For the first time in years, we have grown our own veg and it’s been an absolute joy!

We dug an area of the garden over at the start of lock down. It was an area where the soil was heavy and much of the rubble from the extension ended up there. We added a layer of compost we had left over and that was pretty much it!

I always buy organic seeds. At the end of the day the food you eat has history. If you buy seeds soaked in a herbicide, fungicide or pesticide, it’s not a great start. If you plant it in soil that has few nutrients or that is regularly sprayed with the same chemicals, there is little goodness for your vegetables to absorb. If those same vegetable produce seeds, they are of little use. For our food to be nutritionally valuable, it has to have had the right growing conditions.

Considering the poor quality of our soil this year, the seeds did very well! However, the rabbits came along with the pigeons who we had less control over. A fence was constructed with whatever we could find on the farm. I used hazel twigs to cover plants that the pigeons were attacking but to no avail. They ate almost everything!

Still, the crops that did well in the end were courgettes, squash, chard, leeks and spring oinoins (once I’d bought a lot of ladybird larvae to eat the onion or black fly). I did have a little success with dwarf french beans eventually and grew cucumbers peppers and lots of basil in the greenhouse that also had a new lease of life.

The glut of courgettes was overwhelming in the heatwave - they got recycled into the compost bin. Speaking of compost, I’m preparing for next year with two wormeries and two bokashi buckets. Bokashi is a way of fermenting your food waste so that it produces an abundance of healthy microorganisms. The bokashi can eventually go into the wormery to be further broken down into compost. It’s not as straightforward as it seems; at least I haven’t found it to be so. The worms are quite particular and my family keep forgetting to chop up their waste and put it into the container for the worms so we’re not producing anywhere near the amount of compost we’re going to need!

It’s a journey and one I have found immensely satisfying in spite of the challenges. It’s not for everyone but making my own pesto, soups and salads, drying and preserving food for the winter and of planning the garden for next year has been joyful and benfited my mental health no end. It is quite literally grounding spending time with your hands in the earth.

My top tip is that you will get out of growing your own veg, what you put in - literally! I’d love to hear what your top tips are, especially for keeping pests as bay!