Growing my own

"The Good Life", Richard Briers and Felicity Kendal

 Have you ever watched The Good Life on the G.O.L.D. channel, which was a nice evening telly series created in the 70's for BBC 1 I think? The idea of a married couple giving up everything to have a life of self sufficiency intrigues me and watching them grow their own vegetables and practically running a mini farm in the back yard in "suburbia" with varying degrees of success (and hilarity too) makes me want to throw caution to the wind and join in! How simple it is made to look and how happy they are with their lot. Surely I could do the very same couldn't I?








Well, once I came back down to earth I realised that perhaps this project might be a little too much to take on in one go, not to mention that the neighbour's may finally believe I had lost the plot (of course I have but they don't need to know just yet). So I took on a much smaller project last March which consisted of tomato seeds, compost and hanging baskets. These little seedlings were sown in their bed and allowed to grow on the window sill and when things were a little cool they went for a little holiday in the hot press for a day or two until the warm sun returned. Watering them everyday and willing them to grow for me and not make me a total green fingered disaster. To my delight they began to grow and progressed to individual pots and then came the day when they went to college....or really the hanging baskets! By now they were like children and I had put basil into one pot and parsley into another to see how they would get on.

Happy days!

All summer I tended to them and I'm sure some neighbours must have thought I was growing some illegal substance at first, as they could not see the lovely colourful flowers that usually emerge from baskets. But flowers, although lovely, are not much use really and I felt tomatoes would be much more beneficial to me in the end, if it worked out of course. Well, you can imagine the delight when after the little flowers died I saw the first little tomatoes. All my effort seemed to have paid off and they grew quite large some of them. Still in mid August when everyone else seemed to have lovely red tomato's mine were determinedly green. A friend of mine said that although they were lovely and big and healthy looking, they may not come through and I may have to make ~Green tomato chutney.
Tragedy! It felt like an episode of ER or Casualty, such was the drama. I persevered for a few weeks longer and then last week when the summer nights were more like Autumn nights and I thought it was time to give up, there I saw the glimmer of red on one tomato. Sheer joy.
I've continued on with my watering can and tomato feed everyday or if that wasn't possible, certainly every other day and this evening I picked my first harvest. I took a few tomatoes over to my parents and have a few here for me (well, the hubby doesn't eat them). This is the first thing I have grown from scratch and I am very proud. Next year I will do the same although I hope to save a few seeds from the tomatoes this year and not have to purchase anymore. After all, you don't see mother nature popping into the garden centre- not our one anyway. Next year potatoes and some other easy growers I think. It doesn't really matter if they don't grow for some reason. It's been a joy trying and the satisfaction of "reaping the harvest" is out of this world. I dare you to give it a go.

There's a lot more where these came from.

Please send me a comment if you have grown something this year or do it every year or just let me know what you think about growing your own.