Canes or sticks and string: Chillies are one of the many home grown foods that require something to support them. When they are smaller plants, they may flop under their own weight, whereas larger chilli plants may flop purely under the weight of their fruits. Tying them loosely to a garden cane or a large twig from your garden waste is usually enough to prevent a falling plant.

Troughs: Since your chillies should be grown indoors rather than in the soil for best results, you will need some pots or troughs to put them in. Troughs are better in greenhouses to maximise space, but they might look better in a nice round tub if kept in the home.

Clingfilm: Useful for keeping heat and moisture in seeding trays to help your baby chilli plants to germinate.

Capillary Matting: Roots may grow better and stronger if watered from below.

When your first chillies have grown, cut them from the plant while they are green. By doing this, your plant should continue to fruit right through the season (which is between July and October).

If you want a better flavour, allow your further chillies to go red before harvesting.

If you moved your chillies to a greenhouse and they are struggling to ripen because of bad weather or poor sunlight, bring them back indoors and put them back on the windowsill, ensuring you keep the house warm.

For Best Results:

• Use tomato feed weekly for better growth.
• Check leaves daily for aphids, treating if needed.
• Freeze or dry your excess chillies so you can enjoy your crop all year round.

Composted Horse Manure improves soil structure, helping soil to hold more nutrition and water, as well as fertilising the soil and encouraging microorganisms. All soils can benefit from manure, particularly sandy soil which is known for drainage issues.

Good quality manure provides good levels of the vital nutrients; nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium. Our rotted horse manure is of an excellent quality having been shredded and well rotted down, and will continue to improve your soil the more it breaks down. Composting manure yourself can be time consuming and there may be an unpleasant odour hanging around while it rots.

When creating raised beds, composted horse manure is commonly used as a thick bottom layer to encourage growth and to prevent waterlogging by improving the drainage.

Provides vital nutrients like Nitrogen, Phosphorus and Potassium.

Encourages Growth.

Helps to prevent waterlogging.

Continues to improve soil as it breaks down.

Growing your own vegetables can be a fun and extremely rewarding hobby. While buying vegetables from the supermarket is easy, there is a lot more to be said for you actually growing them yourself.

It is fairly easy to get started. Some vegetables can be grown in pots, troughs or window boxes, where others are best grown in your garden. You need to make sure you have quality vegetable compost and top soil and either seeds or ‘ready to plant’ vegetable packs. ‘Ready to plant’ is the easiest option and can be a perfect start for first time gardeners or those who don’t have as much time to commit in the early stages. Make sure they are watered often, try and keep weeds at bay, and then harvest when they are ready.

Growing your own veg doesn’t take up much of your time, and the rewards are amazing. Your fresh vegetables will be bursting with nutrients and you cannot buy them any fresher than this.

As far as price goes, there will be a small initial cost to prepare your vegetable patch. Planting seeds is the cheapest option but ‘ready-to-plant’ vegetable packs are much easier and still work out considerably cheaper than buying the vegetables from the shops. Our packs are excellent value for money, available in a variety of sizes (whether you have a window box or a large vegetable patch) and once you have redeemed your voucher either online, over the phone or by post, we even deliver them when they are ready to be planted so you put them in at the right time.

Did you know home-grown veg tastes better? Unlike the mass-produced supermarket veg, your vegetables aren’t under pressure to perform outside of their normal capacity and will be allowed to grow normally.

From the moment fresh fruit and vegetables are harvested, they start to lose the ‘good stuff’ such as the healthy vitamins and minerals we expect our fresh produce to contain. By growing your own veg and harvesting it as you need it, you are more likely to eat it within a few hours of harvesting it, reducing the time they are standing around. You will get higher levels of vitamins, resulting in a much healthier diet. If you find you have a lot of vegetables but cannot eat them all, store them in your home, or even freeze them so you can use them at your leisure without worrying about them deteriorating and going to waste.

In supermarkets, we are restricted to the varieties of fruit and vegetables that we can buy. Most supermarket produce has been selected because it lasts longer, is easier to store, or is cheaper to grow. Growing your own means you can explore different varieties and the different balances of nutrition that the vast range of available vegetables have to offer, again improving your diet and inevitably your health.

Having a wider range of vegetables available to you can help you to become more experimental with the meals you cook. Search online for new recipes or invest in an exciting new cookbook and explore the potential of your produce.

Gardening is often seen as therapeutic. By taking a few minutes out each day to water, weed and tend your delicious home-grown vegetables, you get the chance to have a mental break from the stresses of everyday life and the opportunity to mull things over, rather than letting it build up inside. Alternatively, use it as family bonding time and get your children or grandchildren involved.

If you have trouble getting children in the family to eat their vegetables, getting them involved in the growing and nurturing of the plants will make them more likely to want to eat them and less likely to complain about eating them. It is not uncommon for young children to be fussy eaters and a lack of fibre, fruit and vegetables in their diet can lead to problems such as constipation. By encouraging vegetables in their diet, you could reduce or even prevent them becoming constipated. Childrens vegetable growing kits are available online.

We hear a lot of reports about ‘Carbon Footprint’ and how we should try to reduce our carbon emissions. Vegetables grown in your garden or allotment have a dramatically lower carbon footprint, as the food does not have to travel miles and miles across the world to get to your table. You just pop out the back door or a few miles down the road, harvest, and bring it home. Simple! Little or no nasty chemicals are released into the atmosphere when compared with the emissions from transporting your veg by train, boat, or plane. Also, when growing at home, we are much less likely to use harmful pesticides or chemical fertilisers, instead opting for an organic approach which does not harm the environment.

One of the best benefits of growing your own vegetables is that they are always there. Instead of having to dash off shopping because your supermarket-bought vegetables are past their best or you forgot to pick any up can become a thing of the past. Simply pop down to the vegetable patch and pick some of your delicious fresh crop.

Start small. Once you have discovered the benefits for yourself, you may find yourself moving from a small patch to a much larger patch or even an allotment. Growing your own vegetables can have a positive impact on your health, mental and physical wellbeing, and means you have a positive impact on the environment around you.