

With the Met Office promising a heatwave for the coming week, the thoughts of many gardeners will naturally turn to irrigation and how best to help our plants through the hot days. Here in Irel ... … Read more

Rainwater harvesting has become more popular and more common in the UK in recent years. Whether in response to hosepipe bans and water shortages, or in anticipation of climate change and future droug ... … Read more

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 himself in through the universal language ... … Read more

While I am not a fan of of winter I do enjoy preparing for it. There is great satisfaction in harvesting and storing crops in October, protecting beds from heavy rain and generally put ... … Read more

I sometimes throw my vegetable garden a guilty look as I skip past it on my way to the fruit cage or down to look at my young apple trees. The vegetable garden, though not as glamorous, does the heav ... … Read more

Blackcurrants are easy-to-grow bushes that produce bunches of dark purple to black fruits in mid-summer. They have a tart flavour, are an invaluable source of vitamin C and can be used in pies ... … Read more

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 being cooked or chopped. It may be the c ... … Read more

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 biggest from the teachers point of vi ... … Read more

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 Spring. This time of year is really all a ... … Read more

Honestly, do you ever think about how weird it is that ‘pond life’ has become a derogatory phrase and insult, when actual pond life contains some of the most fascinating and beautiful creat ... … Read more

You might remember from a post a few weeks back that we are now manufacturing the fabulous 'Gro-Grid' weed control planting mat. We have the machinery set up in our warehouse and have been building u ... … Read more

A member of the onion family, chives are well worth cultivating in the vegetable and flower garden. They take up very little space, and the whole plant can be eaten from top to bottom - the bulbs ... … Read more

Whether you're moving into a new build or you're looking to improve an existing boundary that has deteriorated, the thorny (pun intended) question of fencing vs hedging is likely to come up. Th ... … Read more

It might sound like a phrase from some futuristic sci-fi story involving androids and off-world colonies, but xeriscaping actually comes from the Greek word ‘xeros’, meaning dry. It’s the practice ... … Read more