The Gooden Life

Keith & Freya have a secret to share with you and it involves an onioney fave!The Leek! Humble?  Yes! Delicious? Yes! Hard to grow? Sometimes!But we know the secret to getting your leeks long with big white bottoms and you don't need to be an obsessive show gardener to do it!How can 12 minutes change your life? Listen........

Keith & Freya are back on the plot this English Bank Holiday weekend with a list of jobs longer than a monster prehistoric worm! Time to get the runner beans in and play the , "Lady Di" game with your tiny little lips! Tips to make sure they don't dry out or succumb to a late frost.The strawberries are forming flowers and fruit, so it is time to nettum and feedum! To protect them from greedy birds, slugs , snails and children.....Just think of those warm English strawberries in July, with single cream....

Keith & Freya are busy in the wonderful English spring weather, planting out those hardened off seedlings, and looking forward to a healthy crop of courgette and collard greens.Also, some tips on how to get the water to the roots and how NOT to feed those abundant Zuchinni...... We are also looking after the final weeks of the strawberry growing cycle, as the plants set fruit.

Join Keith & Freya this week at "The People's Show", the RHS Spring Garden Show in Malvern, at the magnificent showground!This show is one of the most useful in the calendar for practical gardeners, with plants for sale at reasonable prices, lots of good advice from the growers and nursery staff and some spectacular show gardens as well! And its cheaper than Chelsea! And less snobby! 

Join Keith & Freya up the 'lotty as they reveal the results of their revolutionary (?) method of getting their parsnips going in toilet rolls!We plant them out with our similarly grown broad (Fava) beans and make sure the raised bed compost is free of clumps, bumps and stones....Time to plant pumpkin and squash seeds too and a good tip on how to give those Jack'O'Lanterns a boost on a big pile of ........Also find out which life forms aliens would detect first if they were spying on planet Earth!

Keith & Freya are planting their runners this week, with three varieties and a little, tiny pencil mouthed competition! ( Listen to take part!)Frost is our enemy and that goes for sunflowers too! We've got a ton of varieties and they're good for insects with seeds that hoomans cn enjoy, as well as feeding the birds in the winter..... 

Keith & Freya have been doing the final planting of this year's strawberry plants, making sure the young greenery is comfy in their new raised bed , ready for July cropping!The lore of the allotment says Easter is the time to plant your first main crop spuds, but we've not even got the first and second earlies in yet! BTW: (We explain all that 1st/2nd/maincrop malarky).It's also the time to start thinking about your Christmas table and the lovely beetroot pickles with cold turkey on Boxing day! Keith & Freya are planting an allotment favourite as well as something with a bit more colour to it! 

Keith & Freya are in their mini greenhouse this week planting their courgette/ zuchini crop for this year. Staying with the Italian theme, we're getting our Italian Kale seeds in. Cavalo Nero, which costs a bomb in the shops and is a really attractive plant as well as being a tasty money saver. There's beetroot and collard greens being planted for the coming winter crop and an update on how our seedlings are progressing from past week's episodes.We are also sharing our money saving recipe for seed compost using kitchen waste, old planting soil and ancient play sand from the garden.......

Keith & Freya are in their little greenhouse planting more seeds for 2025 and planning what will go on their plates as well as in the garden!The Lobjois lettuce are sprouting, the first planting of sweet peas are breaking through and the cornflower and marigolds are racing away!This week we are planting Kalettes and a herb the Romans used to snack on, Alexanders..... It still grows wild in England..... The descendants of the pants Caesar brought from Italy.

With local and national garden shows gearing up for 2025, let's take a look back at The Gooden Life at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show last year with some ideas for you.Heritage veg seeds from an exciting start up company, Fuschias from a multiple gold medal winner and how a designer got inspiration for her "Bridgerton" garden.Ideas we can translate into our own patches and plots!

Join Keith & Freya back on the allotment for a day of planting a new crop, Jerusalem artichokes. Not easily available in the shops but a delicious alternative to spuds and a beautiful plant that looks like a sunflower.We harvest overwintered Leeks, the final pickings of the Italian Kale and the Collards keep on giving!

Keith & Freya are putting all their saved toilet roll tubes to use and planting their broad beans and sweet peas. Both of which love a little more space for their roots!We are also planting our tomato seeds with some good tips on which are best for beginners, as well as the more experienced Tom grower!There's also a warning of frost in the forecast so find out which seeds to hold off panting for another month or so....  

Keith & Freya are tidying the strawberry bed for a top crop in 2025, thinking about redesigning their raised bed layout and planning the plants for the pollinator's that'll be producing our top crops for 2025!There's some tips about what to spread on your rhubarb (apart from custard) and trimming our bush now, so we don't disturb the birdies!  

Welcome to another "Gooden Life" as we plot and garden in the Cotswolds, growing food and flowers the best way we can. We are not experts, but hopefully we can offer a tip or two?  Keith & Freya Gooden turn their snippers to their raspberries and blackcurrants plants. One needs a hard hair cut (like Keith) while the other requires a little more thought and finesse! (Freya)A little time and effort will guarantee you a good crop for eating and preserves for 2025, so don't rush this important job.

Welcome back to The Gooden Life, your guide to gardening and plotting for 2025! Keith & Freya Gooden are back for a third year and today ,in our mini greenhouse in the sunshine, planting Bishop's Crown red Chilli and beautiful blue cornflower! Also advice for getting your parsnips going.... They can be tricky, but worth the effort!A new year of growing, weeding and feeding starts here!

With a new series of Bridgerton debuting on Netflix, it is a great opportunity for the RHS Chelsea Flower Show to invite a young designer to create a garden for Penelope.Holly Johnson is from New Zealand and spoke with Keith & Freya at this year's show....

Keith & Freya are back at the show, in the great pavilion, this time speaking to Esther from the Gold medal winning Roualeyn Fuchsias.An English garden staple, the sheer flower power from fuchsias can make a garden or allotment really pop! Esther also tips us off about a microscopic pest we should all be on the look out for.... Except we can't see it!

Every day during the show we'll be sharing some of the great edible guests we've been talking at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2024.Today we team up with the two founders of "She Grows Veg" , a company which sells heritage seeds. That's seeds which have been established by growers for at least 50 years as true native varieties. So why buy and grow a heritage variety instead of an F1 seed? These are the answers.Listen everyday to Freya & Keith on the Gooden Life at Chelsea 2024!

Join Keith &  Freya on the plot as we get the crops for 2024 in the ground! It may have been a wild and dark spring but now the English weather seems to have warmed up it's time to bend your back on the allotment! We've also got news about the RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2024!

Keith & Freya are back on the allotment getting their potatoes in, trying to brighten up the conditions and battle against a really cold spring in the UK. There's a great tip from Freya about how you can have a cold frame without paying out for glass. We also want to know if there'll be strawberries in time for Wimbledon!

Keith & Freya are back on their allotment with a slow, wet start to spring but still managing to get the Shallots in, the strawberry plants we grew on are planted and we battle with Rooks and Pigeons on the brassica beds....... Grow along with us here every couple of weeks or so!

Keith & Freya brave the snow covered ground this week as they do those little jobs to get things ready for Spring! They're banned from the allotment because the ground is water logged after the wettest February  in 112 years in the UK! So it's out with the peas and beans as well as the sweet peas, and time to start planting this year's crops!There's some top tips too about your spuds!  

Keith & Freya are at Marshfield's annual potato day.....  But it's not just spuds , we're also buying seeds and a few Dahlias too!This week find out about the new seed potato which " they say" is a lower calorie cropper , how climate change is affecting our plots and gardens, and which spuds goin first and what is "chitting".