Growing our own vegetables

April 18th, 2010

My wife and I decided this year that we would have a go at growing our own vegetables after watching the new BBC series, the edible garden. We are total novices at growing anything because we have only had our garden for 2 years and the first year it was all patio slabs that needed digging out. Now we have replaced the slabs with 4 homemade raised beds (made from decking boards screwed in a rectangle). 

So far we have had variable success growing our seedlings, (indoors for the moment as we don’t have a greenhouse yet).  We have adapted our spare bedroom to house all our plants; the whole of the windowsill is covered as well as an open bookcase near to the window. A heated propagator has proven very successful to get the seedlings started off well.

The most successful seedlings have been beetroot and tomato, and I would recommend growing these to anyone, no experience necessary. The great thing about tomatoes is that they are very productive. Each healthy plant will give you multiple fruits. Lettuce, cucumber, beans and peas will also give you a bumper crop if cared for correctly.

Our less successful crops have been Brussels sprouts and cauliflower which started off promisingly, but shot up with very thin stems and could not hold their own weight after a few weeks. Our carrots have also been a bit of a failure, because the seeds are so tiny we planted far too many per pot, in a pot made for a couple of carrot plants (each plant only produces one carrot) we had planted about 25 plants.  We could have thinned them (meaning plucking out the weaker plants) but we never got around to it.

If you are interested in growing your own then there are a few good places to start. Firstly visit http://www.bbc.co.uk/gardening/digin/ where they have been giving away free seeds. This is an annual event promoted by gardener’s world to get people to grow their own. The beauty of this is that is your plants are not successful you won’t feel like you have wasted your money.  You will also need some basic gardening supplies, like compost and pots and you can find everything you could possibly want in the range at B&Q.

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