Gardening for beginners

It all began at Christmas.
I watched The Victorian Farm, Wartime Kitchen & Garden and last but most inspiring of all The Edible Garden with Alys Fowler and read The Thrift Book by India Knight.

The common theme was keeping things simple. And that is what I seem to be searching for this year. I have noticed the cost of my veggies growing slowly but steadily over time. I am thinking about air miles on my food. But most of all, I get such a wonderful buzz when I eat, make or share things that have been homemade or grown.

So over Christmas, much to MrLB's dispare I started collecting, no hoarding actually, the plastic food containers that were pilling up in the recycling pile. These were going to be my seed trays. I kept a box full of bean and tomato tins for herb seeds and sweet talked my friend with a wine shop to save me any wooden wine boxes he could. I read, watched and asked so many questions to prepare for this huge project.

Then in March the hard work started, digging out this strip of weeded and solid soil. Note: this job was so big because in the whole time I have lived here, 7 years, none of us has ever weeded this bit. So it was compacted and left to nature. You can see it in the photo, it is about 5 meter by 1.5 meters, so it was back breaking stuff for a lazy bum like me! I decided after an hour and half a meter of progress that I was gong to have to do it in stages or I knew I would give up. The strange thing was that while I was sat in the mud I realised that all the guff running through my mind had gone silent. I was just sifting through the mud. There were no lists, no 'need tos', no nothing, and although that is strange for me, I kind of liked it.

That being said, I did have a plan in mind, my rough plan of what I wanted to grow and where. I eat loads of salad and veggies. I hate to admit it but I really don't like fruit. It all tastes sour to me and each bite is like punishment. So I decided that I would start with things I loved and spent money on every week.
Carrots, onions, courgette, lettice, cucmber, tomato and spinich. This little lot costs us about £8 a week from the shops.

In between my vigorous digging, followed by sitting sifting (not a technical term I know, just a form of recovery), I planted seeds. I set my self a budget and went to B&Q and got 10 packets of seeds for £4, 2 large bags of compost for £5 and a pair of gloves for 99p. That was my beginners budget.

In April I began using my food trays, which I stabbed drainage holes into and my soft moist compost and I planted each seed with love. I set up the table in our living room which gets the sun all day as the spot for me to watch these sprout rise from the soil. Every morning while I ate my breakfast I would chat to the soil and will on the seelings. Then everytime I saw a hint of keep peaaking through I got so excited. I don't have children so this for me is as close to the feeling of birth as I'll ever get! Then day but day they got stronger and bigger and the excitment didn't go.

One afternoon MrLB returned from work with a box, a large white box that rattled. He said it was a gift from him to keep me going on my green fingered adventure. It was my very own mini greenhouse!

I cried. We had seen this in Dobbies but it was £49! and I just couldn't justify spending that amount of money. But MrLB is a handy man. He found this one that had some broken pieces and bartered with the assistant to get it for £12! What a man.

So I was able to move some of the seed trays outside, meaning we had a little more room to eat at the table. That being said at first I did miss the dusky scent of soil and folage while I ate my cereal.

I started a gardening journal after about 3 weeks of planting my seed. Doing little drawings and sketches of their progress. I was really inspired by the illustrations which ran through the "Jamie, At Home" series. (The company who did them are called The Plant, unfortunately there are none of them in the book, but I found some images on line.)

Isn't this a wonderful way to record the diary or growth? I'm going to treat my self to a moleskin for the garden next year. I think this is the kind of journaling I can stick to, and get the pages dirty.

So I have been recording my efforts and over the summer enjoying the 'fruits' of my labour. I pick lettice and spinich beet each evening for dinner. I await my carrots being ready to pull, and I am chopping and sprinkling my herbs.

I have had some failures. Tomatos. My favorite veggie. I eat about 3 a day. There are so many amazing things you can do with a tomato. But they just keep beating me. My first lot of seeds grew to 3 feet tall and then got blight. My second lot got to 1 ft tall and flowering, then got blight. And my last lot which were established plant, got some other nasty disease.

But I will not give in. I was sharing my misery with a friend and he told me about some that really worked for him this year, so I'll give them a try next year. I also fried a whole set of seedlings during the summer. They were just about big enough to plant and the weather got really hot, and I went away for a couple of days, and they wilted and died in the heat of the green house.

I will not be beaten, and my heart has moved on from operation tomato and my energies are focused on the prospect of my own courgettes! Since I took this photo last week I have 4 growing on this plant and they are about 5cm. You can just see my baby onions on the right hand side.

Well, this is one of my new hobbies/ loves/ and thrifty pursuits.

Are you growing anything this year?
Who inspired your green fingered adventures?