Return of the gardening mojo

29 April 2009

All of a sudden I’m back in the mood for tackling my vegetable patch, no doubt helped by the fact that I’ve been playing a few levels of this game, which tends to make me think that I could run a little farm NO PROBLEM AT ALL, WHAT DO YOU MEAN CLICKING MY MOUSE IS NOT THE SAME AS ACTUALLY HARVESTING WHEAT WITH MY BARE HANDS? The graphics are so bright and the veggies look so lush that they just make me think, mmm, me want to grow things. Me want them to grow magically and if they could not fail inexplicably like last year, then that would be just tops.

So out came the garden plan, the ruler and the nice pencil that I took from the hotel in Saarbrücken. Then came a whole lot of wondering about what scale I’d used when I drew the plan. When I’m wondering the same thing next year, let’s all remember that one big square equals a foot. Which would have been more obvious had I not counted the little squares as being 16 per big square, when in fact there were only 12 per square.

A good gardener rotates their crops, ensuring for example that a brassica is not planted in the same soil in which a brassica grew the year before. A gardener like me says, well I’ve only got so much space and if the sweetcorn didn’t actually grow last year, then it doesn’t count and so puts the sweetcorn in pretty much the same place as before. Where it had better damn well grow this time, because if it doesn’t, I may have to write a strongly worded letter to someone. Possibly to Thursday.

This is the plan I came up with last night (click on the photo to see the notes at Flickr). Starting on the left, I shall try a few cucumber plants, training them up off the ground onto trellis/supports.

At the bottom of the patch I’ll be putting the dwarf aubergine plants that are currently just spindly little seedlings in pots indoors. It’s about time they grew some proper leaves and stopped looking quiet so pathetic, so I’ve moved them from the den into the conservatory in an effort to warm them up a bit.

Carrots worked well for me last year, partly because I finally learned to thin seedlings when I’m told to. It turns out that instructions are sometimes for my benefit. I’ll be planting a couple of rows, a couple of weeks apart, so as to have a staggered harvest (which does not mean I’ll be drinking heavily in the intervening weeks) (but does not necessarily rule it out).

I’ve not tried tomatoes before and being new to the game I am of course aiming straight off for the incredible harvest that Lee and Debbie had a few years back, producing approximately 3 tonnes of tomatoes that ended up with us making pots and pots of chutney. I’ll be growing bush varieties of ordinary toms and cherry toms, rather than cordon varieties. This is because I prefer to succeed with as little effort as possible and bush varieties don’t need staking and supporting and all that guff. They just grow.

Beetroot is something of which I’m very fond in my summertime sandwiches, so I want to have another go at growing that. Last year I did actually plant some beetroot seed, but bugger all happened. I’m hoping that that was simply the curse of 2008 and that this year will be a bit more like 2007 in terms of bounty in the patch.

Finally I’ll also be doing a few vines of runner beans. I’m not mad about them myself, but Mum likes them and I’ve been denying her a home-grown crop for the past couple of years. I plan to grow them up the back of Juniper Lodge, either pinching out the tops when they reach roof height, or letting them grow further up canes, we’ll see.