Welcome back to the Sunflower Allotment Podcast!

In the second of our two-part series with incredible gardener and author Joy Larkcom, Tim and Peter discuss Joy's general garden observations and tips. This includes her passion for tomatoes, chilies, and sweet peas  along with her advice for sowing direct v modules. Joy also shares her advice and enthusiasm on intercropping, mulching, organic gardening and saving seeds.

We feel so privileged to have chatted to Joy these past two episodes and we can't recommend her books highly enough for anyone interested in the practicalities of gardening advice in Grow Your Own Vegetables and to indulge yourself in writing of her memoir and travel journal of Just Vegetating: A Memoir.

Joy Larkcom, Just Vegetating: A Memoir :
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Just-Vegetating-Memoir-Joy-Larkcom/dp/071122935X

Joy Larkcom, Grow Your Own Vegetables:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Grow-Your-Own-Vegetables-Larkcom/dp/071121963X/ref=sr_1_3?keywords=grow+your+own+vegetables&qid=1671655275&s=books&sprefix=grow+your+own+%2Cstripbooks%2C96&sr=1-3

Notes: Joy's Favourites and Tips:
Sweet peas: Matucana, Cupani, Emilia Fox
Tomato plants: Mountain Magic, Ferline and San Marzano
Sweetcorn: Supersweet varieties

Garden Museum Archive:
https://gardenmuseum.org.uk/archive/

Alys Fowler: ode to Joy Larkom (The Guardian 2012)
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2012/oct/19/alys-fowler-joy-larkcom

A message from Joy after listening to the first podcast in relation to the set up of her garden:

The other thing that occurred to me, at the beginning of the first podcast when I’m talking about the garden, that I never mentioned the main windbreak, which was crucial to us growing anything here. I just talked about the ‘inner windbreak’ of the fan, and the spokes of the fan protecting espalier fruit etc. 

Essentially, our first line of defence against the salt laden winds was a mighty windbreak on the two most vulnerable sides of the garden. We first put up an artificial windbreak, about 6 ft high, of very strong net battened to substantial posts concreted into the ground. Part of this was zigzagging - giving it extra strength and increased protection for the trees we then planted.