Last year I had some success at growing food in the back garden. The garden consists of about a third paving, a third gravel and a third decking, with a small flower bed. Not exactly an urban oasis then, as a result almost everything was grown in trays, pots and planters. I say almost because we have a rosemary plant in the flower bed which appears to be almost indestructible and regularly provides garnish for all sorts of roasts. It’s so successfull, I’ve take to chopping large bits off to use as air freshener in place of those god-awful plug-in things.
As an aside on those air fresheners, I work in the ship repair industry and we were recently using an epoxy-based sealant for a hull fitting which had all kinds of scary health warning symbols on the packet; you know the kind of thing, crosses, skulls, dead fish, etc. I’ve been somewhat concerned to find the same warning symbols on the plug-in air freshener currently fragrancing the house.
Anyway, back to the garden: Last year I planted a wide variety of fruits, vegetables and herbs and whilst some plants were successful, others were far from so. To begin with, here’s what I sowed: runner beans, aubergines, garlic, cucumbers, tomatoes, chillies, peppers, mint, thyme and rocket.
The beans and cucumbers were put in long pots like window boxes, everything else was sowed in pots except the tomatoes which are a tumbler variety and went in hanging baskets.
So lessons learned then: the beans, aubergines and the herbs were, er… less than successful. The other crops all faired well, but suffered from my enthusiasm in overplanting. So the plan this year is to plant less seeds with the intention of giving the plants that do make it more of chance to grow bigger. I should point out that I’m using homemade compost, I have a heap full of the stuff!
So we’ll se what this year brings, hopefully some late summer barbeques with exlcusively homegrown salad.
Filed under: Environment, Gardening, Sowing
