How wonderful to be here at last! This has been a long time in the planning and I am just delighted to have you along on the journey.
I am so excited to get started - I have such a lot planned and I hope in time we can all link together into one lovely sharing, supporting community, where my writing acts as a springboard for everyone to pitch in with ideas, experiences and advice of their own. The lovely thing about veg growing is you just keep learning, no matter how long you’ve been at it!
So what can you expect? Well - some of you may already have come across my total obsession with growing my own food through the articles I write about my adventures every month for BBC Gardeners’ World magazine. So there will be lots (and lots) of veg, fruit, herbs, cooking, preserving, and general gardening and foodie stuff. I love to experiment, trying out less familiar foods I think might work in my garden, and testing different growing methods. It may not be that scientific but it’s always enlightening, and a lot of fun!
You might also have read the columns on sustainable gardening I wrote for many happy years at The Garden (the Royal Horticultural Society’s journal), or perhaps you follow my Instagram @sally.nex: so you’ll know I garden largely without plastic, and certainly without peat or pesticides. I try to grow my veg in ways that leave no trace - and where possible I garden to help the world around me by making space for the wild creatures I share my garden with.
Don’t expect Insta-ready perfection here. Obviously I’ll be showing off trugs overflowing with summer harvests - I mean, what veg grower is going to turn down the chance to brag a little - but there are weeds, blight spores and marauding mice in my garden just like everyone else’s. So I’ll also be giving you the bare truth about all the setbacks and frustrations, the times I make mistakes and fall short. I learn far more from the things I do wrong than all the times I get things right: so those are the bits I’d like to share with you too.
You’ll get the main newsletter dropping into your inbox every weekend: this is your update on what’s going on in our veg gardens right now. You can catch up on what’s going in the seed trays, where we’re up to with crops in the ground, what you can harvest – so you can garden alongside me through the growing year.
Alongside that I’ll be starting to introduce more and more extras as our community grows. The weekly newsletters will always be free: but I’m also planning an extra two posts each week. Some will be free to all, but more often they’ll be offering added value for paying subscribers. At the moment I have in mind subscriber-only posts, regular how-to videos, maybe a monthly podcast, special offers, recipes, growalongs… and anything else you want me to put in there! To be honest I’m up for anything - we’re right at the start of this ride so it could go anywhere, and probably will. And this is your forum – so I’m always open to suggestions.
Right – so let’s get on with it! Tell me what you’d like to see here – and come along with me for what I just know, with a veg grower’s eternal optimism, is going to be a fabulous growing year.
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Hello Sally - and welcome! Brilliant to have you here on Substack!
Very much looking forward to seeing what you're doing over the year