You've guessed it, I'm new and have a lot of looking around here to do!
But first I thought I'd introduce myself a little bit.
I'm a 'mature' woman who hasn't had a garden since she was a child, who has just 'aquired' (after a four and a half year wait!
) an allotment in dirty dusty London! It's a real learning curve! 
In seven weeks we (well the hubby has actually
) cleared 45ftX90ft of seven foot high brambles! Hubby has installed 11 raised beds for me so far, and I have planted WAAAY too much in each and every bed! We still have more than half the plot to cultivate, but what the hey! We will at long last start to eat stuff that hasn't created a massive carbon foot print, and I'm hoping to learn how to make a pond to encourage the wild life too, and then perhaps next year I'll take some courses and learn how to keep bees as well... all good stuff I'm not sure you'd call me 'selfsufficient'-even 'ish', but I do call myself frugal, and resent paying for something I can make or do myself! So I bake my own bread, biscuits and cakes, knit, sew or crochet a lot of my own clothes, (even my slippers are crocheted, but I still have to convince the husband to try some himself!
All this can be hard when you live in a 'throw-away' city like London, so I guess you could say I march to a different drum
