If ever there was a time to grow more food, it’s now. You can ‘eat your greens’, save money on food and join a collective effort to increase our food resilience and decrease our environmental footprint. It sounds simple, and we know it can be hard work and take a bit of know-how and planning, so we include tips, inspiration and links for support to suit your growing needs. Use these with more detailed guidance in the ‘Resources’ mentioned below:

• Healthy soil is essential to growing any food successfully and maximising its nutritional value. 
• Check that your growing space, or container, has optimal conditions for growth.
• Crops need consistent water, not just when it rains. So consider water catchment right from the start.
• New to growing? Keep it simple; follow Grow 6 for seasonal tips and tricks to get you growing whatever your setting year-round.
• With some growing experience, try intercropping (growing quick crops in the gaps) to maximise the use of your space.
• Grow ‘multi croppers’ that can keep cropping over several months, such as purple sprouting broccoli, peas, courgettes, cut-and-come-again lettuce, kale, and autumn fruiting raspberries.
• Stagger your sowing to prolong your harvest and avoid a glut.
• Extend the growing season by warming your soil up from early March to try early sowings in late March. An old shower door, or pane of glass will do.
• Do the same in the autumn months to protect tender outdoor crops such as lettuce and leafy herbs.
• Plan carefully for winter growing- it’s easy to miss the ‘window’ for sowing and planting winter crops when you are busy in the summer.
• Choose your seed carefully, and remember sowing times in Scotland may be a 2-4 weeks behind those written on the packet.
• If you are growing in the community and want to grow more food, why not evaluate other spaces to grow in your area?
• More detailed growing guidance in the Resources mentioned below.