There’s a fantastic number of allotment, kitchen garden and grow your own bloggers out there. I read as many as I can for inspiration, advice and to find out what everyone is getting up to.

Here are a few of my favourite articles and blog posts from April 2018.

1. The Best Way to Plant a Strawberry Pot. A really lovely example that demonstrates why you don’t need a lot of space to grow fresh fruit from your garden. A strawberry pot can be tricky, but in this post, Tanya provides lots of hints and tips to make it a success.

2. Ten year anniversary. I know from my own experience of allotment gardening that time flies in what is such an enjoyable and rewarding hobby. In this fantastic post, Zoe looks back over her ten years on her plot and why she has no regret about taking on the keys to that overgrown allotment. This is inspiring!

3. Grow Your Own – Berries. I love this post from Sasha. It’s always fascinating hearing about others childhood experiences with fruit and veg and how it remains a powerful memory that we can recreate in our own allotments and garden. Berrytastic.

4. Build an Easy Wooden Compost Bin using Pallets. If you’ve read my recent blog posts you will know I am a huge fan of using the timber from pallets to reuse in the allotment. They can be used to build raised beds and as Tanya demonstrates in the post, really easy compost bins too.

5. Prepping the plot. I’m so pleased to discover a new allotment blog in the form of Little Secret Garden. In this post, family of four – Phil, Christine, Lottie and Ryan – are finally on the new allotment and getting it ready for what I hope with be a hugely successful year of growing their own fruit and veg.

6. Squelch. In one word, Beryl sums up the allotment for most of us last month. Frustrating wasn’t it? However, the greenhouse provides it’s worth.

7. Bridging the Hungry Gap. Mid-March to mid-May can be a quiet time in terms of the crops available for the dinner table. Which is why this period is often called the Hungry Gap. However, I’m discovering crops that I hope to grow on our allotment this year that will help fill the tums with homegrown veg next spring. Mark shows it’s easily done with a few crops in this post.

8. Our 2018 gardening year begins. Spring is here – really. I know the weather has tried to keep that from us. The fantastic allotmenting duo of Sandra and Andrew are back on the blog and making plans for their ongoing quest for veg in 2018. A few interesting crops to try this year.

9. Gardening Therapy Real or Bullshit? Bo is back! And so is her straight talking mouth too. This is such an important blog post by Michelle and comes from her own personal experience with mental health. Importantly (for her and us!) she’s back on the plot and on the blog and explaining why gardening is responsible for this, why horticulture therapy shouldn’t be over looked and why she will continue to be it’s ambassador.

10. A Watertight Greenhouse, With Thanks to Baby Alastair. What a fantastic surprise to see a blog post from Jono pop up in my feed this month. When his sister-in-law gave birth recently, not only did Jono get a new nephew – he was given a greenhouse too!

You can read all the Sharpen Your Spades Top 10 posts here.

Drop me a comment below with a blog I might be missing out on and I’ll pop it in my reader.

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