Show Us Your Veg Patch - You Know You Want To!! (Merged Thread)

Doom_and_Gloom

Lotus-eater wrote: »

Tell him you want it as a christmas or birthday present and if it all goes wrong you will put it down to grass again. Besides he won't have to mow that bit will he?
If all else fails, do the little princess/Daddy bit, I presume you are a girl, sorry if you are not

I'd love to use it as a birthday one but the lefty guitar etc that I got at Christmas was my birthday one to . Believe me I've tried nearly everything to get the bit opposite what I have now even saying I'd put grass back after but no good . He's just as stubborn as I am I have to say. I won't budge on asking and he won't budge on not letting me have that area for another plot :rolleyes: .
Hrm I don't think the little princess or 'DAAAAAAAAD' thing would work that well now. Being 19, nearly 20, does have it's disadvantages :rotfl: . Yes I am a girl, don't worry about that! Oh well I might just get my way if the food prices gets so much that even he won't want to pay 'that much' for it .

Lotus-eater

How about asking for a small area of it, a border, (in my best last of the summer wine voice) you can do alot with a border, good things borders.


Break him down. bit by bit
Dads can never really say no to a daughter very easily you know... I know only too well. lol

hathor

D & G: I think patience is your best plan. With luck, when your first season is well in hand and Dad can see that you're on top of the job and actually producing good stuff, you'll have the best argument possible to press your case.

There's nothing like baskets full of bounty to make folks realise what a bind mowing & edging can be! (You can see why I live in an apartment, now, can't you?)

Lotus-eater

hathor wrote: »

.

There's nothing like baskets full of bounty to make folks realise what a bind mowing & edging can be! (You can see why I live in an apartment, now, can't you?)

Sorry, no.

hathor

I'm a new convert to veg-growing, driven to it by poverty, to be frank!
Against the huge disadvantage of only having a balcony to grow on, I can only set the slight advantages of no slugs, no snails, no weeding, no mowing (obviously!), no digging, and (until proved otherwise) about 35ft too high for carrot root fly .

Seriously, the apartment thing is 'cos we've moved around a lot through work & couldn't cope with the effects of leaving a garden for any length of time. Now OH moves around & I spend a lot of time on my own, so the a-pot-ment helps me stretch the old housekeeping budget a bit. Plus, of course, it helps encourage me to eat more veg.

Being a total novice last year, I owe any success I had at all to this forum & lots of research (Mrs M: you're a Godsend :A; please don't leave me!) so I am proof that anybody can grow food.

Having established my non-credentials, and without wishing to be at all rude, might I humbly suggest that anyone with a big plot that's a lot of work on the digging/weeding front considers raised beds? They really do seem to have lots of advantages over traditional gardening methods.

On the keeping costs down front, just think laterally: anything that will hold compost & can be drained will do. Someone on this thread grew tomatoes in a Coke bottle hanging from a fence (I asked for details: if you're reading this, please post ); I've read details of someone growing upside-down tomatoes from those big paint-bucket containers; I'm using mainly black storage crates converted into self-waterers, and washing-up bowls; Mrs M uses anything that comes within her reach, I think! Another article I read about vertical gardening recommended catering-sized tins, washed out & painted on the outside (or not) and wired to a trellis. I'm sure I've even seen shopping bags hung from fences with things growing in them, but I guess you'd only get one season from them, because of the UV. And there's always the potatoes in compost bags/stacks of tyres trick! The point is: there's often an alternative to spending a fortune down the garden centre/DIY.

MRSMCAWBER

Awwww shucks Hathor
I won't leave you - I will keep visiting here as I love to see what everyone else is doing :T ...Im doing a blog to try and help out anyone who is growing in pots n tubs..and to give me a way of keeping track of what Im doing and what results I get..a lot of mine is trial and error and if in doubt I ask my mum :rotfl: Im trying lots of new things this year so there will be lots of finger crossing and praying

Its true -if i find anything that will hold compost I grab it -much to hubbie amazement:p -he should count himself lucky that I don't send him to the cookhouse to retrieve the catering sized tins

My mum at the grand old age of 69 had 3 big raised beds put in her garden last year and she is brilliant -she also has 2 greenhouses joined together and a shed.. and she grows like a demon :T its her exercise and she loves it so it does her mental health good too:D

Primrose

MrsM - I think you're so right about your Mum's mental health being improved by gardening & growing things.. I think this is partly because it's an exercise in "Anticipation". No matter how gloomy and depressing the economy or your personal circumstances, the act of growing seeds and plants means that there is always something in the future to hope for and look forward to. Nature may not always perform as well as you intend but there's always the hope that in a few days your seeds will have germinated, in a few weeks the first blossoms will appear, and then the fruits, and then the joy of picking them, cooking them or freezing/preserving. All these are all postive activities that give purpose and pleasure to our lives. I think that the day when I become too old or too ill to continue gardening and growing things will genuinely be the day when my soul starts to shrivel. To be outside "pottering" doing something productive with the sun on my back and listening to the birds singing is a free pleasure that I would not swap with all the rich bankers and their millions. I'm sure that right now I'm a lot happier than many of them who are now reaping (in a rather different sense) the crops of the seeds they have sown.

KittyCat1

Hi
I'm really inspired to grow some veggies this year after reading through this thread and seeing the amazing results you've all got.But i too am a novice at growing veggies - love gardening but never tried growing anything else.Well,last year decided to grow some strawberries and they were coming along really really well,had tiny little strawberries starting to grow,then my 18yr old cat Soxy decided the pot would make a great loo for him and dug them up and did his business in there.To say it put me off growing anything else is an understatement.But after reading this thread i think i may give it another go.I read a post where someone planted strawberries in hanging baskets?May give this a go but knowing my cat he'll try to find a way of getting up there to leave his mark on my newly planted fruit.

cheerfulness4

I couldn't agree more about gardening improving your mental health. Mum literally dragged me out into mine last year (which was pretty stressy) and plonked me on a chair while she began digging me out veg beds.
By the second one I started joining in - she's 76 and I felt guilty .

By the end of the summer she, myself, DH and DS2 were out there most days digging, weeding, planting, watering etc, and you soon forget your troubles with the breeze on your face and the birds singing. I'm totally addicted now.

Taught me patience, too. You can't have a readymade veg garden really, so I just love watching it develop.

Give me the simple life any day!

hex2

Hello everyone, I do enjoy having a nose at what everyone else is up to and the pictures. I did post pictures last year of the veg plot, will do some up to date ones when it stops raining.

Jobs for this weekend include covering the frame DH has made to keep the hens off the asparagus, planting the jerusalum artichokes (bought today reduced to £1 in BnQ), getting my early new pots in in the green house plus starting some salad in the greenhouse bed for the first time. Tell that to the weather though. I am admiring my seedlings daily, I have Gardeners Delight, Sungold and Garten Pearl on the go atm. Itching to get more stuff sown, and to make a start on the potatoes but need to wait a few weeks yet.