How does your garden grow: September 28th 2008

Hello, my name is Lynn (otherwise known as sparkx) and I am 37 years old. I am a wife and mother of two boys and live right beside the seaside in the southeast of England. With the growing recession and rising costs of food I have decided to take the plunge and grow my own fruit, vegetables and maybe the odd flower or two, as best I can. I have absolutely no idea about how to grow vegetables, I have no lush green garden, only a square decked area.

My first hurdle was to find a plot. Allotments in this area have a 10 year waiting list, and I'm not sure I could handle an allotment, all I need is a small area of which to have a play. After asking around the family I was offered a small peice of my uncle's garden, approximately 16.5' x 4.5', just perfect enough for me to manage. Next hurdle is to find out where on earth to start, how to prepare, what to grow and how to maintain, and of course with little or no expense, else it would defeat the object.

I hope to encourage my children and maybe their friends to get involved. On first mention they show absolutely no interest whatsoever, all the hard work and prepeartions will be done by me. I am curious to see whether as time goes on and things start to grow they will start to take an interest, here's hoping. If they don't help grow it then they won't help eat it ...

So here goes, the beginning of what will hopefully be a long term, easy to manage, beautifully tasty crop of food. It may be that everything gets eaten by slugs, it may be that there is not enough sunlight, the birds eat everything, or it may be that I end up with the most brilliant crop of foods, only time will tell.

I hope you enjoy the adventure as much as I do, and most of all I hope it might inspire you to have a go :o) (Or if it fails miserably it will make you feel better about not trying it)

Tuesday, 7 October 2008

September 28th 2008

Today I have started to prepare the earth, the first dig over. It's a back breaking job, lots of well established weeds & roots. I have managed to do about 4/5 of it, but due to having two severley torn 'hang' nails, as the grass got thicker and tougher I could not pull it out as it was catching on the broken nails (typical woman)

I have now come home and cut all my nails down to nothing, I must be serious, my hands look like a man's, my neatly manicured beautiful long nails are no more, all in the duty of doing what one must to save the planet.

As far as my research has gone I have figured out the earth needs to be turned over as much as possible, and all weeds must be banished. It must then be fertilised, the best fertiliser being farm manure. So I will spend the next couple of motnhs turning, weeding and fertilising. The earth itself is actually very nice, I am surprised, it feels rich, it looks rich, it's not chalky, it isn't clay like, which I thought it might be being so close to the sea, I don't know why. I am observing where the most sunlight is and where the most shade is, and when i get to the point of deciding what is to be planted where I guess I should have to take that in to consideration.

Not a bad job for a couple of hours work!

Useful Site for Preperation info

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