Who am I?

I am Gavin, father of four children - Bassem, Tamanna, Ayman, and Halla.  

After spending most of my working life in the Middle East and Africa, I am permanently in the UK; and currently working again as a teacher - an "interesting" culture shock, since I left Scotland six months before Mrs Thatcher was elected.

I want to know what's going into my food, so I took on a quarter plot allotment in August 1999, run on organic principles.   We have expanded to a full-size allotment plot, in two sections.   Not much in life can better the superb flavour of a freshly picked vegetable cooked within minutes of harvest.

So you know what to expect - I am not a professional gardener.   Treat anything in this site as my personal notebook, full of snippets of information, opinion, and the occasional rant!

Anything to add?   Anything I've got wrong?   Use the guestbook link above or use my e-mail to share ideas and hints.

I acknowledge with immense gratitude

• the invaluable friendship, wisdom and help from fellow allotmenteers on the Seacroft Hall and the Oakwood Lane sites in Leeds, and on allotment and vegetable discussion boards;
• information culled from The Kitchen Garden Magazine, The Vegetable Expert by Dr D G Hessayon, The Organic Allotment by Anne Algar, who guided me through the first season, Grow Your Own Vegetables by Joy Larkcom, and the Kitchen Garden magazine;
• innumerable web-sites from which I have learned;
• lots of friends who have made contributions "behind the scenes" by e-mail.

The mistakes are mine; the strengths - those I owe to others.

For speed and simplicity, most pages are text only.   I have added some of my photographs in the diary section on separate pages, should you really want to see the team's ugly mugs.