Welcome to the first blog for vegswap. I will be writing about me, my family, friends and fellow allotmenteers and our experience of growing our own produce. I am a novice gardener and I am looking forward to writing about my lessons learned, my successes and failures and what it is about growing our own that is fast becoming a national hobby.
We are pretty pleased with ourselves so far. Most things we have tried to grow have succeeded – some better than others of course. We don’t always know the right thing to do but we have worked out that if in doubt, do what everyone else is doing. And we have been very grateful for the gentle advice our friendly fellow allotmenteers have given us.
It is ironic therefore, that until about two years ago my time spent in the company of plants mainly involved cutting bits of them off. I had (and still have, it has to be said) a fondness for pruning. The garden is small and pretty much looks after itself so I can happily focus most of my attention on the allotment. It is also fortunate I guess, that generally vegetables don’t require too much pruning.
For us, the business of growing our own started in the spring of 2007 when we were lent a part of an allotment as the owner couldn’t manage the whole area that year. We started off with four 2m by 2m beds and packed them full of whatever plug plants we could get our hands on. It was great. Every evening in the summer I would pop over with a glass of wine just to look. I guess it was love at first sight and now we have a 30m by 6m plot of our own.
I get huge satisfaction out of not only growing, but the actual cooking of our own food. But this is a relatively sparse time on the allotment and there’s not so much fresh stuff to eat. However, we only recently finished the last of the Desiree potatoes and the last three butternut squash are destined for a vegetarian lasagne on the weekend. Even the last bag of frozen beetroot has just gone pureed up into a chocolate cake – isn’t it great how many sneaky ways there are to feed children vegetables! Even so, we still have plenty of leeks and swede. The purple spouting broccoli is looking hopeful despite being attacked by pigeons in the autumn and even some parsley has withstood the cold winter.
All I need to do now is defrost the freezer (or maybe just buy a bigger one), check out my stock of seeds and get my wellies on.