This archive brings together practical, experience-led articles from The Backyard Farmer, covering gardening, DIY, indoor growing, foraging, reviews, and sustainable living. Each post is written with real-world use in mind — focusing on working with nature, building practical skills, and making sustainable choices more accessible.
Growing apple trees in the UK sounds simple — and to be fair, it can be — but most issues don’t come from the tree itself. They come from how it’s set up in the first place. Choosing the wrong rootstock, planting it in a
Garlic harvest timing is one of those jobs where a few days can make a real difference. Lift it too early and the bulbs may be smaller than they could have been. Leave it too long and the cloves can start splitting, the skins break
Garlic is best planted in the UK from October to November, giving the cloves plenty of time to establish before spring. You can still plant through winter if the ground is workable and well drained, while February to March provides a useful spring planting window.
Courgettes are easy to grow once the weather warms, but planting them too early can leave young plants sitting in cold soil and struggling to get going. In the UK, sow courgettes indoors from mid to late April and plant them outside from late May
Courgettes are one of those crops that can go from “nearly ready” to “where did that marrow come from?” almost overnight. In the UK, the main courgette harvest usually runs from July to September, although greenhouse plants and early starts can crop sooner. The real
Growing tomatoes in the UK is rarely as simple as waiting for them to turn red. Some years they ripen cleanly on the vine, but more often you’re working around cool nights, heavy rain, stop-start sunshine, and the risk of fruit splitting or going over.
Courgettes are one of the easiest vegetables to grow well in the UK once they have warmth, space and consistent moisture. A couple of healthy plants can produce heavily through summer, even in a fairly small garden. The main problems usually come from planting too
Most gardens don’t fail because of what you plant — they fail because of how they’re laid out. If you’ve ever stood in your garden and thought, something’s not quite right here, you’re not alone. I see it all the time — decent plants, plenty
Knowing when to harvest onions in the UK can feel like a guessing game, especially when the usual advice is to “wait until the tops fall over.” That advice is useful, but it is not the whole story. In a real bed, some onions flop
For most UK gardens, onion sets planted in spring are best planted from March to April, once the soil is workable and no longer waterlogged. If you are growing onions from seed, sow indoors from January to March or direct outdoors from March to April.
Growing onions in the UK is fairly simple once the basics are right. Most poor crops come down to wet soil, overcrowding, weak early growth or excessive nitrogen, so the key is getting plants established strongly before bulb formation begins. Onion Sets or Seeds? Both
Why I Was Invited to Speak Recently, I was invited to give a talk at the Cheshire Smallholders Association after being featured in the NAS (National Allotment Society) magazine. The Chairman’s father — a previous chairman himself — had read the article, tried the allotment