Vegetable Gardening & Me!
Starting this blog got me thinking, “where did I get my interest in vegetable gardening.” I reckon the answer is simple – my grandmother. As a tot I used to watch her fascinated as she would fanatically cram plants into anything that would hold soil! Not vegetables I grant you, infact mostly geraniums but they would be unceremoniously plonked into anything from empty margarine cartoons to old watering cans. The amazing thing is though with a little TLC they grew and grew well. Looking back my gran used many of the secrets I later found out for myself and am going to pass on to you, for your vegetable gardening exploits – those oldens knew a thing or two!
At the tender age of five I moved with the whole family down to Lymington in Hampshire. For those that don’t know and my friends across the pond, Lymington is a quaint old seafaring town right slap bang in the middle of the south coast of England. Back then it was a sleepy little hollow with working boats coming and going from the picturesque quay. Today however it’s very different; a high class and very desirable area – in fact it has just been voted the number one seaside town to live in the UK, two years in a row – I diagress! The reason for my telling you this has little to do with Lymington and lots to do with the garden I suddenly found my self playing and growing up in. Gone was the large expanse that was our garden in the leafy suburbs of London and instead there was nothing much larger than a postage stamp stuck at the back of the shop my mother had insisted we bought and hence our reason for our moving to Lymington.
What on earth has this got to do with vegetable gardening I hear you cry – not a lot so far, but bear with it, the second 10,000 words get better – lol! Seriously thought, it was in this tiny garden between the ages of 5 and 14 that I started to get my introduction to how plants and vegetables could be successfully grown in confined spaces. Everything, I kid you not, from fir trees 20 feet high to strawberry plants were grown in that little place all in containers none bigger than a couple of feet across and the same deep – it was a neccesity. And so it was that my family through trial and plenty of error learned the art of vegetable gardening and I as a growing lad developed what has turned out to be a life long passion for the pursuit.
So why the vegetable gardening blog?
Now many years, countries, careers and gardens later, I find myself once again with a small patch to call my own and have rekindle all the tricks of old to transform what space I have into a highly productive garden, producing all might and manner of goodies from courgettes to strawberries, and all of them in containers or raised beds. Now as some of you know a lot of my produce is used to fuel my love of preserving which I already share with the world through my website “Pickles, Jams & Preserves.” So it dawned on me wouldn’t it be fun to incorporate my love of gardening with my love of preserving and put together a little veg patch ramble to add to “Pickles, Jams & Preserves” so I can share some of the methods I use with you guy’s and prehaps encourage you to grow some of your own fruit and veg for preserving or even heaven forbid eating fresh if there’s any left over!/p>
So why not join me in some vegetable gardening exploits? Were going to look at lots of novel ways of making raised beds and containers, both permenant and disposable, how to best propogate your plants from seed, how to nurture your vegetable garden with the least effort and the equipment we use to make our life that much easier. There’s going to be reviews of vegetable gardening products, a hints and tips section and somewhere for you to leave your bright ideas for us to share.
So guys, welcome to my little veg patch and please feel free to leave all the comment you like. Any suggestion are always well received and I’ll try and reply to as many queires and questions as you put to me. I’m always available on jess@my-container-vegetable-gardening.com so go head and email me today!
