matthew and i have been undertaking some gardening recently. we are not quite tom and barbara in the good life, but we now have some veg growing. in the past i have been known to grow a few veggies in pots and when epping forest district council gave us all wheelie bins i took the opportunity to convert my old dustbin into a potato bin. however the last two summers have both involved moving house, so there was no veg growing.
back in april i sowed some seeds - tomato, beans and carrots. we also planted some potatoes in the bin, i did protest that it was a bit early, but my friendly live-in farmer told me that they were already planting them in the fields! my friendly live-in farmer then refused to let the seeds germinate in the house as the compost was manure based and would therefore smell, so they had to make do with the garage. the carrots were the first to sprout, eventually followed by the tomatoes. the beans however refused point blank to show any sign of growth. then disaster overtook the carrot seedlings as they proceeded to die off one by one.
last week i visited my local country store, aka cornwall farmers, bought some bean plants and grow bags and then had an evening of potting up. we had also in the meantime acquire a pepper and a chilli plant.
so now we have two pots of beans, seven tomato plants (half cherry toms and half normal toms), a chilli plant, a pepper plant, a dustbin of potatoes and 1 carrot. yep. 1 carrot! maybe i should plant some more seedlings, but i am not sure that they would fare much better next time around. the strawberry plants that i already had have survived the winter and are already flowering and setting strawberries, so for a garden that has no flowerbed we are doing quite well. we are experimenting with a new watering system seen at a friends house, using wine bottles - will let you know how that goes, but since installing them it has done nothing but rain!
i am reasonably confident that we will be eating some of this in the next couple of months and if you live in cornwall you may even get to taste some yourself! the next hurdle the plants will have to survive is our two week holiday starting next weekend... i will of course keep you updated.
just to update you on our garden produce. we've had a few, very tasty, strawberries, but with only four plants there were never going to be loads, however the plants are reflowering so we may get a second crop. the potatoes were a let down. having had loads of healthy looking leaves, they suddenly wilted, so we decided to harvest and got a lot of very small, but again tasty, potatoes. i think ants were the problem here, the bin was full of them when matthew harvested.
