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Allotment Month by Month: How to Grow Your Own Fruit and Veg
How to grow your own fruit and veg all year round on your allotment or in your garden
For tasty, delicious fruit and veg that hasn’t travelled halfway around the world, you can’t beat home grown produce from your own allotment or vegetable patch. Here’s how to ensure your plot provides fresh, healthy food all year round.
Follow month-by-month, easy-to-follow advice on what to do on your allotment and how to do it. Pick up time saving tips and techniques on everything from pruning to dealing with pests. There’s clear guidance on when to sow, plant, and harvest for excellent results
Get more from your allotment with this indispensable companion.
For tasty, delicious fruit and veg that hasn’t travelled halfway around the world, you can’t beat home grown produce from your own allotment or vegetable patch. Here’s how to ensure your plot provides fresh, healthy food all year round.
Follow month-by-month, easy-to-follow advice on what to do on your allotment and how to do it. Pick up time saving tips and techniques on everything from pruning to dealing with pests. There’s clear guidance on when to sow, plant, and harvest for excellent results
Get more from your allotment with this indispensable companion.
- GenresGardening
352 pages, Kindle Edition
Published May 1, 2009
9 people are currently reading
57 people want to read
About the author
Alan Buckingham
41 books5 followersAlan Buckingham is a freelance writer, editor, gardener, and photographer. He has over twenty years' experience in illustrated publishing, both as an editor and as an author, and has worked on countless information books, interactive CD-ROMs, and websites. In recent years he has written chiefly about gardening and photography, his two main interests. "The Kitchen Garden" and "Grow Fruit" are illustrated with many of his own pictures.
Alan is a long-time kitchen gardener. Every summer he proves himself incapable of heeding his own advice and consequently grows far more fruit and vegetables than he and his family could ever hope to eat. Should he ever be given the opportunity to have his time again, he would happily swap his career in publishing for one as a head gardener.
Alan is a long-time kitchen gardener. Every summer he proves himself incapable of heeding his own advice and consequently grows far more fruit and vegetables than he and his family could ever hope to eat. Should he ever be given the opportunity to have his time again, he would happily swap his career in publishing for one as a head gardener.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
January 17, 2020
Invaluable advice for a novice allotmenteer. Will be referring to this book all the time!
March 9, 2025
Great book, just got my own allotment and this is going to help a lot.
April 28, 2024
As I try to bring my back yard up to scratch I’m browsing a dozen gardening books for ideas and advice. These opening paragraphs will open every review of the dozen – the review of this specific book will appear at paragraph 5.
Can’t imagine any gardening book could be described as perfect – I live in Scotland, which might have a slightly colder climate than other places in the world. But gardening books are useful if you’re trying to bring a piece of land into productive use for yourself, family or community. Useful, to supplement what you may already know, useful to give you ideas and encouragement, useful to remind you of the essentials and the possibilities.
I’d caution against picking just one book – unless it covers a particularly narrow, specialist field. Browse half a dozen or a dozen books before and as you start your new project. Don’t necessarily buy new – pick up some second hand ones online or in charity shops. Seriously, gardening is not going to have changed much in the last 30 years, you don’t need to pay £20 to buy the latest piece by some celebrity gardener when you can get a half a dozen books for that money from charity shops or online.
Browse, take notes, compare, learn, become enthused … but don’t forget to get your hands dirty.
ALAN BUCKINGHAM – ALLOTMENT MONTH BY MONTH. Begins by echoing the mantra, “Fresh, seasonal, local”: a fine political objective but also a shorthand for the goals of this book. I’d previously read Buckingham’s book “Grow Vegetables”, and there is inevitably a degree of overlap. His Allotment guide, however, concentrates on the practical tasks of bringing a piece of ground into something productive, with greater emphasis on planning and organisation and a much more extensive guide to month-by-month tasks.
He counsels against growing too much of any one crop – if you’re trying to build an allotment which will feed you and your family (or at least provide much of your annual food), then look to variety. There’s more to harvest in summer months, you’ll need to produce crops which can be stored over winter.
Make use of every square metre. Recycle. Don’t neglect compost-making. Go for variety. The rewards are fruit and veg which will taste vastly better than shop-bought varieties and give you scope to produce the unusual and the different.
Buckingham emphasises that it’s a learning process – coping with changing weather, changing conditions. Assess your site, decide what you can grow and where, plan your crop rotation.
The best part of the book is given over to planning an annual calendar of jobs and planting / harvesting. It’s far more extensive than in his other book and it’s worth getting the book for this calendar alone. Fine reference work.
Excellent crop planner, loads of good advice, much material to fire your imagination and encourage you to get your hands dirty. Definitely a book worth consulting.
Can’t imagine any gardening book could be described as perfect – I live in Scotland, which might have a slightly colder climate than other places in the world. But gardening books are useful if you’re trying to bring a piece of land into productive use for yourself, family or community. Useful, to supplement what you may already know, useful to give you ideas and encouragement, useful to remind you of the essentials and the possibilities.
I’d caution against picking just one book – unless it covers a particularly narrow, specialist field. Browse half a dozen or a dozen books before and as you start your new project. Don’t necessarily buy new – pick up some second hand ones online or in charity shops. Seriously, gardening is not going to have changed much in the last 30 years, you don’t need to pay £20 to buy the latest piece by some celebrity gardener when you can get a half a dozen books for that money from charity shops or online.
Browse, take notes, compare, learn, become enthused … but don’t forget to get your hands dirty.
ALAN BUCKINGHAM – ALLOTMENT MONTH BY MONTH. Begins by echoing the mantra, “Fresh, seasonal, local”: a fine political objective but also a shorthand for the goals of this book. I’d previously read Buckingham’s book “Grow Vegetables”, and there is inevitably a degree of overlap. His Allotment guide, however, concentrates on the practical tasks of bringing a piece of ground into something productive, with greater emphasis on planning and organisation and a much more extensive guide to month-by-month tasks.
He counsels against growing too much of any one crop – if you’re trying to build an allotment which will feed you and your family (or at least provide much of your annual food), then look to variety. There’s more to harvest in summer months, you’ll need to produce crops which can be stored over winter.
Make use of every square metre. Recycle. Don’t neglect compost-making. Go for variety. The rewards are fruit and veg which will taste vastly better than shop-bought varieties and give you scope to produce the unusual and the different.
Buckingham emphasises that it’s a learning process – coping with changing weather, changing conditions. Assess your site, decide what you can grow and where, plan your crop rotation.
The best part of the book is given over to planning an annual calendar of jobs and planting / harvesting. It’s far more extensive than in his other book and it’s worth getting the book for this calendar alone. Fine reference work.
Excellent crop planner, loads of good advice, much material to fire your imagination and encourage you to get your hands dirty. Definitely a book worth consulting.
January 18, 2023
If you’re new to gardening, or new to gardening in the UK, this book is phenomenal
December 30, 2025
As it says month by month information. I can drop into the information as and when I want to.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews