FROM LITTLE SEEDS GREAT THINGS GROW

Mark Alexander is a home/allotment gardener with a focus on growing food for his young family. Mark grew up learning about organic farming from his family and from this seed of knowledge grew a passion for growing his own and also seed saving

- Mark Alexander

How long have you been growing your own veg?

This will be my fourth season growing on an allotment scale, although I grew bits and bobs in a succession of small terraced gardens prior to that.

Do you have an allotment or do you grow your veg at home?

I have a full-sized allotment and a small garden at home. We have an old wall running down the side of our garden which has two cordon apple trees trained along it, and it’s also where I put up tepees for our peas and beans in spring/summer, but really I grow almost everything at the allotment, either in my polytunnel or one of my ‘no-dig’ beds outside.

What prompted you to start?

I’ve always had an interest in organic food – my mum’s side of the family run an organic stock farm, but my real desire to start growing came in my early 20s (about 10 years ago!) when I was sharing a garden flat with a friend in North London. I got very into sustainable cookery and food provenance, and growing your own is a natural extension of that. Unfortunately, our garden at the time was very shady and littered with perennial weeds, and having little knowledge of how to make the best of things at the time, our yields weren’t huge! Once I met my wife and we moved out to Guildford, which is roughly where I grew up, I really threw myself into it.

You share your plot with your young son. Does he enjoy helping Dad with the veggies?