Information and Advice about growing vegetables
Vegetable growing can be so rewarding - yet also frustrating! Our advice and information about growing vegetables is meant to take the hit and miss element out of it. Fresh vegetables cannot be beaten for taste and nutritional value.
The number one problem of growing vegetables is that it is seen as being hard work - and it is! But only if you do it the old-fashioned way. Not everyone wants an allotment - and no wonder. Most of the allotments I see are run down affairs - rife with vandalism and theft. Add the extra demands upon time for most of us - work and family for both sexes - and it is easy to see why not too many people want to - or can - go back to the good life!
It need not be so. There are many innovative ways to grow a few vegetables or fresh fruit, that can actually be productive - and fun. OK, so you will still have to pop down to the local store for top ups, but once you start tasting fresh from the garden produce, you will want to do and produce more.
One
of the big mistakes made in vegetable growing, is the glut!
Old methods will show rows of cabbages, carrots, turnips and
the like. They all come to maturity at the same time. that
is where the lack of enthusiasm can start after a first
attempt at growing your own vegetables. How are you supposed
to cope with the sudden acquisition of thirty or forty
lettuce for instance.
The secret is simple - Grow to scale! Let innovation creep in to your vegetable aspirations. Yes - ignore the seed packets and old books. Grow what you can eat at any given time. We all hear of succession planting. It works, but it also involves more work and organisation - and TIME!
Growing Vegetables can be FUN!
If you are a hardened vegetable grower who can spend their time looking after a fair sized pot, hats off to you. You will have learned how to store and how to grow in required quantities. It takes time. Not everyone has that time - mores the pity.
This is for those who are perhaps making their first attempt - or even re-trying after many failures. Those who have enough on their plate (pun intended) coping with the garden of flowers and lawns. Even those that do not have a garden as such - maybe just a balcony. You CAN GROW VEGETABLES!
Vegetables can be grown in pots, window boxes, hanging baskets and basically anything that can hold a bit of soil or compost. Even an old welly! We have all heard of walled gardens, and I must profess to being lucky enough to have one. But virtually any wall can be a garden. Imaging for instance, a sunny wall full of juicy strawberries in hanging pots on the wall!
The patio containers, the flower borders, even a shrub border, can be home to a few vegetables that will NOT look out of place. The purple foliage of Beetroot, the multi coloured stems of Swiss Chard, the border edging of Frilly Lettuce in various shades of bronze, the wigwam of colourful flowers on the runner beans. (My father used to have people knocking on his door - asking what that pretty plant was on his patio. A container full of runner beans growing up and around five bamboo canes!)
I can tell you now, that the taste of new spuds grown in an old pot is something that will get you hooked on this fun way of growing vegetables. Rows and rows of potatoes - forget it! Unless you want to - or have to.