One year on

The transition from growing a few tomatoes to growing on a grander scale was more a series of small faltering steps than one giant leap. 

For the first couple of years, we grew vegetables in large pots and interspersed them throughout the flower beds. We flirted with an allotment, but the combination of working full time and bringing up two children meant we couldn't give it the attention it required. There was also another problem: this allotment site didn't fit in with our ideals of growing organically. Nowadays, growing organically is seen as the norm, but 30 years ago, we were eyed rather differently. At best we were recklessly naive. 

At worst, rebellious fools destined to fail at the first spadeful of soil. 

"Why would you go to all the trouble of growing veg for it just to be eaten by pests?" was an often-asked question.  

Besides, allotments are a detached form of gardening, perfect if you have no or little garden of your own. But we wanted something other than that. We never saw vegetable gardening as something that was a separate entity to other parts of the garden. We never saw it as something to be tucked away at the bottom of the garden. We wanted it to be an integral part of our lives, the engine room of the garden, feeding our souls as well as our stomachs. 

We wanted "food feet" not food miles and to be able to pop out to the garden and come back some minutes later with whatever was ripe for the picking. From fork to fork in as short a time as possible. 

Just as importantly, we wanted our children to know about where food comes from, to be able to walk in the garden and pick a pod of peas, or a perfectly ripe strawberry. 

We decided on a simple grid system of four raised beds as a starting point for our new vegetable garden, with paths wide enough to accommodate a wheelbarrow. A few weeks later we were gifted enough timber from some large packing cases to edge the raised beds. We had all the ingredients. 

Now all we had to do was start. 

Footnote: 

It is a year since our first post, and I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who has been good enough to read it. 

It also seems appropriate to continue our story from that first post. 

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