'Grow Your Own' A-Z

There are many reasons why more people are choosing to grow at least some of their own food. Concerns around food security, rising supermarket prices and the environmental cost of imported produce have encouraged gardeners to look closer to home. Growing your own fruit and vegetables also gives you greater control over what you eat — how it’s grown, what goes into the soil, and when it’s harvested. The difference in flavour between freshly picked produce and shop-bought vegetables can be remarkable.

Perhaps just as importantly, vegetable growing offers wellbeing benefits. Time spent outdoors, working with the soil and watching plants develop through the seasons can be hugely satisfying and restorative. It’s a slower, more mindful way of engaging with food. Add to this the sheer variety available to the home grower — from heritage varieties to unusual crops rarely seen in shops — and it’s easy to see the appeal.

With this in mind we have decided to dedicate this area of our website to providing advice on how to grow various vegetables in our Irish climate (and we even plan to throw in a few recipes!). This section is currently a work in progress and we will be adding to it throughout this year's growing cycle with the aim of hopefully having a fairly comprehensive growers guide compiled by the end of 2026. We hope you find this section useful and if you have any growing tips of your own that you'd like to share, then we'd love to hear from you!