Practical Guide to Allotment Gardening

Step-by-step techniques for cultivating organic produce on your plot all year round

This newly updated edition guides the budding allotmenter through every step of successful growing from early planning to planting and harvesting. Information on tools, equipment and soil management follows, along with a chapter on what to grow where, crop rotation, companion planting and growing both outdoors and in a greenhouse. Techniques such as sowing, propagation, feeding, watering, pruning, harvesting and storing are examined with easy- to-follow instructions and examples. There are directories of vegetables, fruit and herbs that outline the specific requirements of different crops while a section on plant health helps to deal with common pests and diseases and carry out weed management. A season-by-season calendar of care ensures you do the right jobs at the right time.

Christine and Michael Lavelle are both lecturers in horticulture at Writtle College, UK. Together they have won the Garden Writers’ Practical Book of the Year Award for their books How to Create a Wildlife Garden and Organic Gardening (both Lorenz Books).