Get Up and Grow: 20 edible gardening projects for both indoors and outdoors, from She Grows Veg

Lucy Start/Hutchings was once recognized as one of the rising stars of the fashion industry, and the go-to couture jewelry designer for the likes of Rihanna, Kylie Minogue and Cheryl Cole.

Lucy Start/Hutchings
Hardie Grant Publisher
May 11, 2021

In this truly innovative book Lucy Hutchings – aka She Grows Veg – proves that vegetable gardening doesn’t always require outdoor space.

Through clever uses of space and containers, understanding of growing conditions and a unique, design-led approach, Lucy showcases how anyone can grow pretty much anything in their back garden, courtyard, balcony or kitchen. Lucy creates 19 projects, from living vegetable walls and hydroponics basics, to indoor greenhouses and hanging herb racks that have all the decorative style and visual interest of ornamental house plants.

With step-by-step illustrations and stunning photography, with Get Up and Grow, you can go from gardening novice to growing pro in a matter of weeks. Lucy is blazing a trail for new-wave gardening with a mantra of anything is possible, for anyone.

Lucy Start: Meet Lucy Start from United Kingdom ??
“My name is Lucy but I am better known as “She Grows Veg”. I am an edible garden designer and garden writer, but I spend most of my time sharing gardening tips, hacks, interviews, tours and the rare heirlooms I grow, with my followers across social media.
I have always grown some vegetables, for the pure pleasure of producing food. But at the beginning of 2018, during a very stressful time in my life, I found calm and happiness in growing, to the extent that I decided to retrain for a career in horticulture.
Very simply I grow food because it makes me happy. I love all aspects of it and seemingly have an unquenchable thirst for trying new crops and varieties. I have a relatively small garden in a rural village in the south east of the UK, that I have designed and replanted to be almost entirely edible. Even the plants in the ornamental borders all offer a harvest with everything from citrus, edible albums, sichuan pepper, and Chilean Guava, to Dahlias, artichokes, chrysanthemums and saffron. I also have 2 full size allotment plots where I grow some some the more space hungry crops such as corn, pumpkins, onions and garlic.
I grow as much as possible, from the standard to the highly unusual. I aim for everything I grow to be heirloom or heritage so spend a lot of time carefully sourcing my seeds and plants. I also have a passion for perennial edibles, many of which are sold as purely ornamental but were commonly eaten historically and have gone out of fashion, such as potato onions, cardoon, babington leeks, skirrit and society garlic. Additionally I like to find crops from other parts of the planet that are hardy enough to grow in the UK under the right conditions. Some I am trying are cinnamon and chocolate vines, perennial African basil and finger limes.
I find prevention is the best approach, so use lots of netting on vulnerable crops and grow all my brassicas in a net tunnel. Nematodes are a must and I am also a big advocate of a good torch lit slug chucking session, a good old beer trap, but if in doubt I go with the ‘plant absolutely tonnes of seeds and let the slugs do the thinning’ approach!
For me the biggest reward I gain from what I grow is the benefits to my children. At 6 and 4 they are already fascinated with the whole process from seed to plate and they adore helping with all of it, I love seeing little hands sowing seeds, little arms full of harvest and of course little mouths stuffed with stolen tomatoes or strawberries! I think as as parent there is nothing more satisfying than watching food you have grown from seed be merrily munched by your babies! Not only that but I have been lucky enough to build a career out of my passion for something that makes me happy. My biggest challenge is time. When you are a single working mum of young children you have to pick your time in the garden and make it count!
Due to my work on social media, raising awareness of unusual or forgotten heirlooms, I am privileged to have been made the Ambassador for Garden Organic and the Heritage Seed Library. I work with them, growing some of the endangered varieties they work so hard to protect and sharing this with my followers, to spread the word about the amazing work they do, plus get more people growing these fabulous heritage seeds.”

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