New Year, New Challenges

It's a new growing season and it's almost time to start planting things again!

Last year was all about 'the challenge' - whether I could grow an entire year's worth of vegetables in my back garden and go a calendar year without having to buy any. As it turns out, I couldn't. Well, I couldn't on my first attempt, certainly not with the number of mistakes I'd made or the choices of vegetables that I'd gone for.

Now, I did consider trying again. It is possible to do, but the problem is that it's not possible to do in a very interesting fashion - the answer seems to lie in planting nothing but lots of potatoes, green beans, courgettes and broccoli, and cramming the freezer full to survive winter. This strikes me as dull.

So instead, I've decided to give the challenge a miss and instead have a mixture of productive and fun. This means that carrots are still on the list, but sod growing any orange ones - I'm growing purple or nothing this year. Same with cauliflower. I have an ambition of growing the ingredients for a vibrant purple soup.

I am also growing a lot of plants that I've found in a very interesting book, James Wong's Homegrown Revolution. The theory behind it is that there are over 2,500 edible plants that can grow in the UK's climate, but most gardening books and garden centres only talk about 20-25: sprouts, swede, carrots, cauliflower, cabbages, potatoes, etc. Back in Victorian times, people grew all kinds of crazy things in their gardens; there are reports of people successfully growing pineapples using only glass and horse manure for heating. However, this all stopped with the World Wars and the emphasis on Dig For Victory - everyone was encouraged to Grow Your Own, but most people didn't know how. So the propaganda departments made leaflets and other literature telling people how and what to grow.

Nicked from https://emmymakesthings.wordpress.com/2013/10/27/vegetables-all-year-round/

So the reason why garden centres sell you cauliflowers, despite them being an absolute bitch to grow, is because a wartime bureaucrat had to make a list of patriotic vegetables - brassica made it in, while things like jerusalem artichokes and courgettes did not. After the war and rationing, people were in the habit of growing and eating the same old staid vegetables that the government told them it was patriotic to grow.

Homegrown Revolution's is a book about the many and varying vegetables that are fun, productive, make the best use of space and thrive in the UK climate. This year I will be trying out asparagus peas, kokihi, chop suey greens, electric daisies, saffron, purslane, sea kale, day lilies, dahlia yams, chinese artichokes and oca. Looking forward to new experiences from those!

January and February in the garden have mostly been about planning where I'm going to fit all of these things in. In previous years, there's been so much expansion of beds and creating new spaces, that most of the growing areas were filled with new compost and so rotation wasn't strictly necessary. This year, however, I'm absolutely determined I'm not going to create any more beds, so I've gone for some crop rotation and am resting my two oldest brassica beds to give them a chance to recover.

This means that I have two 1.25m square beds to use on interesting things. One of them is going to be set aside for root vegetables, which is a bit boring, but the second is going to be used for another go at The Three Sisters companion planting system. Last year, this experiment was notable for me planting the wrong type of beans (dwarf rather than climbing) and getting absolutely sod all out of planting a pumpkin. However, I did get some nice beans and sweetcorn out of it, and the idea of a three-way companion plant interests me enough to give it another go, but substituting courgettes in for the recalcitrant pumpkins. Plus, I found a variety of red sweetcorn to plant, which is worth the entrance fee on its own.

Do you see how cool this is!?

Here's the plan of how everything will fit together:

Click to embiggen.

This plan is already out of date and I've yet to actually plant anything out yet. Par for the course. Planting proper starts this week, beginning with early broccoli, indoor carrots, early onions and the first potato planting of the year. Looking forward to it.

PJW