Growing Food

GROWING FOOD

I get a lot of pleasure from growing food in my garden, watching the abundance of crops emerge from just a few tiny seeds.

I learned a lot from my parents who for as long as I can remember always had a patch of the garden designated for growing food. We had fruit trees as well as bountiful crops of vegetables and salads.

There is nothing nicer than freshly picked salad ingredients, one of the nicest being Tomatoes. Have you noticed that when you buy tomatoes in the supermarket, they have little or no smell? Whether you buy them prepacked or loose they never seem to have that delicious freshly picked smell.

In fact very little of the salads and vegetables we buy in the supermarkets have much smell at all. But then such a lot of it travels a very long way which is a great shame because we can grow so much of our produce in this country rather than importing it.

There are other benefits to growing food of your own, one of those being that there are so many more varieties of crops that just aren’t available in the shops. Another benefit is that you reduce your carbon footprint and food miles and save money.

Growing food is not difficult or complicated and needs nothing more than a few basic tools, some space, a few seeds, a little time every day to care for your plants and enthusiasm.

While we are on the subject of space, if you don’t have a garden then you can still grow lot’s of good things to eat in pots on a balcony or in a back yard or on a window ledge, although smaller spaces are more challenging for growing food, with a little creative thinking you can still be very productive. There is also the option of growing on an allotment although there is usually long waiting lists to get one especially in large cities where the waiting list can be 25 years plus! But it is worth enquiring to see what is available in your area.

In 2010 I did a rough calculation of what I saved from early Spring right up until the snow came in December and I reckon it must have been £500 upwards and that was not factoring in the fabulous eggs that my chickens lay every day which are only fed on organic food and scraps from the garden. So it’s maybe nearer £700 I saved last year!!

I hope my website will inspire you to start growing food in whatever space available to you. I am not an expert gardener and the information and advice on this website is what works for me in my garden, which is always evolving. Much like this website!

Happy growing

Pam