A new phase: mission statement and privacy

It’s been a long time since I last wrote a blog post of my own.

This blog started off as a way to share my enthusiasm as I took my first steps in the world of allotment growing (Orto di Casa Cecconi means: the plot of the Cecconi household). When I became a professional, the blog turned into a diary, sharing my own learning and providing future reference.

Then I moved (with most of my plants), and I had a phase in which I tried to acclimatise, writing and speaking more Dutch. However, English remains my first language, the one I am most comfortable communicating in, so here I am, hopefully a little bit wiser. After all, when you go into some depth into another language, you do learn different ways of looking at problems, different ways of doing things.

I also have 6 more years of experience of gardening, particularly with fruit: I have a small collection of apple trees and dare say I am specialising in fruit. In fact, I hardly ever grow veg any more, even though I am keen on expanding my herbs’ collection. I am also gardening under slightly different environmental conditions here in the Netherlands (continental climate, peat and clay soil etc.). What has not changed is my passion for growing from seed (everything about seeds really) and good pruning.

For the last year and a half I have written the newsletter for my allotment site, putting some extra thought in what kind of horticultural information people might be looking for. I sit in a couple of gardening groups and I observe the questions that come in: it’s often the same question, over and over again, at a particular time of the year – we all have the same problems! So that is what I will try to do here: address some questions about plants, pests and diseases, and good practices that are of interest at a particular time of the year. To start with, I will reuse some material I researched for and wrote in the newsletter already. I do reserve the right to throw anything in that I care about, that catches my fancy, and the odd memory. What you will NOT find is what gadgets to buy or any influencers’ hacks: if you are after that sort of stuff, better be on your way, as I hate all that with a passion.

This blog was migrated from Blogger to WordPress and am I ironing out the little snags – please bear with me.
The content is published under a BY-NC-ND Creative Commons License.
The site is hosted in the EU (migration to be completed over the summer), I do not use AI or optimise for search engines and I certainly do not track visitors (WordPress does use some cookies though, see their privacy policy).

I hope you feel welcome here and enjoy my content.