Grow It!
Everything You Need for a Successful Allotment
Ruth Binney author Rydon Publishing author
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Rydon Publishing
Published:20th Feb '25
Should be back in stock very soon

Allotment gardening has never been more popular, and there is no more satisfying way to grow your own fresh produce. But getting an allotment into shape and raising healthy plants is a constant challenge. With this commonsense, practical guide you’ll discover all the best ways to plan and tend your plot year by year, choose the newest and best disease resistant varieties, and find a wealth of ideas for enjoying your abundant harvest in the kitchen. Attractively illustrated as well as practical, it is also a perfect gift for any allotment gardener.
With sound advice based on experience, and dozens of invaluable hints and tips, you’ll find the answers here to the perennial questions that are key to allotment success, including:
- What’s be best way of making compost – and how can worms help?
- Why are raised beds so good for growing carrots?
- How and why is it essential to rotate your crops every year?
- Which vegetables are best planted in blocks, not rows?
- Is it ever possible to stop slugs in their tracks and deter pigeons?
- How can you avoid gluts of courgettes? And what are the best and different ways to enjoy them?
- Which fruit and vegetables are most successful for making jams and chutneys?
With dozens of ‘Allotment Choices’ for recommended varieties, from old heritage favourites to the exciting newest arrivals like black tomatoes and purple kale, there are so many wonderful plants to grow, whether you’re new to an allotment or already working the soil. From fork to table, Grow It! is the book you need to inspire and guide your gardening adventure.
Grow It! more attractive than many allotment books, of which there is plenty of competition on the market. … Ruth Binney is a veteran allotmenteer and editor so knows her way around the potting shed. … Binney makes some lively recommendations of what to grow in this energetically laid-out and pleasingly illustrated book. You won't go far wrong if you go with her top choices. I like drawings rather than photos as they date less quickly, and indeed this is a book that will be kept by its owners for a long time, such is its reliability and wealth of practical and sensible advice.
-- Matthew Appleby * Hort Week *Feeling like you want to grow your own veg in 2025? ‘Cultivating your own plot, and eating your produce fresh, tasty and in profusion are the bonuses for being outdoors in the fresh air, appreciating nature, taking exercise and getting the soil under your fingertips,’ says Ruth Binney in her brilliantly comprehensive new book Grow It!. Ruth has been studying plants and gardening for most of her life and has written and edited numerous books on natural history, botany and gardening, not-to-mention owning three allotments. We love the month-by-month guide for what to do and when. March jobs include: sowing tomatoes and cucumbers indoors; sowing peas under fleece or cloches; and planting onion sets.
-- Rhoda Parry * Wildflower magaziISBN: 9781910821466
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: unknown
224 pages