How to play along at home, part 1 - PO-TA-TOES!

The most annoying thing about a convert is the zeal with which they try and get you to join them. Try talking to anyone who's still in the honeymoon phase of going to the gym about how you're struggling with your fitness and they'll be ready, eager and keen to sign you up, full of helpful suggestions about how you could come with them, there's a class that you'd just love and you'd feel so much better! You rarely get the hardsell from a long-time gym member, but you'll always get it from the person who's been going for 3-9 months and is pleasantly surprised to find that they're enjoying themselves.

It's hard to blame them really. It's a sign they like you - they're enjoying themselves and they want to to be happy too. And it's so easy now that they're in the swing of it!

With that example in mind, forgive me.

While I appreciate that very few people have the space, time, energy or obsessive personality to build a vegetable garden quite as daunting as mine, it is very easy and very rewarding to do something small. A couple of well-placed pots or a windowsill could allow you to turn dirt into food, with very little effort or cost. Quite apart from the satisfaction of eating something you killed yourself, the vegetables you get will taste better as they've not travelled and are fresh from the ground.

So, I've decided to write up some of the easiest and tastiest vegetables that I've accomplished, at the appropriate time of the year for my loyal reader(s) to try it themselves if they so wish.

Vegetable the first - potatoes

Five reasons to grow potatoes at home:
1) They taste better than any potato you will ever get from a supermarket or farmer's market
2) Potatoes are the easiest thing in the world to grow - they don't require a bed, fiddly little seeds or any knowledge whatsoever. All you have to do is put a little potato into some dirt, water it every now and again and from it will grow a plant that makes more potatoes.
3) They don't need much space, or sunlight, or anything. More sunlight is always better, but you can grow them anywhere.
4) You get a good return for not a huge outlay. Three bags, which take up approx 3ft² space will provide you with about 40 potatoes for an initial outlay of £20, but you can reuse the compost* and bags again next year (*compost may require a dose of inexpensive fertiliser next year). That means you'd just have to buy new seed potatoes, which would be about £2-£3 per year.
5)

Potatoes grow from other potatoes - if you've ever forgotten a bag in a kitchen cupboard and come back to spindly white tendrils, then you've accidentally a potato plant. It's best not to plant supermarket potatoes though, as they tend to be bred for eating and transport, not creating a new generation. You can get seed potatoes like these online, but you might find it cheaper (and more fun) to go down to a garden centre/Homebase and look through the varieties yourself. There are two main types: Earlies, planted from end of February and can be harvested from May onwards; and Maincrop, which are planted March and are harvested July/August onwards. Earlies are usually "new potato" types, while maincrops are bigger and more useful for chips, roasties, etc.

You often get seed potatoes delivered in January/February, as it's a good idea to chit them before you put them in the ground. Chitting just means leaving them in a cool, bright position, usually in an old egg box, so that they can get the light and start sprouting sprouts. It's not essential to do this step, but it will speed up your harvest.

People think of potatoes as being something grown in the earth and dug for, but the easiest way to grow them is in a bag on a patio or other hard surface.You can get a specially designed bag like this one for only £2.99 on Amazon, but you can also recycle an old compost bag if you have one/live anywhere near me and want to cadge one. I've got dozens going spare, so feel free. The only rules for the bag are that it has to have some holes in the bottom to drain water and that it has to be relatively opaque. Potatoes that see sunlight while they're in the ground are bad for you, so no clear tubs, bags or boxes.

All you need do is roll the edges of your bag down so that it's only about 1-2 ft high and pour in a thick layer of compost. Put in three seed potatoes on the compost, equidistant from one another and with the sprouting bits pointing up, and cover them up with another layer of compost. Water them twice a week or whenever the earth seems dry - a surprising amount of edible potato is water, so best to keep them too damp than too dry.

In time, you will end up with three bushy green plants poking up through the soil. When they are about 1.5ft high, roll up the edge of the bag so that it's now as tall/slightly taller than the plant and then pour more compost on top of the plants until all but the top few leaves are covered. Yes, this will feel like you're murdering the plant that you worked so hard to make happen. However, we're not interested in the green bit; we're interested in the potatoey-goodness of the roots and the deeper the dirt, the more room there is for spuds.

The plants will recover from the indignity of being earthed up and will valiantly create another 1.5ft of foliage again. Teach them that life is cruel, roll up the edges of the bag to make it deeper and pour more compost on, again leaving the top few leaves uncovered.

Rinse and repeat until the bag is fully unrolled and as tall as it can get and the compost is a few inches from the top. The potatoes will revel in their freedom and create a bushy top of green bits and sometimes flowers to celebrate. Ignore this; they're just showing off.

What you're waiting for is for the green bits to start dying. Yes, it's a plant that signals when it's done by going yellow and falling over - how great is that?! Once that happens, your potatoes are just about ready. You don't need to dig them up immediately - you can leave them in the bags for several months and it won't make the slightest difference to them. Some of mine last year stayed in the bags for 6 months without any effect.

All you need do is cut off and remove the dying greeny bits and dig through your compost, looking for spuds. It's quite a good idea to save the bag that the compost came in and then you can pour it back in bit by bit and remove the potatoes as you see them. As I mentioned earlier, everything can be reused next year with a little bit of extra fertiliser.

If anyone in and around Bath is interested in trying this, there is a good chance that I will have a couple of seed potatoes and some usable bags that will be open to good homes. Apply below if you want to give potatoes a try.

PJW

Beginnings and experiments - January carrots

The first seeds have been sown.

You're not supposed to sow vegetable seeds in January as a rule - too cold, too damp, not enough sun and any gardener who gets overenthused and sows too early will get nothing but disappointment and sickly seedlings that are starved of sunlight. I know this mostly cause I did it last year, but it's very hard not to. Winter's back is broken, the sun's coming out again (in patches) and the month of January is filled with preparation of beds, acquiring of compost and planning of where everything's going to go. All of the seed packets you ordered have arrived and it's very hard not to jump the gun and get right down to it in the hope that the weather will have picked up by the time you come to plant out, right?

I'm attempting to stop myself from giving in this year by giving in in a very controlled fashion and experimenting with indoor carrots.

Carrots are supposed to germinate at 10⁰C, but air temperatures outside at the moment are wavering from freezing to a max of 11⁰C, which is far from ideal. Quite apart from that, soil temperatures in the ground and raised beds won't warm up for at least a month without help. So my theory goes that maybe if you plant them in pots, in an area that will always be >10⁰C, you might be able to trick them into thinking that it's February/March (when you're supposed to plant them). Our baby daughter is going to be looking to try out solid food for the first time in a month or so and it would be lovely if we could start her with some homegrown carrot.

I've got two experiments on the go at once for this. The first is inside my raggedy plastic greenhouse thing, which in theory should trap heat and lead to a warmer air temperature than that outside. This works in theory and would probably work a lot better if the plastic greenhouse weren't riddled with holes. We live on top of a very steep hill and when the wind blows, it howls, so the plastic greenhouse has been wired down in several different ways since it was bought last year and each tiny hole for wiring has allowed erosion to eat away at the plastic cover. Frankly, I'm a little dubious as to how insulating it might be compared to, say, a colander, but it's all I have at the moment. The pot is swaddled in bubble wrap as an insulator and hopefully it'll be slightly warmer than if it were just outside.

The second is actively indoors, on a table near a window. This has the advantage of being guaranteed to be above 10⁰C, but the disadvantage of not getting a brilliant amount of light. We don't have any south facing windows in our house (being semi-detached) and growing things on windowsills has proven a challenge before. My hope is that carrots don't need a huge amount of sunlight in their early days and that the weather will pick up enough/they'll grow strong enough for me to put the pot outside before they suffer too much.

In theory, it should work. Maybe there's a reason that back garden gardeners don't grow carrots inside and maybe I'll find out, but as for now, it's an adventure and it's saved me from the urge to plant anything else too early.

PJW

A new (growing) year's resolution

Or - The Challenge!

The whole thing has just gone horribly out of control and, worst of all, it's looking feasible. It's a larger garden, but it's significantly better planned than before and keeping all the brassica under nets should in theory mean a massive reduction in pest-control time and a much greater amount eaten by me rather than the local wildlife.

This brings us to the current situation. Whilst there is great satisfaction in the work itself, the main payoff was being able to sit down to a roast dinner and say that everything not meat on that plate came from the sweat off my brow (not literally). Don't think I haven't had to talk myself out of keeping chickens to complete the plate either!

Not having to buy a vegetable for the second half of last year was phenomenally satisfying and, as I watched this monstrous time-sink take shape, I decided to see how far I could stretch it. By my calculations, with prudent planting, veg choice, storage and freezing, I could possible go the whole year without buying a single vegetable. "Could possibly" has since turned into "will" as I love a challenge and frankly, I'm a little bit drunk with power. I've put things in the ground and they've made food. On a semi-regular basis. That's one step away from omnipotence as far as the 2012 me of "Probably a nettle" is concerned.

So, the challenge is that from May 2014 to April 2015, we will buy no fresh vegetables at all, apart from the following exceptions: onions, garlic, bell peppers, tomatoes, cucumber and lettuce*. I will aim to have emptied out my freezer and cupboards of any non-excluded tinned or frozen veg before May, so I can have a go at complete self-sufficiency**  *** ****.

This blog is going to be one part journal and one part collating all the knowledge that I've picked up already and the new informations that my mistakes will inevitably lead to blunder into. If anyone does start reading this and have any requests, I have actually learned a lot already and am happy to share. Or you can just come to mock my pain, either way.

Wish me luck. I'll need it.

PJW

* I will actually be attempting to grow all of these. However, I've failed in varying degrees at all of them last year and the first four are such staples of my cooking that I couldn't bear trying to survive it I fail again. If my cabbages don't come through, I'll live. If I don't have any onions or tomatoes, I'll starve.
** Apart from my need for copious amounts of animal flesh
*** And my unhealthy addiction to Diet Coke
****  And the unholy amounts that I will need to spend on compost and other assorted dirts. I've been running a compost heap since last year, but it's a thimbleful in the ocean of dirt needed to keep up with my expanding garden.

A very grand adventure

Or - the background

I moved into my first house just under two years ago. It had a green grassy space out the front and a odd-shaped long triangular concreted bit at the back. I had previously rented a house with a garden, but seeing as I tended to kill plants and had actually resorted to paying a friend to tend it, I was somewhat relieved to only have one green bit to contend with. My knowledge of plants was such that I chose to identify every plant as "possibly a nettle", on the basis that it had as good a chance of being correct as any other guess I might make.

The concreted section was quite nice, I thought. A good little space that we could have deckchairs out in and maybe a barbecue. I wasn't very good at plants at all, so it was for the best.

Ay me. Life was so simple back then.

Corruption came in the form of two little raised beds of earth behind one of the garden sheds. One of them was clearly for strawberries and Wife was quite interested in keeping them going. However the other puzzled me - it was filled with deep, loose compost that looked as though it had been recently turned. Someone suggested, "Maybe they grew potatoes there?" and an unexpected little thought crept into my head.

"I bet I could do that."

Unfortunately, the gardening shop that I went to for seed potatoes also had onion sets for sale for only a couple of pounds, so I bought some of them too. I went back home, read the instructions and realised that I needed a bit more space than I actually had. I wasn't going to throw away any that didn't fit; hell no! What I clearly needed, was a larger raised bed.

I extended the first, then built a second when it was clear that wouldn't do the job. I then looked at my work and, instead of being sane and thinking that I was done, wondered if it was possible to grow broccoli and cauliflower at home. A quick google confirmed it was perfectly possible, if a little bit late in the year to be starting, and I was once again back to the garden centre, buying massive amounts of compost and top-soil to build another raised bed out of bits of wood I had lying around in the shed.

The first year, I failed at broccoli and cauliflower (despite a promising start) and achieved only 5p-sized onions. Even the potatoes, which were a pretty good success, only gave me enough for two, maybe three meals worth. Worst of all, I got a new thought in my head.

"I bet I could do better next year with a bit of planning."

The potatoes had given me hope, you see. I'd put something in the ground and against all expectations, not only had a green thing come out at the top, but it'd successfully made food underneath. By the loosest of definitions, I had successfully gardened, and I was intrigued to see how far I could push my luck.

The second year, I discovered that, yes I could do a lot better with a bit of planning. I could grow a great number of crops to feed caterpillars. I've officially done my bit for the butterfly population and ensured that my darling daughter will never, ever be read "The Very Hungry Caterpillar." Or if I do read it to her, it will have my own personal twist about the thieving little villain and the comeuppance that he would inevitably get.

However, while the caterpillars did eat as much as we did, we ate a lot. I got broccoli, courgettes and carrots, graduated to 10p-sized onions, discovered growing potatoes in sacks, toyed with runner beans, learned a lot about what does and doesn't like to grow in a container (swedes, not so much) and managed to go from June to November without having to buy a single vegetable from the shops. The concreted area also gained four new raised beds, some grape vines, a fig tree and an astonishing amount of new pots. I don't like to think too long about how much I've spent on compost and top soil.

At the end of last year, I decided I was going to rationalise my production and aim for a smaller growing space. I couldn't defend the larger area against the depredations of the local butterflies and even my slightly guilty resorting to pesticides hadn't made much of a dent. Besides, just having had our first child, it would be more sensible to reduce things down to a more sensible and more manageable level.

Having made this eminently sensible decision, I have somehow ended up with this monstrosity as my plan for the forthcoming year:

It started off so innocently. I bought a pop-up garden net cage to protect my main bed (click on the link if you're planning on growing brassica, it's really good and it beats finding a cooked caterpillar on your broccoli halfway through a meal) and was really impressed by it. So I got one for the other two big beds. Those beds weren't 1.25m x 1.25m though, so I extended them out a bit so they fit the nets. And while I was doing that, I might as well move the plastic greenhouse to a more sensible place... that's actually given me more room round that other bed; I bet I could extend that out to 1.25m2 by using these spare bricks and get another net for that... but the bricks aren't staying put unless I wedge them in with something like these extra pots... which clears up room over there and I was talking about getting some raspberries, wasn't I... but they only come in a set of 12 and that space isn't big enough, so I bet I could squeeze in another bed there and use that other space for the blackberries that I've been thinking of...

Oh dear.

Next, the new year's resolution.