The snow has gone, the days are warming up so it must be time for us to start our 2010 garden. After watching last night’s new series called Edible Garden, which is hosted by Alys Fowler, it would seem Hubs & I have been ahead of the trend.
In our tiny garden everything is grown in pots, hanging baskets or in the two small raised beds down the edge. As space is limited there are a few rules as to what we plant 1) it has to be edible or useful 2) colourful fruit/veg or flowers. Hubs very much concentrates on the fruit & veg and I do the herbs. First I must point out that Hubs & I are not exactly experienced with gardening. We’re the kind of chuck-it-in-and-see-what-happens type of gardeners. Every year we learn lessons and try not to make the same mistakes the following year. If your interested here are the links to The Garden – 2008 , The Garden – 2009 and the much toiled over Falstaff Sprouts.
The lessons we’ve learnt over the years:
- Squashes – triffids in disguise. They quickly take over a small garden.
- Globe artichokes – pretty but take up far too much room in a small garden for the amount you yield.
- Rhubarb – impossible to kill. Shame I don’t like the stuff.
- Brassicas – we are obsessed with planting them even though they can be pain thanks to pests. Hubs is always on Caterpillar Watch when we are planting these.
I love flowers and until now the only flowers had been on the veg/fruit plants or herbs but thanks to being influenced by Masterchef & James Wong I’m planning to grow edible flowers alongside my herbs. I’m starting with borage & marigolds. Borage – quite plain and simply I want to try it in Pimms. Marigolds – for various reasons from edible, medicinal and also companion planting as it helps to keep away aphids. Without realising it we already do quite a bit of companion planting. Chives for aphids & blackspot in roses; Basil for flies & mosquitos, Rosemary & Sage for cabbage moths, bean beetles and carrot flies. To be honest I’m not sure if it works but given we haven’t had to use any pesticides on the garden may be a good sign.
The rest of the garden plans include:
- Romanasco Cauliflower
- White Alpine Strawberries
- Pixie Cabbage
- Burpee’s Golden Beetroot
- Berlotti Firetongue beans
- Purple Haze Carrots
- Samurai carrots
- Inspired by Alys I’m also going to try and plant dried peas for pea shoots plus a few other things are bound to appear.
To start quite a few of the seeds off we plant them in little biodegradable newspaper pots made with the ingenious paper potter . Not only is it a great way of recycling, the pots are gratis thanks to the amount of free newspapers we get through the letterbox. These little seeds are then germinated on either the windowsill or little greenhouses we managed to pick up in Ikea. Hubs also has got plans to build some fancy cloches to help protect some of our plants once they are in the ground.
The thing I love most about gardening is the experimenting and seeing all the wildlife it brings to the garden. Nothing beats the satisfaction of eating delicious fruit or veg straight from your own garden.
Butcher Baker Baby 