As much as it’s part of my living to encourage more people to garden, and in particular grow their own veg, I’m fully aware of the commitment it requires. Hence this is first time in a few years I’ve been making the required effort myself.

            There’s a couple of reasons for this, I find my gardening interests sway each year with this being one where I wish to focus on a veg again, and jings, with the price of everything these days I’m happy to be saving myself a bit of money.

I regularly use bags of salad leaves as an example on this. In the Cunningham household of four, two of which are food disposal unit teenagers, we can go through four or five bags of salad a week. This comes in at approximately £5 of our Sunday big shop, but this year I have been harvesting from our own since the start of May, hopefully going through to the end of September, meaning we could be saving ourselves £120 over the course of the growing season.

Every little helps!

Of course, this is part motivation but overall, I just can’t beat the simple satisfaction of heading into my 6 x 8 greenhouse to pick some cut and come again lettuce from the pots I have growing in here, for the healthy salad option as part of my lunch.

I grow this way as I don’t have a dedicated veg plot in my garden. I take a total of three harvests from each pot I sow before discarding as I feel the leaves don’t taste as nice if I take any more, tasting slightly bitter. In a process called successional sowing, I sow a few pots every two weeks, munching from one as the others recover. Give it a go, it’s great fun! You’ve still got time to sow these, radish, carrots and salad onions to garnish your plates over the summer months.

First early potatoes planted at the start of April will soon be ready for digging up, one sign that they are near picking is the flowers that will appear. Funny though, whilst looking at those growing in the plot at the Beechgrove Garden, the second earlies that were planted a couple of weeks later have more flowers on them. I then recalled how when I was last checking four weeks ago the foliage of the first earlies was browned by a frost. I said at the time no long term damage will have been done but looks like they may have been set back in their growth rate which is how the seconds are now appearing to be ready before those planted earlier.

Carrots are looking good too, growing away nicely within the confines of their fleece protection. This isn’t them being precious demanding privacy on the plot but is for their own good to protect them from the carrot root fly. These swines fly low and if given the opportunity would seek out the distinctive carrot aroma and lay eggs in the soil next to the roots, which the resulting larvae will munch through the carrots we so longed to enjoy ourselves.

One task typically needing done now is the thinning out of the rows of seeds sown over the previous weeks, my eye focused on my beetroot. Germination can be fickle, so when we sow along the row created in the soil we tend to place more seed in the bottom than we need. At this point, once we see what’s has managed to survive the wet and dry, one day warm then cold and wet conditions of spring, we can start to remove some of the plants whilst they are still at a young stage and easy to pull out.

Placing one hand beside the plants to firm the soil and keep those we wish to keep in place, using my finger and thumb pinch out the beetroot seedlings I don’t need carrying this task out when they are at least 3cm in height. I’m aiming for a plant spacing of around 5cm so when the beetroots have grown to roughly the size of a golf ball I will harvest those for the kitchen, removing every second one. The rest will remain in the ground to grow until they are ready to pull out of the ground once grown to the size of a tennis ball.

I’ve spotted one early disaster though. Checking over the plants growing in the brassica cage- cauliflowers, cabbages, kale and sprouts- I noticed some of the plants looking like they needed a drink which was strange as the soil was clearly dark in colour and full of moisture from the rains. I dug a plant up and on closer inspection found the maggot of the brassica root fly nibbling away in the roots. If only a collar of fabric was placed around the neck of the plant when planted, this could’ve been avoided.

Thankfully I’ve still a few spare plants growing on, homegrown sprouts for the Christmas dinner plate will not be cancelled this year!