Potting Bench
A wicker basket of tomatoes, peppers, squash and spring onions resting among green leaves.

The plot, in season

A quarterly magazine for people who grow their own vegetables, written by people who do the same.

Featured story: the year we gave up on carrots
Ripe red cherry tomatoes hanging on the vine. A hand reaching for a young green cabbage in a vegetable bed. A hand holding a crinkled savoy cabbage against a white background.

Sowing

See all 38 stories
Hands pricking out seedlings into a module tray with a metal tool.

Spring issue

Pricking out without tears

Why the smallest seedlings are worth keeping, and the old spoon that does it best.

Black and green plastic trays full of small seedlings, close up.

Online

One tray, twelve salads

Cut-and-come-again leaves on a windowsill from March to November.

Trays of seedlings on a gravel bench inside an old greenhouse.

Winter issue

The cold-frame calendar

What to sow under glass in every month, from a grower in the Pennines.

A long polytunnel with rows of lettuce growing on both sides of a path.

Autumn issue

A tunnel of lettuce

A market grower in Devon on keeping salad going under plastic all winter.

Harvest

See all 24 stories
A wicker basket of heirloom tomatoes, courgettes and beans.

Summer issue

Too many courgettes

Eleven readers, eleven recipes, and one honest note about the compost heap.

Freshly pulled carrots and red onions in a wooden trug on grey boards.

Autumn issue

The year we gave up on carrots

Clay soil, carrot fly and a happy ending involving parsnips.

Out now

The autumn issue

96 pages on garlic, leaf mould, winter squash and the allotment waiting list in Bristol.

Get this issue
A basket of tomatoes, carrots, courgette and leeks on a wooden table.

Online

Storing it all

Sand, newspaper and a cold garage: how to eat your own veg in February.

On the plot

See all 17 stories
Two people working on wooden raised beds in a large walled vegetable garden.

Summer issue

Raised beds for clay

Scaffold boards, a trailer of muck and a year of patience.

Rows of young vegetables growing in a lush, overgrown garden.

Spring issue

No-dig, three years on

A sceptical allotment holder reports back with photos and a weed count.

Raised beds in a polytunnel with hand-chalked labels on black boards.

Online

Label everything

Chalkboards, lolly sticks and the varieties we forgot we had planted.

A woman carrying an armful of produce along a grass path past greenhouses.

Winter issue

A community plot

Forty households, one shared shed and a rota that actually works.

A black and white photo of allotments with sheds, a greenhouse and blossoming trees.

Beyond the seed packet

Long reads about the people, soil and weather behind what ends up on the plate.

Young plants in pots inside a small zip-up greenhouse. A hand watering young seedlings in a raised bed next to small black pots.

Before you subscribe

Four issues a year
Posted in the first week of March, June, September and December. £34 a year in the UK, postage included.
No adverts, no sponsored seeds
Readers pay for the magazine, so nobody else gets a say in what we recommend.
Writers are growers
Every story is written by someone with soil under their nails, and paid for it.
Stop whenever you like
Cancel before the next issue is posted and you will not be charged again.
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